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Here is SPEW’s position on this May’s local elections:
““This May TUSC has agreed that we will not be standing against Your Party candidates and, if there are Green councillors or candidates who sign the trade union petition to Zack Polanski, we will not stand in competition with them too. We can’t know in advance what position Zack will take on the petition’s call – we would very much welcome the Green Party throwing its councillors into the battle against austerity but that will very probably not be his stance – but if a prospective Green candidate is prepared to sign the petition that’s a better indication that they might resist the pressure for cuts from the council officers (and their less determined fellow councillors) than any amount of verbal ‘opposition’ to austerity in general.
“Of course, it is true that petitioning Green and Your Party candidates to take a stand is not the same as trade unions having their own candidates running, directly subject to the democratic accountability of the union members. It puts the working class and its organisations in a similar position to where we were at the end of the 19th century, without a party of our own and seeking out individual ‘friends of labour’ to articulate workers’ interests.
“That’s why TUSC will be stepping up its support for the campaign in the trade unions for them to take the necessary measures to establish their own political voice; including by encouraging as many trade unionists, socialists and working-class community candidates as possible to stand in May’s elections – alongside Your Party and genuine anti-austerity Greens”.
https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/147421/04-02-2026/greens-must-pledge-no-cuts-to-services/
Like the accompanying picture of what the Greens stand for — “We have a plan” and “Fair Taxation now”.
Three branch members leafletted a meeting in Brixton (in one of the wards we are contesting) of an organisation called “Vote Palestine 2026”. Near the time when the meeting was due to start we are asked by one of the organisers to stop leafletting as, she said, all other parties which might be contesting had agreed not to. Not wanting to create an incident with Palestine Solidarity Campaign we stopped and went into the meeting.
We wished we hadn’t agreed to stop leafletting as it turned out that, although the PSC agreed with “Vote Palestine”, they weren’t the organisers themselves. Under the “Vote Palestine” plan candidates are to be asked to sign a pledge to support “self-determination for Palestine” and, in particular, to get the council not to invest its pension fund in companies helping Israel. “Vote Palestine” would then campaign for those who signed the pledge and against those who didn’t. The basic aim seemed to be to kick the ruling Labour Party in Lambeth out of office. According to their leaflet:
“Lambeth Council continues to funnel our pension funds into the genocide in Gaza. Meanwhile, Lambeth public services are chronically underfunded. This May 2026 election, we’re voting in councillors that invest in Lambeth instead of investing in genocide!”
This is either confused or populist demagoguery. The money in question is that paid by the council as employer and by its employees into a fund to provide pensions for them. While the council could decide not to invest in firms helping Israel they cannot use the money to fund council services. If they did, the council’s employees would be up in arms protesting about money set aside for their pensions being used for some other purpose. This would be unlawful anyway and any candidate promising this, or accepting support from people who are, will not be able to do this.
One of the speakers at the meeting was Andrew Feinstein, the former ANC MP in South Africa, who stood against Starmer at the last election and who has been involved in setting up the Your Party. He revealed that in Camden, the Camden Peoples Alliance and the Greens had reached an electoral agreement not to oppose each other, but, in multi-councillors wards (as all wards are in London boroughs), for example in two-councillor wards, to each put up one candidate in the expectation that supporters of both parties would cast one of their votes for each of them.
The Greens in Lambeth will probably make a similar deal with YP supporters here who are calling themselves the “Lambeth Independent Socialists”. The situation in Lambeth is complicated by another group of anti-Labour “independents” organised by Roger Hallam, of Just Stop Oil notoriety, seeking to stand candidates. The Greens may do a deal with them too. They certainly want to do a deal with the Greens.
There is also this from last year:
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2025/04/cooking-books-guns-before-butter-2025.html
Body “fascism”! And there are some people here who think that “fascism” has some meaning outside its specific historical context. There must be a better term to describe what you have in mind. Anyway it’s not a term we should encourage being used.
