Brexit – Joan Twelves

Covid can’t wait – Brexit can

Labour must demand a Brexit pause while we tackle Covid-19

Covid-19 has exposed the dysfunction at the heart of the British state after a decade of austerity. That dysfunction has been combined with an extreme right-wing ideology, meaning that we have a government utterly incapable of carrying out its primary function – protecting its citizens. This combination has already led to a litany of failures: the foot-dragging initial response; the refusal to follow World Health Organisation guidelines; the failure to requisition adequate and timely supplies and equipment; the adherence to the immoral ‘herd immunity’ policy favoured by eugenicists and elitists; and the current fetish with non-existent antibody tests to identify an immunity that, without a vaccine, has not been evidenced to exist.

Many have been duped by the Tories’ sudden embrace of public expenditure, but the small print shows that it is all smoke and mirrors. Loans and deferred VAT payments mean SMEs and the self-employed gain little other than a bit of time to pay. Waiting on the phone for hour to then wait another five weeks for a Universal Credit payment is no substitute for the immediacy and simplicity of universal basic income or helicopter payments. Statutory sick pay is not a living wage. Utility and rent bills have not been frozen. Thousands are still going to work in non-essential jobs because they have no choice. Mutual aid volunteers are being asked to pay for groceries as people run out of money.

At the end of the day, as with Donald Trump, Tory policies will always be determined by the bottom line – by stock market rather than fatality numbers. We know which side the Conservatives are really on in those ‘economy vs. people’s lives’ debates. We know that by ‘economy’, they mean profit – not our livelihoods, jobs and household bills. The UK’s departure from the EU’s Early Warning and Response System and European Medicines Agency, and the Tories’ refusal to be part of a 28-country purchasing block for ventilators are not just shameful; they exhibit a pig-headed anti-Europeanism and dangerous British exceptionalism that puts ideology before saving lives.

In these circumstances, Labour must be bold. In recent years, Labour was at its best and most popular when Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell showed clear and firm leadership. Their anti-austerity policies and the 2017 manifesto are prime examples of that. But Labour has also been at its weakest and least popular when clear leadership has not been forthcoming. The 2019 manifesto was as radical as that of 2017, but was always going to get swamped and ridiculed in an election dominated by Brexit. And here, instead of boldness and clarity, Corbyn’s triangulation and failure to challenge the nationalist and populist nature of the Brexit project was a major contributory factor to our defeat.

Keir Starmer has already demonstrated a moving empathy and understanding of the effects of the Covid-19 crisis on the poor and working class. Now he must also be bold on Brexit. The economic and social fallout from coronavirus will be more than most people can cope with, without adding the unnecessary and human-made disaster that the Tories’ preferred hard Brexit constitutes. Brexit and fighting Covid are now inextricably linked.

The UK will, by default, be trading on World Trade Organisation rules come 2021 if Labour does not demand the virtual reopening of parliament immediately after Easter to agree an extension to the transition arrangements. If it doesn’t, then this Brexiteer government – that just a couple of months ago thought Brexit bongs more important than confronting the deadly threat that they knew we faced – will be more than happy to allow the July deadline to pass unnoticed, just as it has already ensured that the important Windrush Report was buried by Covid-19. Whatever their position on Brexit, every Labour member should now be demanding the government press pause on Brexit and concentrates on saving lives. You can sign Labour for a Socialist Europe’s petition to that effect here.

The majority’s reaction to the crisis has demonstrated the power of community, of working together, of solidarity, of support for our key workers and the NHS. Where the government has failed to act, cash-strapped Labour councils have stepped into the breach magnificently, working with all sections of their local communities to feed and support everyone. Pop-up mutual aid groups have linked up with established voluntary organisations, small businesses have used their imaginations to find ways to help, online entertainment and education has transformed many people’s lives and enabled them to live in isolation.

Thousands of migrants, refugees and EU citizens whose lives have been turned upside down by the Tory Brexiteers have instinctively and generously worked with their neighbours to build community support networks. These are the very same migrants who have been subjected to the Tories’ hostile environment, threatened with deportation, banned from receiving healthcare because of the ‘no recourse to public funds’ rules, and who have been the first UK health workers to lose their lives to coronavirus.

We must not let this profoundly ideological Tory government continue to put lives at risk, nor to use this crisis as their opportunity to further right-wing projects. Labour needs to be offering a future in line with the community strengths and power of collective action that a new generation is discovering. More immediately, we must demand a pause to Brexit so that all of our collective efforts can be concentrated on fighting the pandemic. And once this is over, let’s make sure that we don’t go back to normal.

