Elections in the UK – Red Flag News Editorial

We hereby publish excerpts from the editorial of Red Flag News:

EDITORIAL: On the election of Keir Starmer and the road ahead

The 2024 election has concluded with the election of the Labour Party as the majority Party, thereby electing Keir Starmer as Prime Minister. The position is ultimately nothing more then the figurehead of British imperialism. Elections do not change who is in power, but rather who they choose to run their day-to-day affairs.

The Labour landslide comes as no surprise, with almost all of the mainstream media outlets putting their full support behind Starmer. It has never been clearer just how farcical and predetermined elections are when we see that this “landslide” is largely a fictitious one, and was in fact decided entirely by the ultra-wealthy ruling class through their monopoly on the media.

Labour’s “landslide” comes after losing more than half a million votes compared to 2019. The “strong democratic mandate” which Keir Starmer claims to have been given, came from just 14% of the population.

It was one of the lowest turnouts in modern history, at less than 60%. Even the most reactionary of sources admit that those who do not vote tend to be the most exploited and downtrodden working class people in Britain. The monopoly-backed media have been urging the people to vote and ‘have their voice heard’, attempting to shame those working class people who righteously see voting as pointless.

Social-Democrats and Revisionists alike have expressed dismay at the low turnout, condemning the Working Class in Britain as impotent and not knowing what is good for themselves. This is not only incorrect, but an insult to the proud Working Class who these opportunists claim to represent.

The low turnout does not show that working class people are uninterested in politics or apathetic about their future. Instead it shows the fact that a huge number of British workers are not being fooled by a futile illusion of choice.

Workers are increasingly recognizing that they are not empowered by bourgeois elections. The task now for proletarian revolutionaries is to take the correct ideas around the rejection of bourgeois parliaments among the workers, and use them to advance Class Consciousness. A major part of this is the Electoral Boycott.

Much is said in the monopoly media about what changes the Labour government will bring about, the clear answer is that there will be no change other than the worsening crisis which Imperialism cannot find its way out of.

No matter how much talks of a “new deal for working people”, workers will still have to work themselves to exhaustion and still not feel like they can get by. No matter how much they talk of “police reform”, Black people will still live under constant harassment by police and will often face murder from those meant to “serve” their communities. No matter how many Women they put in their cabinet, Women workers will still have to live their whole lives enduring violence and abuse, all whilst not being afforded even the same meager wages given to working class men. The struggle of the working class is not one of getting a “left-wing” government elected, but is ultimately one for Socialist Revolution. For this revolution to be successfully carried out, the Working Class must be led by its most advanced elements to act in its own interests as a class, this must be done through a Party of a new type, which can only be the Communist Party. This is not a Party anything like the various bourgeois parties in parliament. Rather, it is a combative organization of professional revolutionaries.

There are dozens of parties today claiming to be “Communists”, but the Working Class only has one single will which can lead it away from its misery and into a world without exploitation, without rich and poor. Likewise, they must be led by a single Party which is capable of leading it in the proper sense, both with the material strength and the correct ideological line. None of these parties hold either of these things and therefore their claim of being “the Communist Party” is one that is false and opportunistic.

Today in Britain, the Communist Party does not exist. This is not a reason to despair, but rather to recognize the fact that the principle task for revolutionaries is to Reconstitute the Communist Party.

As the electoral farce of 2024 concludes and the prospect of worsening Imperialist crisis looms over us, more and more workers will be brought over to the revolutionary struggle. It is our duty to elevate this struggle with Proletarian Ideology and grasp the Reconstitution of the Communist Party as the principle task of all revolutionaries, as it is the first step towards the completion of the Socialist Revolution.