The Socialist 27 January 2016

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill

Davos summit: a broken capitalist system

Google pays pittance for avoiding £2bn tax

Red doors and wristbands scandal

Steelworkers may face benefit cut-off for not seeking bar jobs

Oscars snub black artists: fight racism and austerity in the arts

Labour councillor smears TUSC policy as 'BNP'

Them & Us

Top tweets: #TraditionallySubmissive

Teaching: a perfect storm is brewing

Teachers need national strategy for a national struggle

A day in the life of a teacher and mother

New wave of protests in Tunisia

India: student death exposes caste oppression

Tories 'Prevent' civil liberties

Labour councillor suspended for fighting cuts

Dave Nellist's byelection appeal to Jeremy Corbyn: 'let's discuss how to fight the cuts'

Labour election post-mortem: nothing to report!

The dark arts of Labour's right

Councillors must fight to defend our services

'People's budgets' and local democracy

Lewisham: no backsliding in council cuts fight!

"I have left work many times in tears" - a council worker

Trade union bill will stretch resources and limit action

Birmingham teachers strike to resist academy attack

24-hour tube strike suspended

Care services under threat in Haringey

Workplace news in brief

The end for deep coal mining jobs in Britain

Obituary: Dean Meehan 1962-2016

Letters

Protesting against closure of Huddersfield A&E

Coventry children's services closure protest

New Socialist Party branch fights against St Austell austerity

Socialist Party discusses the fight for socialism

Socialist Students bake-off

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Labour election post-mortem: nothing to report!

Former Labour leader Ed Miliband, photo by Wikimedia Commons (Creative Commons) (Click to enlarge)

Paul Callanan

The Labour Party has released its long awaited report into why they lost the general election. Authored by former Blairite cabinet minister Margaret Beckett, it runs to 35 pages and demonstrates a refusal to draw the necessary conclusions from Labour's defeat last May.

A great deal of space is taken up making excuses. The report claims that Labour was treated unfairly by the Conservatives and the media who blamed them for the economic crisis in 2007-08.

While there is a kernel of truth in this it also true that under New Labour the banks were feted as the creators of wealth. The then Prime Minister Tony Blair and Chancellor Gordon Brown followed a policy of almost completely deregulating the banks.

At points the report does get close to reality. It does rubbish claims that Labour "lost because it was too left-wing". They also acknowledge that what left-wing policies they did have, such as those on energy prices and taking railways into public ownership were their most popular.

They also acknowledge that they didn't offer much that was different to the Tories on NHS spending for example. And that people opted instead to vote for the Greens and in Scotland the SNP who were "arguably seen as to the Left of Labour".

Yet in the final section entitled "Learning the Lessons", ironically, none of this is acknowledged. No hint here of how Jeremy Corbyn's thumping leadership victory showed that people are desperate for a party than stands against the Tories' austerity agenda. Instead, it's all empty guff about how "excitement that has been generated by the leadership campaign, gives something on which to build" etc.

The report is more of a papering over of the huge fissure in the Labour Party between those who want to continue with the discredited New Labour project and those who want to build a genuine anti-austerity party gathered around Jeremy Corbyn.

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Socialist Party news and analysis

Housing: smash the Tory wrecking bill