BRITAIN’S system of state-monopoly capitalism, in which the economic power of the monopolies is effectively fused with the political power of the ruling class and its state apparatus, stumbles from one crisis to the next.

Most people do not see things in such ideological terms. Instead they feel the negative effects on their families, themselves, their neighbours, workmates, local communities and society generally. 

Although they draw conclusions from what is happening, their understanding, thoughts and aspirations are shaped — at least in part — by the state and monopoly-owned mass media.

But their own experiences and those of others can break through the media smoke-screen of distortions, diversions and cover-ups.

Many if not most people know that food, fuel and housing costs continue to escalate — and that someone, somewhere is profiting mightily at their expense.

They know that vital public and social services are deteriorating with little or no prospect of immediate improvement.

They fear for sick and elderly family members and friends — and prefer not to think about growing old themselves.

They know that work is getting harder and more insecure with less satisfaction and reward.

They know, especially after the Iraq war, Covid and the Post Office and blood transfusion scandals, that those in positions of power and authority will lie to evade responsibility for their actions. They’ve always known that “there’s one law for the rich and another for the poor.”

They know that Israeli forces are committing genocide in Palestine but most of our top politicians don’t want to admit it.

They suspect that Britain’s Labour government has no coherent plan to tackle any of these and other real or perceived problems.

They also suspect that Prime Minister Starmer and Chancellor Reeves will be taxing them more in order to fill a real or imagined “black hole” in Britain’s public finances.

As a result of all this, many people distrust Labour and Tory politicians as never before. They have no time for the slippery catchphrases, gimmicks, evasions and buck-passing. 

Instead they are listening to the self-proclaimed “straight-talkers,” the right-wing and racist “voices of the people” who increasingly pollute politics and the mass media.

A smaller number of ex-Labour voters are turning to the Greens, the Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru or the SNP.
 

The Starmer regime’s social and welfare cuts, repressive legislation, militarisation and now further deregulation of the corrupt and over-bearing City of London are driving away Labour Party members in their tens of thousands and working-class supporters in their millions.

The corporate capture of Labour by big business is proceeding apace.

True, more than 100 Labour MPs rebelled against the Welfare Bill woken from servile slumber by angry constituents or by their own conscience. 

Five more have now been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party.

But they have little desire and no strategy for changing the government’s fundamental direction, at least not yet.

Some Westminster rebels may join the new party or alliance of the left proposed by Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and some of the independent pro-Palestine MPs. 

The intention is to provide a left and progressive alternative to Labour and Reform UK at elections, especially those scheduled for the May 2026 and the pre-2030 general election. 

Faced with such likely developments, what does the Communist Party have to say?

We will be discussing our electoral policy in the run-up to our 58th Congress in November, when 120-plus elected delegates will take the important decisions.

Traditionally, the CP position has been to call on electors to “vote Labour where no Communist is standing.” 

Before the emergence of many more far-left candidates in the 1980s, the party’s slogan to “vote as left as you can” amounted to the same thing.

Why these slogans? Because the Communist Party’s programme recognised Labour’s significance as the mass party of the working class and its labour movement; and as a vital arena of struggle for left and progressive policies that could be imposed on a Labour government and implemented under organised mass pressure as a stage in the process of socialist revolution.

Faced with the rise of the National Front and then the BNP in the 1970s and 1980s, the CP urged support for the anti-fascist candidate best placed to keep out the neonazis.

But it was New Labour’s break from social democracy in the 1990s that began to change the Communist Party’s electoral line.

Gone were Labour’s commitments to public ownership and a mixed economy, to economic planning with controls on capital and prices, to the redistribution of wealth.

So Communists opposed the re-election of leading New Labourites, urging a vote for Arthur Scargill against Peter Mandelson in 2001 and, after the Iraq war, for Respect’s George Galloway in 2005. 

With many Labour-run councils implementing Tory and Labour cuts and privatisations with little or no resistance, the CP’s general call to vote Labour in local elections ceased to operate.

At the same time, Britain’s Communists multiplied our candidates at local, Welsh, Scottish and Westminster levels, while also creating an electoral alliance — Unity for Peace and Socialism — with overseas communist and workers’ parties domiciled here.

The CP also played a prominent part in anti-EU electoral coalitions with other left-wing parties and the RMT union.

Understandably, these developments were interrupted when Jeremy Corbyn — with Communist support in the People’s Assembly and anti-war mass movements — won the Labour Party leadership in 2015. The CP then stood down in the 2017 and 2019 general elections and called for a Labour vote everywhere.

Now we face a new set of evolving circumstances. 

It may be difficult for Communists to call for a generalised Labour vote in the foreseeable future, especially when Starmer’s suppression of inner-party democracy, dissent and the left has made changing his party’s direction from within all but impossible.

Only a resurgence of trade union pressure and mass campaigning — combined with the threat of more Parliamentary Labour Party rebellions — has the potential to bring about changes of policy on specific issues such as water renationalisation and Palestine. 

Nor will Reform UK’s bandwagon be spragged by voting for a Labour leadership whose policies have been feeding this gaggle of millionaire spivs, chancers and the downright misguided.

Certainly, the Communist Party will not back candidates, parties or alliances who fail to call for public ownership of key services and utilities, a wealth tax and the repeal of anti-trade union and anti-democratic laws, but who embrace instead Britain’s ruinous nuclear weapons programme, Nato, the war in Ukraine, Israeli genocide, the Cold War against China or rejoining the militarised, pro-big business EU.

Of course, there will be Labour and candidates of other parties and alliances who deserve popular support in the coming elections. But while a substantial left-wing electoral breakthrough would be welcome, it is neither guaranteed nor a universal panacea.

What is needed, above all, is a militant United Front of working-class and left organisations to expose the capitalist class origins and loyalties of Reform UK and to promote an alternative left-wing programme to the policies of both Nigel Farage and his pound-shop epigones in Starmer’s Labour Party. 

Communist Party candidates can be relied upon to project such a programme in forthcoming elections without fear or compromise, as part of the struggle for socialist revolution.

Rob Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.