This article was published in Labour List on 8 April 2020

https://labourlist.org/2020/04/labour-must-demand-a-brexit-pause-while-we-tackle-covid-19/

Congeries ebook on Amazon

Only Labour Can Stop Brexit

Only a vote for Labour in Thursday’s European elections can stop the Brexit Party topping the polls.

A ‘tactical’ ‘protest’ vote in these elections is not an option. Remainers must support Labour.

Allowing the Brexit Party to top the poll will not bring about a People’s Vote. The opposite. It will send a message to Europe and the world that a bunch of anti-European right-wing little-Englander charlatans speak for this country, and it will strengthen both their neo-fascist friends across Europe and the No Deal Brexiteers in the Tory Party.

Farage said yesterday “If we win on Thursday, we kill off any chance of them forcing a second referendum on us”. He went on to demand a place in the EU negotiating team.

Only Labour can beat the Faragists.

Only Labour can stop Boris and Nigel taking the UK out of the EU on Hallowe’en with No Deal.

I share the frustration of so many Labour members at the Leadership’s ambiguity on Brexit. But we have to acknowledge that they have pursued the policy agreed unanimously at last year’s Conference – to call for a General Election and for “all options to remain on the table, including campaigning for a public vote”.

There were many shortcomings to that composite motion, not least its failure to spell out that Labour is fundamentally a Remain Party, but the way to change that is not desertion but to use every avenue within the Party to effect policy change, in particular by motions to this year’s Annual Conference as well as supporting calls for a Special Emergency Conference on Brexit now.

I’ve criticised the lack of Labour campaigning in this election. But JeremyCorbyn, accompanied by many Shadow Ministers, was out in Vauxhall yesterday, meeting members, knocking on doors and talking about Labour’s positive vision, including:

“If we can’t get a sensible compromise or a General Election, we’ll back a public vote”. (here)

Voting anything but Labour may make you feel ‘better’, but it is a wasted vote. None of the smaller parties are in a position to deliver the public vote on Brexit of their claims – only Labour can do that. Nor are they in a position to influence the policies and practices of the EU – only Labour and its allies in the S&D can challenge for the Commission Presidency and affect the EU’s attitude not just to the UK but to a range of policies in respect of austerity, migration and the climate crisis.

Instead of using these elections to send a message to Jeremy Corbyn, our message has to be that fascists of the neo-, alt- or any other variety, are not welcome here, and that only Labour can stop Brexit.

Joan

Photos: @JohnStuttle with thanks - Vauxhall Park, 21 May 2019

How to lose votes and alienate EU-friends

Dear Jeremy and Labour Party comrades

I have decades of experience campaigning in Lambeth and across London. I am currently a member of Vauxhall CLP EC and a coordinator for the local Momentum group. I am writing to share my concerns about how the current EU election is being run.

The day after I received my postal voting form I received a personalised letter from the Lib Dem’s Mayoral candidate. I see from Facebook that lots of other postal voters have received similar from the Brexits. But nothing from Labour. We wouldn’t know an election is going on!

In my constituency the chance to get out on the doorstep and explain that our unrepresentative hard Brexiteer MP, Kate Hoey, does not represent the views of local Party members has been seized by all wings of the Party with enthusiasm. Three of London’s MEP candidates are members of this constituency. Again, all wings of what is often depicted as a politically split CLP have welcomed their nominations and are eager to campaign for them.

But – along with the lack of attention being given to the thousands of postal voters, who faced with a long and complicated ballot form let alone a short and ‘complicated’ (in the Facebook sense of the word) campaign really need some guidance – the Labour Party machinery has not just been unhelpful but at worst has pushed activists away.

I manage a Community Centre but was quickly told that it would be impossible to host any kind of rally or meeting there because, even if I personally donated the cost, it would not be permitted as it would be charged against election expenses. I have even been told that putting up a Labour poster is banned. (By the way, I have no intention of obeying that edict – and if it is true then I would like to see it in writing.)

It does not help that this lacklustre attitude to campaigning – so unlike the spirit of the 2017 campaign – is reflected in the paucity of literature that has been produced. What has been produced is dire. Instead of suggesting that the European Parliament funds the Met Police, the NHS and schools (and is therefore responsible for the current cuts), why haven’t the policies contained in the excellent PES manifesto, which Labour signed up to some months ago, been used as the basis for spelling out what our MEPs can do; why hasn’t the excellent record of what socialist MEPs have achieved contained in Labour’s own European Manifesto been mentioned? That Manifesto is great – but who’s going to know that. It’s top secret.

