This short British Perspectives document aims to outline the main features of the situation our party will be facing in the run-up to and, more particularly, after the next general election.
It is for discussion and agreement at our 2024 National Congress due to take place on 2-4 March 2024.
It should be read in addition to the articles published in our paper and magazine on the many stormy current developments.
Many, if not most, Socialist Party members have only been politically active during Tory-led governments and have no experience of Labour in power.
However, even those whose memories go back to the 1974-79 Labour government cannot rely on past experience as preparation for what is coming.
One hundred years after the first Labour government, the Starmer-led government that is on course to take power next year could be one that presides over a PASOK-style collapse.
Starmer’s government is set to face huge economic and social crises, and will be doing so with a shallow social base.
Potentially, therefore, the Tory party’s ongoing implosion could be put in the shade by the crises Labour will face in office.
They will be rocked by mass struggles.
The fates of not just PASOK in Greece but the Parti Socialiste in France give a glimpse of the processes ahead for Labour.
Both were comparable parties to Labour and were electorally shattered as a result of their implementation of vicious austerity in government after the Great Recession.
As this document outlines, this poses the question of what forces will step into the vacuum created by the further fracturing of the established parties in the next period, and whether the working-class, as an organised force, can play the central role.
It will also create huge opportunities for our party and put unprecedented demands on us.
