face an electoral abyss.
The party is not in disarray because there is no "feel good factor". Nor is it because it is trailing in the polls.
The Conservative Party is in crisis because the German and French ruling classes are driving towards European Monetary It matters little in this context that single currency project is in tatters and even in the last month the German deficit has jeopardised the Maastricht timetable for union.
For the drive to union is still causing cracks in the Tory ranks as wide as that caused by the 1846 Corn Law.
The ideological rift exists between those who want to integrate British capital into a Europ an superstate and those who will defend the pound sterling come what may—and see a central bank as the Bundesbank by another name.
Tory division
In other words there is a division between the majority of British capital and the mass merabership of the Tory Party.
So when Emma Nicholson and Alan Howarth point to social policy as key reasons for their defections this should be caken with a large pinch of salt.
Both are in favour of European institutions and policy making processes, which have laid the foundation stones for the Asylum and Immigration Bill and the attack on the welfare state.
Despite this humbug, the Left has to take advantage of Tory divisions to attack the projects of the ruling class.
It must defeat the current central plank of Conservative legislation—-the Asylum and Immigration Bill-through building the broadest possible alliance against it.
That coalition includes the likes of Nicholson - but it needs to have a labour movement and black leadership.
But simply to destabilise Tory rule is not enough.
Welfare state
The problem for the Left is that the majority of the working class is desperate to defeat the Tories by voting Labour-but once in power Labour will launch further attacks on the welfare These attacks will intensify opposition to a Blair government within the labour movement.
And the engine that wil drive this fightback will be the struggles of the working class and the oppressed, mainly through the trade union movement.
It is critical that socialists orientate these struggles to the policy battle that will unfold in the Labour Party and that the Labour left provides solidarity with these struggles.
Socialists must also begin to reach out to the trade union and Labour Party youth sections who will oppose the Labour leadership when they implement workfare.
But struggle alone is not sufficient to challenge the Labour Socialists need to show they have a political and economic alternative to both Blairism and