Dave’s Part on an all too common occurrence, as three socialist parties will stand in the Glasgow North East by-election:
The picture was complicated in 2005, as former Labour MP Michael Martin sought election as Speaker of the House of Commons. In accordance with convention, the ballot paper did not describe him as Labour, and neither the Tories nor the Lib Dems ran against him.
To general astonishment, the Socialist Labour Party secured 14.2%, an all-time high for the Scargillites, almost certainly thanks to confusion on the part of the electorate. The SSP tally came to an additional 4.9%.
[…]
But nothing can excuse the wilful display of light-mindedness the division flags up in neon lights to potentially sympathetic punters, just months ahead of a general election. Credible this is not.
The far left, both sides of the border, should remember that until it starts taking itself seriously, there is no reason why anyone else should do so.
That there will be three socialist parties with broadly the same ideology and policies standing in this by-election is silly, but it’s not the cause, nor even a sympton, of the socialist left’s irrelevance in UK politics. In fact, it’s the obsession with unity that shows how much the left has declined in the past three decades. Healthy parties do not bother with alliances and bpopular fronts; they rely on their own strengths. And as each of the various initiatives undertaken in the last ten years — Socialist Alliance, Respect, the Campaign for a New Workers Party etc — they don’t work: little electorial succes, no real gain in membership or activists and infighting soon ruining all of them. The most succesful of these projects is the SSP, which did go from an electorial alliance to being a real party, only to be nobbed by the whole Tommy Sheridan affair.
The differences on the left, between social democrats and socialists, socialists and communists, communists and trotskyists have alwas been there but didn’t matter when the left was healthy. If the left makes a turnaround it won’t be through desperate unity projects, but through hard slog and by confronting the realities of 21st century Britain. Some group or party will get it right, go their own way and become “the next Labour party” — maybe even the Labour party itself.