TWO weeks ago Labour won 2,000 council seats and came second in the European elections. Labour last won a European Parliament election in 1994. 

Since the vote there has been an implosion of thinking in the party about how to deal with Ukip’s undeniable success in winning four million votes in the European poll.  

Nigel Farage’s appeal is based on a never-never land of a comfortable Britain of the 1950s together with hard-core racism from some of his close acolytes, including Britain First, and a general appeal that he is “standing up” for everyone that the political classes have forgotten. 

At no stage is Farage ever seriously challenged on his economic thinking which bears a close resemblance to Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 destructive programme of privatisation, marketisation and impoverishment, and a Europe that gave power to capital and not to workers.  

At every opportunity he and his colleagues in the European Parliament have voted against any kind of social justice and always against any regulation of business or workers’ protection.  

The response by many who should know better is strange.  

Much publicity has been given to a letter signed by six Labour MPs led by Frank Field which expressed concern about the numbers of central European citizens who have come to work in Britain and goes on to call for Labour to renegotiate the relationship with the EU to constrain the free movement of labour.  

In line with the whole anti-international theme of the last week, the shadow justice secretary Sadiq Khan writing in the Daily Telegraph has given huge ground to the Tories on the issue of the European Convention on Human Rights and the British Human Rights Act of 1998 which enshrined the case law into British law. 

Khan appears to be saying that he would do more or less what the Conservatives are proposing and give British courts the right to disagree with decisions made by the European Court of Human Rights, which of course would destroy the whole principle of a pan-European norm for human rights and justice law.  

If we follow the Tory line of withdrawing from the European convention or some amelioration of its power over national law then we’re in no position to criticise human rights abuses anywhere else, be it in Russia, Hungary, the Czech Republic or any other country where there are serious concerns about discrimination against migrant and Roma peoples for example. 

Ed Miliband is clearly concerned about the whole process and decided to make a speech in Thurrock on issues surrounding migration and the supply of services.  

While he does make the correct point that services have to be improved, I think we need to go much further in understanding the nature of the crisis that is faced on both sides of the channel, and indeed on both sides of the Atlantic with the austerity programme. We must propose something different and better.

Last Monday, the estimable Gary Younge writing in the Guardian pointed out that one of the huge problems facing any elected government is not its power but its lack of power in respect of the influence of multinational corporations over capital flows and investment strategy. 

He pointed out Marine Le Pen’s statement: “Our people demand one type of politics: they want French politics by the French, for the French, with the French.”

Younge then goes on to explain in clear and quite brutal terms that language such as that is not only economically illiterate, but also leads to a very rapid rise of racism in
our society and attacks on migrant workers. 

In the case of France, these attacks are directed mostly at Muslims, Roma and travelling communities and lead to a nasty, oppressive atmosphere in all aspects of public life.

If we follow this road of appeasing Ukip and its stance, blaming migrants for the shortage of housing and/or any difficulties in the health service as well as overcrowding in classrooms, and not on a central government strategy, then not only will it not succeed in winning us an election, but it will lead to a very dangerous atmosphere in our society. 

If migration within the European Union between member states is halted, and we continue with the extremely nationalist form of border control, then the logic is that this will be reciprocated and European countries would then stop British people from living and working in those societies. 

The economic benefits both of inward migration and outward migration will be completely lost, and I can only imagine the sort of headlines the Daily Express or Daily Mail would run if they found that British expatriate workers were being removed from places where they had gone to practice their skills. 

L

ast Saturday I was at the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) meeting as part of the Brighton Fringe, on austerity and the legacy of Tony Benn. 

In the very interesting discussion that took place, it was obvious that the clue to how we deal with Ukip and the issues that face people in Britain is found in a number of factors that come together under the austerity umbrella.  

This process has reduced expenditure on health, caused problems in education, a chronic shortage of housing for rent by councils and housing associations (forcing private rents up also) and put a cap on benefits. 

This has created much higher levels of poverty and indeed a large number of people who at any one time run into the hundreds of thousands who have no access to work or benefits.   

The appeal from Labour towards the next election has to be one of optimism and hope. We achieve that by an absolute commitment that we will deal with the housing crisis by building large numbers of council properties. 

Similarly, we will deal with the education problems by building more schools and not through the atomisation of the education service into academies and free schools. Sufficient investment will go into the health service, the Health and Social Care Act will be repealed, and the internal market and privatisation ended. 

On the question of wages, it’s quite clear that while Labour does support the concept of the living wage, it’s time to move it a big step forward and insist that the living wage becomes the minimum wage, thus inmproving living standards for the very poorest within our society. 

If we go down the road of appeasing the Tories by promising a different form of cuts and following Ukip’s line of proposing limitations on migration as though that is the cause of problems and poverty in Britain, then we not only sell short the whole principle of the labour movement, but we will not achieve electoral popularity either. 

Every story is really a human story, and on the back of all of the rhetoric about immigration one should spare a thought for the rapid increase in racist attacks in our own country, as well as those that are happening all across Europe, and indeed the huge numbers of migrants running into the thousands who have died trying to escape from poverty, IMF-imposed neoliberal economics and indeed wars sponsored and promoted by the European Union and the US. 

The issue must be one of presenting a social justice and human rights agenda.  

As Younge points out, multinational corporations have far more power than national governments. But that doesn’t mean we should approach the general election solely on the basis of appeasing those enemies of the labour movement. 

Such a strategy won’t bring us success, but it will bring the opprobrium of those who have tried to build a labour and socialist movement across Europe that brings not more poverty, fear and hate but provides decency, human rights and a proper living standard for everyone.