Quietly, behind the scenes, a new Labour leadership battle is shaping up. If Labour loses the next election then Kinnock will go. Maybe Hattersley will go too.
According to some rumours support is building up for Gordon Brown to be the next leader, as opposed to the favourite, economic spokesperson John Smith. Others say that a John Smith-Margaret Beckett slate is being constructed to replace Kinnock and Hattersley.
The rumours of this manoeuvring show that the labour leadership is far from convinced that electoral victory is a certainty. All the polls shows that Labour has not decisively capitalised on the Tory postThatcher poll tax crisis. The reasons is obvious. No one can have confidence that a Kinnock government will deliver policies decisively different from the Tories. All the main features of the "Thatcher revolution' - privatisation, benefit cutbacks, anti-unions laws, ERM membership, deflation -would remain under Kinnock.
The Labour front bench may be able to score parliamentary points over the poll tax. But this does not translate into a convincing policy alternative. With Major trying to present a 'more caring' image, parliamentary politics is drifting towards a post-Thatcher consensus. Scottish and Welsh nationalists and the Liberal Democrats are gaining as a result.
Of course, Tory divisions over the poll tax and Europe are very deep. Both problems reflect insoluble problems for british capitalism. And contrary to NOtman Lamont's budget optimism, there is no short-term escape from recession, high interest rates and rapidly growing unemployment. This means that the Tories can be no more certain than labour of electoral victory.
Major's best asset remains the failure of the Labour leadership to advance any radical alternatives.
Labour's crisis is part of a wider transformation of European social. democracy. The strength of the social democrats in the post-war years was growing prosperity. On the back of economic growth their project of reforms within capitalism and steadily growing living standards remained credible. But economic crisis in the 1970s devastated that perspective: reforms. ranks.
Everywhere the social democrats have moved sharply to the right. Governments like those of Mitterrand in france and Gonzalez int Spain can only administer the crisis and and tinker with cosmetic.
Kinnock in power would be a British 'Felipe Gonzalez', presiding over austerity and crisis. But recession. with one difference. Despite the deep swathes cut by new realism into the ranks of the Labour Party, the Labour left is still powerful compared with its French or Spanish counterparts. This means that either an electoral defeat or a Kinnock government will create deep new conflicts in Labour's A new Labour government would be a weak government of permanent crisis, elected in the depths of an economic recession. It. is unlikely there will be any. 'honeymoon period'. Trade union and social struggles would grow. Probably the space would be created for a new wave of racism and the regrowth of the fascist organisations. Other reactionary currents like the anti-abortion movement, would go on the offensive.
What does all this mean for socialists? The next general election will throw the elements of British politics into the air and rearrange them. One way or another Kinnockism and new realism will go int a new crisis. This will take place against the background of deep and long-lasting economic Two things follow. First, the idea that the struggle in the Labour Party is 'over' is premature. In any case; only a new test after the election could provide decisive evidence that the left has suffered an historic defeat at the hands of Kinnock and new realism.
Second, we are in a preparatory situation. We must use this period to put into place the forces and organise a broad left alternative in the coming crisis. That's why Socialist Outlook puts such stress on the building of the Socialist Movement. and its constituent parts - Women for Socialism, Labour Party Socialists, and the Socialist Movement trade union committee. Serious preparation to capitalise on the coming crisis will pay immense dividends for the left.