By
Ben Chacko
It’s
my deal or no deal is the unwelcome message that Theresa May’s little helpers
have been carrying to the far corners of Torydom over this weekend. Gin and
tonic-fuelled discussions in the bars of Conservative clubs up and down the
shires is perhaps not the most accurate measure of Britain’s mood. But these
ministerial missions to this least representative loci of public opinion are
more about framing a consensus — any kind of consensus — among the warring
tribes of Tory MPs than any more ambitious political project.
May’s
message — threat really — is unlikely to establish unanimity or even order in
the parliamentary Tory party let alone the parliament as a whole. And what
chances it had are weakened by the intervention over the weekend of Romano
Prodi that, in the event of the deal not going through the Commons, the EU
would return to negotiations.
Prodi
preceded Jean-Claude Juncker as the Commission president. His Democratic
political identity and career connection to Goldman Sachs makes him the ideal
representative of both the institutional imperatives of the Brussels
bureaucracy and the EU’s communion with the so-called centre left.
We
should see Prodi’s intervention as yet another manoeuvre in the eternal efforts
of our rulers to ensure that their interests endure. Another wearisome round of
talks will likely resume in which the internal convulsions of the Tory Party
may play a less significant role then the strategic considerations of a ruling
class becoming accustomed to the idea that Jeremy Corbyn is likely to become
prime minister.
The
great benefit – to our bourgeoisie – of Britain’s infinitely flexible
constitutional set-up is that the politics of the workplace and working-class
communities finds a very imperfect reflection in the parliament.
For
most of the time this arrangement causes few problems for those set above us.
But, as that president des riches Emmanuel Macron is finding out, a
parliamentary majority that fails to represent the many is little use when the
streets are aflame and the police take off their riot helmets.
Our
rulers find both an election anytime soon and the prospect of Jeremy Corbyn in
office equally disturbing prospects. These fears will not have been allayed by
Corbyn’s assured and incisive speech to the Lisbon conference of the Party of
European Socialists.
PES
brings together the remnants of what was once the pace setter in the structures
of the European Union but it now lacks a majority, a cohesive or unifying
ideology or even a common political language. The social democratic consensus
which once underpinned decades of relative class peace has vanished and with it
many of the reasons for working people to vote for it.
Not
so in Britain. Corbyn’s Labour is a different beast to the continental parties
of class conciliation.
Jeremy
Corbyn pointed out — to an audience that included representatives of both
Merkel’s SPD coalition partners and Prodi’s eurocratic Partito Democratico –
that “EU support for austerity and failed neoliberal policies have caused
serious hardship for working people across Europe” and had damaged the
credibility of European social democratic parties.
This
is not a welcome message in parts of the PES and Corbyn’s speech was in marked
contrast to some that preceded it. He commended Portugal’s political
arrangement where the PS governs with the conditional support of the communists
and other lefts and set out a political programme which offers Europe’s
socialists and social democrats a way back to government.
Labour
may well inherit the mess May has made of the Brexit negotiations. It is in the
renegotiations that Prodi foretold that we will see how a People’s Brexit is
fashioned.
Courtesy: Morning Star
The post Corbyn Should Be A Model For European Socialists appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