Instead we get the fluffy Hallmark slogan of ‘bringing our country together again’. To do that requires honesty, bravery and a clear position on Brexit. These elections are about Europe. The issue cannot be ignored. It has to be confronted head on. Is it any surprise that the two parties who are rising in the polls are the two who are campaigning with the clearest message in respect of Brexit. A clear strong message will do more to bring the country together than woolly ambiguity.

And what about social media ? From voter registration drives, to enthusiastically selling the messages in the Manifesto across Facebook and Twitter, the Party could be doing so much more. More than nothing, that is. In 2017 Labour dominated social media – why are we not doing the same by recapturing the spirit we found then? Labour’s posts don’t even mention the elections. It is being left to individual candidates to wage an air war on their own. And to individual CLPs like my own to organise doorstepping, canvassing, and photo ops with the candidates and the rare Shadow Cabinet Minister who is actively campaigning to get across Labour’s internationalist message.

Having seen the complexity of the ballot paper, with 10 Parties and 11 independents standing in London, the party needs to at least be explaining the voting system! Will there be ‘Get-out-the-vote’ leaflets doing that or will it, like everything else about this campaign, be left to individual candidates and grassroots members to do that. Without spending any money?

I gather the spending restrictions are because any expenditure now may get charged against a future early general election. But it won’t be spending too much at the GE which will lose us votes. It will be not campaigning now. We are losing the General Election campaign on the doorstep today . Once voters – and members (a third of Labour List readers!) – abandon Labour to vote for another party they rarely come back. The majority of Labour members and voters in London support remaining in the EU, and we have been losing members and voters in my constituency for months because of our MP’s and the Leader’s positions on Brexit. If Labour does badly on 23 May because of the lack of campaign support already unhappy members will be even further demotivated.

Complex messages need to be got across in this election. We need to be explaining how voting for other smaller parties is a wasted vote as they are not in a position to either deliver the public vote on Brexit of their claims – only Labour can do that – nor are they in a position to influence the policies and practices of the European Union – only Labour and its allies in the S&D can challenge for the Commission Presidency and affect the EU’s attitude to the UK. And we need to be spelling out that only Labour is committed to challenging the growth of fascist and alt-right populism across Europe and in the UK.

London is a great working class city and the majority of its diverse, multi-national residents want to stay in the European Union. We have great candidates who will represent this city and its people heart and soul. Let’s please tell Londoners who they are, how to vote, and why, above all, they should vote Labour. Against austerity, for real action against climate catastrophe, for peace and prosperity across our continent.

I feel obliged to complain like this because if ordinary members like me don’t, then nothing will change.

In hope and solidarity

Joan

Footnote:

I’m pleased to say that after I wrote this the Labour Party machinery swung into action – in London at least – and has produced election material, including on social media. Hundreds of Party members have enthusiastically accompanied our candidates on the doorstep. But, as the same time, far too many members are saying they are voting for one of the smaller Remain parties. A wasted vote, which could allow Farage’s Party to top the poll and send a message to Europe and the world that a bunch of anti-European, anti-migrant right-wing little-Englander charlatans represent the values and opinions of this country.

I will be voting Labour on Thursday and I call on all socialist Remainers to do the same.

Joan, 19 May 2019

Today I wrote to my MP, Kate Hoey….

Dear Kate

I am not going to rehearse our disagreements over Brexit here. We both know where we stand. However, I would like to know how you plan to vote on today’s motion before the House on No Deal.

It is not my practice to reduce political questions to my personal circumstances. But on this occasion I think they may illustrate a situation that faces thousands of people in this country including in Vauxhall.

I have just taken delivery of a biological drug for the treatment of Crohn’s Disease. It is the latest in a family of very expensive, innovative drugs which have enabled me to get back involved in political activity after over a decade of being virtually housebound. It is manufactured in Belgium. It requires continuous refrigeration.

I am awaiting a delivery of medical appliances and related equipment without which I cannot function. They are made in Denmark and other European countries. I was worried enough to contact the company who provide them. They told me that they had purchased additional warehouse space (at what cost to the NHS/taxpayer?). That didn’t really reassure me.

