Republican Unity

It was a great, indeed incredible, victory secured by Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party over the Tories. Theresa May would be sitting on the opposition benches, having been made to resign by her own party, if it wasn’t for the bonkers constitution.

Nobody understands how the Tory constitution works. It is a great national mystery. I think it is a Heath Robinson machine in the basement of Tory HQ. The Tories feed in the results. Hey presto, votes are translated into seats in the Commons. Then a letter from the Queen is printed on goat skin inviting one of the party leaders to visit Buckingham Palace.

May got the letter and drove immediately to the palace. Her Majesty was not amused. This great miscalculation had damaged the value of her shares. It might even mean missing royal Ascot. But the Tories clung on to May as the only person to save them from political meltdown.

Not a peep of criticism could be heard from Tory MPs once the central decision had been taken. It is the type of discipline any Leninist could be proud. Once again Heath Robinson came to the rescue. By keeping Northern Ireland in the British Union, the Democratic Unionist Party would keep the Tories in office.

Those who felt Corbyn could not win on a programme of restoring the social monarchy have been proven wrong. After ten years of austerity, the social monarchy has proved popular with young people. But if the Crown doesn’t invest in it then the whole show is in danger, as the vote to leave the EU indicated. The message from this election is that the Tories cannot keep strangling the goose that lays their golden eggs.

Left Unity has been called the republican wing of the Corbyn movement. That seems like an exaggeration to me. But to their credit LU has taken an anti-Unionist stance which is a necessary precondition for any serious republicanism. It is goes without saying that British republicanism is a non-starter or a complete fake. It is a sordid attempt to mislead and deceive the working class.
The idea that Left Unity is the republican wing of the Corbyn movement is contested not an established fact. Left Unity began life in 2013 as a party of left social monarchism in the ‘spirit of 45’. But it adopted a republican position in the 2015 general election and had a change of mind on British Unionism in 2016 after the Scottish referendum.

With the first victory of Corbyn in the Labour Party, most of the LU’s left wing social monarchists went off to join Labour. It felt like going home after their house had been stolen by Blair.

Every forward march of Corbyn Labour poses the question of whether LU should liquidate into the Labour Party. If Left Unity is the republican wing of the Corbyn movement in England and Wales the answer must be no. There has to be an independent working class republican party, ‘strong and stable’ enough to resist the siren call from Her Majesty’s Labour Party.

With the ongoing crisis of British Exit, people will eventually conclude that we need something better than the Tory constitution to decide who gets the keys to Downing Street and access to Crown powers enabling the few to govern the many.

Despite crashing into the EU iceberg, HMS Brexit is still afloat with Captain Corbyn ready to take command on the bridge. Even more people want to get on board. We are tilting but not yet sinking. Does anybody know on which deck the lifeboats are stored or do we have to build our own?

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