IN THE dying days of 2022 Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle, the high priest of Britain’s parliamentary system, admitted that in recent years “people’s respect for democracy has struggled.”

Hoyle’s elaboration of this theme in his Radio 4 interview suggested it is not loss of respect for democracy but for the British Establishment which troubles him. 

Parliament’s proudest moment in his eyes was when it emphasised its sycophancy towards explicitly undemocratic authority: the lavish tributes heard from all sides of the House to Queen Elizabeth II following her death in September.

The institution had lost respect during the Brexit process — but because Brexit “divided the country, divided families.” No acknowledgement was made of what Parliament’s obstruction of Brexit following the vote to leave the EU in 2016 might have done for its reputation as an instrument of the people’s wishes.

Unsurprisingly there is no mention either of the other major indicator of parliamentary contempt for democracy of those years — the relentless war the Parliamentary Labour Party waged against the elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, long after the 2017 election made it clear the transformative policies he advocated enjoyed widespread public support and were capable of massively increasing the Labour vote.

Hoyle blames the Tories for making the country a laughing stock through the chaotic succession of three prime ministers in three months, but there is no hint here that the turmoil at the top points to a deeper political crisis.

The roots of this crisis of political legitimacy are the same as those which produced the distinct “anti-system” revolts of Corbynism and Brexit. They also help explain why the current strike wave meets not just ferocious opposition from the Tories but a distinct lack of support from Labour. 

And securing victory in the current industrial struggles depends on the left recognising the continuity with political developments since 2015, the systemic nature of the crisis and the transformational scale of the change we need.

Tory extremism on the demolition of strike rights, protest rights and workplace rights has prompted some voices on the left to revive old arguments about Brexit — to view the frontal assault on the working class as the consequence of leaving the EU and to heap reproaches on socialists who supported that, even those in the RMT union currently on the front line of industrial struggle.

The Tories are indeed using Brexit to attack workers’ rights, though working classes across the EU are also under attack by their governments. 

Without dwelling too much on the past, however, Leave-supporting socialists can justifiably retort that Brexit under a Corbyn government could have looked very different and that the Remain lobby did more than anyone else to undermine the chances of such a government being formed, as the 52 Leave-voting seats Labour lost to the Tories indicate. 

That’s hypothetical. Faced with a right-driven Brexit project, some on the left tried — and failed — to block Britain’s further lurch right by aligning themselves with the political Establishment against it; others tried — and failed — to transform it into a left project, which the anti-democratic capitalist character of the EU made a logical goal. 

The left’s overall alignment against Brexit suggests a failure to empathise with popular political revolt. That it was not a debate held on our terms or at a time of our choosing is irrelevant: the labour movement cannot always pick its battles. 

The left missed the boat on Brexit. In its majority it aligned itself against a majority of the public at a time of political ferment. It was so frightened of the Tory right that it allowed its own radicalism to be blunted by alliance with the liberal centre.

The danger is that a similar desperation today could likewise dilute class politics. 

The idea that the Tory Party rather than the capitalist system, of which the EU is a bastion, was our main enemy undermined Corbynism. The same superficial reading of present-day battles could lead to an accommodation with Keir Starmer’s Labour Party when it plays a key role in today’s anti-working class offensive.

If the Conservatives are currently leading the charge against the working class, forcing pay down, using inflation to impoverish us and ripping up our rights, Labour’s role is analogous to blocking the exits of a building the Tories have set alight. 

Take the NHS. We cannot address the staffing crisis without raising pay, which Labour refuses to commit to. And we cannot address the hollowing out of the service without ending privatisation and outsourcing — which Labour wants more of.

It cloaks its ideological support for parasitical private “investment” in public services by claiming that using the private sector to tackle NHS waiting lists is an emergency measure dictated by Tory mismanagement. 

But as with Starmer’s empty promise to bring a “mindset” supportive of pay rises into government while refusing to commit to pay rises, it amounts to Labour continuing the attack on working-class living standards and the attack on public services — on the actual and on the social wage — but apologetically. Neoliberalism with a human face.

The problems we face are systemic. 

The drive to lower working-class living standards, to force pay down, continues decades in which the share of national output paid in wages has declined and the share taken in profits and rents has risen. 

The destruction of our transport system and postal service are tied to privatisation. The very concept of a “public service” is under attack, with an obscenely rich ruling class telling us that services which don’t turn a profit (and which more often than not have been stripped to the bone by those same private “investors”) cannot be afforded.

Labour echoes this narrative. Its political role in the current period of reaction is to close off options for working-class advance. 

It has taken the lead in painting any opposition to US imperialism or Nato as beyond the political pale.

But on economic questions too it acts to shrink the democratic space. To assert that policies it recently championed and which have majority support, such as public ownership of water and energy, are off the table. To use a phrase Starmer likes to trot out in Parliament, Labour under current management would “bake in” the general direction of Conservative policy for the next decade, even if it would slow it down.

That cannot be acceptable during the biggest surge in industrial action for decades. 

The causes that have brought health workers, teachers, posties, lecturers, rail workers, cleaners, firefighters, civil servants and so many more out on strike are the same. 

The huge public support for strikes reflects the fact that people understand we are all facing the same problems. Winning the disputes means forcing a change in political direction — which Labour opposes.

This is not to get bogged down in arguments about forming new parties of the left — there are plenty, and none has shown a capacity to seriously challenge Labour on the electoral field. 

It is to emphasise that the confrontation between capital and labour, the class struggle, is primary and not only is the Labour Party not going to resolve it in our favour, its leadership are actually on the opposite side of the barricades.

If an election were called tomorrow, the bulk of the left — even most of the revolutionary socialist left — would likely call for a Labour vote in most areas. But that should be a tactical judgement on how to vote, and nothing more. 

Our priority is the strike wave, not because the industrial and political are separate but because the strikes are political and their political victory would be a victory over Starmerism as well as the Tories — a defeat of the ruling class. Every picket and every labour movement rally must become a platform for socialism.

Lindsay Hoyle’s ruminations remind us that the capitalist class is not out of the woods. The British political system lacks public confidence and its managers know it. The authoritarianism that characterises both big Westminster parties reflects a shift to coercion driven by a collapse in consent.

A militant trade union movement with mass popular support can put socialism back on the political map. It can put pressure on Labour MPs, devolved governments, mayors and councils to align with the strikes and not the system — which some are already doing. It can transform the political scene.

Socialism, not a  Labour government, is the goal. We can afford to be ambitious — indeed, given global warming, great power conflict and the class war being waged against us, we can’t afford not to be.