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No votes for New Labour!

The general election announced for May 5 offers no real choice to Britain's 44 million potential voters. Millions, perhaps as many as half the electorate, sense that fact and will decline to take part in a charade carried out under the guise of a democratic process. And they will be right.

New Labour, after eight years in office, is the ruling élites' party of choice. The Blair regime champions and facilitates global big business and the capitalist, dog-eat-dog market economy. New Labour has encouraged corporate globalisation's crude and cruel commercialism to penetrate every corner of social life.

Together with the Bush regime in Washington, the Blair government acts as a global enforcer for the handful of corporations and financial giants that lie like a giant albatross on humanity. While climate change brought on by the rapacious activities of the transnational corporations threatens the planet, Blair and Bush stand aside. After all, business and profit must come first.

In place of democratic rights, the Blairites have constructed an authoritarian, intolerant, reactionary state that scapegoats minorities and asylum seekers, and declares civil liberties and the rule of law to be "out of date". They have engaged in an illegal war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, countries that posed no military threat to Britain, manipulating the state to concoct lies and half-truths to justify their action.

In 1997, voters thought they were rejecting the Thatcher years, with its privatisation, anti-trade unionism and greed. By 2001, the same voters had fathomed out the deception that the Blairites had perpetrated and abstained in record numbers, especially younger voters. More will do so this time. Who is to say they are wrong to stay at home on May 5 in these circumstances, when all the major parties stand for the status quo?

What is also clear to increasing numbers of people is that the parliamentary system offers no solutions to their problems or those of humanity as a whole. It failed to yield to pressure to stop the war on Iraq and is incapable of protecting democratic rights. In any case, New Labour finds parliament an embarrassment and would rather rule by decree. In place of the welfare state, this government is rapidly building a market state which opts out of social provision in areas like pensions and housing. The market state declares that business interests are a priority and that they are essential "partners" for delivering healthcare and transport, for example. This is how corporate-driven globalisation has undermined the right to vote as a means to changing governments and producing reforms. In today's set-up, our voices are silenced and the vast majority are effectively disenfranchised by a fraudulent political system that talks about democracy and acts in a totally opposite way. The stench of hypocrisy is overwhelming.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever to turn out to vote for the Blair government, whatever scare tactics they may use. This is a reactionary, capitalist government and no socialist should endorse it. A handful of Labour MPs like John McDonnell have fought the Blair government consistently and deserve support. As for the rest, they can go hang!

Yet we cannot allow the political élites to manoeuvre us into a position where we give up the right to vote, which previous generations struggled and sacrificed to achieve. The challenge is to create the circumstances where the vote will mean something again, where it will be an effective means to an end. Those who abstain on May 5 should take part in the building of a movement to extend democracy in ways that the present state is incapable of doing.

The Movement for a Socialist Future recently published A World to Win - a rough guide to a future without global capitalism. In it, we put forward proposals to democratise ownership and control of economic and financial resources and the framework for a popular political system in place of the present one. The next government will lack legitimacy and authority because it will be in the hands of big business and lack the mandate of the electorate. This will present opportunities to turn our proposals into a living reality. In fact, we have no other choice if we are to make the right to vote count for something once more.

Movement for a Socialist Future
5 April 2005