I haven’t dared look at the country of origin of the multiple pills I take every morning.

My needs are minor compared to others. But it is alarming that I should even have to worry about whether I will be able to function if the UK leaves the EU without arrangements in place to guarantee the seamless provision and delivery of vital medical supplies.

I have read that you think stories such as this are unnecessarily alarmist. That the disruption of No Deal is a price worth paying.

I do hope that is not your view.

The idea that you could support the dismantling of 40 years of integrated manufacturing, commerce and trade without coherent plans and agreements being in place is incomprehensible to me. Especially when it is in the hands of the most right-wing and inept Tory government of the post-war years. Especially when we lose more than we gain. I believe in a socialist transformation of society. That could well cause disruption. We used to joke in my youth about the necessity of guaranteeing beer supplies come the revolution. But socialism’s aim is to benefit us all; not enrich the few. It’s to extend our rights and liberties; not remove our right to travel, study, work, live, and love across our neighbouring continent. Brexit is the antithesis of socialism and internationalism.

I know you argue that the result of the referendum has to be implemented; that it was a democratic exercise and decision. But nobody ever suggested during the referendum campaign that there would be No Deal, no civilised arrangements for leaving the EU. Nobody even whispered that the smooth delivery of medical supplies could be affected – that wasn’t on the side of that bus.

Democracy is not a static concept. If it was we would only ever have one election and that would be that. Maybe another one a generation or two later? That sounds a bit like Spain, where there was a general election in 1936 and then not another until 1977. The Chartists argued for annual elections. It’s hardly revolutionary, let alone anti-democratic, to argue that the people might want to have another think, have another say, now they have more information on what that first binary decision means in practice.

I look forward to hearing from you confirming that you will be voting to rule out No Deal today, and that you will be supporting Labour’s policy, including supporting steps for a public vote to stop no deal or a damaging Tory Brexit.

Yours

Joan

I wrote to Jeremy this morning. Here’s what I said –

Dear Jeremy

I was appalled to wake up to hear the Tory spin that you might accept the paltry concessions offered by the PM to push Brexit through Parliament.

Concessions on things which should be happening anyway. And even if the Tories are prepared to row back on a few workplace rights they have spent the last decades demolishing, and offer some more Sports Direct depots to the former coalfield communities, what about our environmental rights, what about our consumer rights, what about our rights as European citizens to travel, study, work, live, and love across our neighbouring continent, what about the rights of EU citizens in this country, what about all of our rights to free movement across the world – or is that just for the rich? Where are your demands on these rights? Where are the Tories’ concessions on these?

The fact that I could believe this possible is an indictment of the position you have taken on Brexit ever since the referendum – indeed during it when I was told by your staff that you felt you had done enough meetings on Europe after just doing a couple, and therefore could not do one in south London with me.

You are making it impossible for comrades like myself to defend your Leadership. Brexit is an anti-internationalist, anti-solidarity, anti-peace, anti-immigrant right-wing project – there is no fantasy Lexit which will overturn austerity; indeed, the reverse as the country is impoverished and the NHS crumbles for lack of staff, medicines and funding.

Good comrades are leaving the Party in Vauxhall because you have not only failed to provide clear and decisive leadership against Brexit but also because you have failed to take any action against our MP, who has been consistently allowed to break the whip and collude with the most rabidly right-wing of Brexiteers such as Nigel Farage and Arron Banks. Motions of no confidence in Kate Hoey have won unanimous support across the Party here, but nothing ever happens; but it is more than clear that nobody here will campaign for her if she is allowed to restand as our PPC. The trade union sponsorship the CLP has received for her for the last 30 years has recently been stopped. It is time the Party did the same.

Criticism of the institutions of the EU is fine. But you have to make them in the light of the objective circumstances of the time; and the objective circumstances now are that the right are advancing across the world and we – you – need to be leading the fightback against them. Rather than bunkering into a ‘socialism in one country’ world view, the fight needs to be taken into Europe, where we need to be working with socialists, not against them.

I hate referendums. But I believe that another is unavoidable if the anti-Europe vote in the first one is to be overturned. You need to not just support another vote, but make it very, very clear that you will campaign and fight to challenge the original decision and support Remain and Reform loudly and proudly.

I believe the advice you are receiving is wrong. You need to get out of the bunker and the Westminster bubble and talk to comrades who take a pro-European view. More than happy to get on the bus and come and chat any time.

Comradely greetings

Joan