Monthly Archives: June 2019

A view from Europe on the UK EU election on 23rd May

La Tribune des Travailleurs [Workers’ Tribune] Issue no.191 – 29 May 2019

Britain: The  people  want  democracy  respected

The simple truth is that the people want democracy respected – and political power back.” This is how Doreen MacNally, one of the British delegates to the internationalist rally in Strasbourg (France) on 11 May, summarised the result of the European elections in Britain.

Three years during which the Labour leadership did everything it could to oppose a clear and full  break as decided by the voters in the 2016 referendum.

On Thursday, 23 May, British voters had to elect members to the Parliament of the European Union (EU). An EU that they had already decided to leave three years previously. Let us remember that on 23 June 2016, a majority of the British people – especially in working-class constituencies – voted in favour of leaving the European Union.

Three years during which the crisis that has torn the Conservatives apart has seen conflict between the City’s financial representatives in favour of remaining in the EU and those who were saying that they would implement the EU’s anti-working-class policy from outside the EU. 

The leaders of the Labour Party and the Conservatives have consistently agreed on this denial of democracy. 

Regarding the minority of voters who took part in the election, Tory voters largely turned to the Brexit Party of far-right politician Nigel Farage. The Labour Party’s electoral base mostly abstained, although it is indisputable that some Labour voters voted for Farage’s party – for which the Labour Party leaders bear full responsibility.

The result on 23 May: an abstention rate of 63 per cent, rising to over 70 per cent in some working-class constituencies where there had been a majority in 2016 in favour of leaving the EU.

It is pointless to beat about the bush: democracy means breaking with the European Union, as the people decided in 2016. What is now on the agenda is rallying together all those in both the trade unions and the Labour Party who are in favour of respecting the 2016 mandate: a clean break with the European Union and all its anti-working-class and anti-democratic provisions, which would open up the path to renationalising privatised services, to ending privatisation and zero-hour contracts, and to satisfying working-class demands which are forbidden as long as the straitjacket of the European Union remains in place.

Jean-Pierre Barrois