It’s more convoluted than that. The YP Conference voted down a motion for an absolute ban on being a member of another party in favour of :
“Members shall be permitted to hold membership in other national political parties where they have been approved by the CEC as aligning with the Party’s values, to include those with whom the Party cooperates electorally. The approved list shall be subject to ongoing CEC review and annual ratification by National Conference.”
The argument against Nellist’s candidature is that his party (SPEW), in fact no party, can be covered by this because the CEC has not draw up an approved list.
A bit of a Catch 22 position perhaps, but Nellist (and many others) will have joined under false pretences as to join you had to declare that you were not a member of any other national political party. Nellist was probably expecting to be barred because he openly and prominently declared on his nomination that he was a member of SPEW.
There doesn’t seem to have been any move to expel the others who have dual membership, so they will have a vote in the CEC elections.
It’s going to depend on the composition of the CEC whether SPEWers will be allowed to stay in.
A whinge from SPEW about not being allowed free range to enter and recruit members from the Your Party:
This article by Michael Roberts is quite good on why Chavism failed. The price of oil fell.
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1568/their-days-were-numbered/
Just for the record, here is an idealised version of how Venezuela’s “socialism of the 21st century” is meant to be a peaceful transition to “socialism” based on popular, local communes:
Of course real power rests in the hands of the chavist political and military bureaucracy. But at least they are not Leninist and are not claiming to be Marxist.
One of the articles there, on the campaign for free transport in London, is by Simon Pirani, an ex-Trotskyist (WRP) who has written a couple of good books about how the workers fared under the Bolsheviks when Lenin was still alive. Here’s his free transport article:
https://theecologist.org/2024/mar/19/fair-free-fares-london
And our reviews of his books:
Book Reviews: ‘Armed Madhouse’, ‘The Shock Doctrine’, & ‘The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24’
Yes, the editorial committee received something similar, but from a group calling itself the “Contemporary Marxist Trend”. An ex-comrade says they are a breakaway from the “Worker-Communist Party” of Iraq. He points (which we’d never have guessed) that their site is in Kurdish as well as Arabic:
On checking we found that, despite the pictures of Marx and talk of revolution, they were invited to the founding conference of the Your Party and were, apparently, very impressed:
https://www.facebook.com/gona.saed/
They did ask for our comments but presumably those of everybody else on their mailing list.
Unrevised AI translation from a post on Trotsktyism on one of our Spanish-language Facebook pages, based on a pamphlet issued by a group in Spain in 1984).
The Trotskist conception is that of a “Revolution in stages”. In fact, for Trotskists we must first make a “political revolution” (takeover of power) which will then allow for an “economic revolution” to then carry out a “transitional society”, the “social revolution” – which is never addressed –. In effect, for Trotskists, the “takeover” – prepared by mobilizing the masses around transitional demandss – would serve to expropriate the bourgeoisie, stabilize the means of production, establish labor control, planning, the monopoly of foreign trade (all of which would constitute the “economic revolution”) in order to guarantee jobs, salary, money, goods, etc. , for all proletarians, and so a “transitional society” would start that would lead to socialism and communism (“social revolution”).
But, for us, leaving the social revolution “for later” means that, in fact, the Trotsky approach is that of capitalist reform. Trotskism emphasizes sharply: it says not a word of the “social revolution”, almost nothing of the “economic revolution” and much of the reforms of social relations, – of production and life – of capitalist.
This false vision of the communist revolution that Trotskism has
– which makes them present as revolution what is nothing but capitalist reform, is based (and, according to Trotskist ideology, justified) on a also completely false understanding of what capitalism is. It affirms that the consequent struggle (and defense) for the claims (and conquests) of the proletariat as variable capital, i.e., the claims (and achievements) of capitalist content that do not question capitalist social relations would force the proletariat to “take power” i.e. would force the proletariat to do what the Trotskists call a revolution.The totally false understanding by Trotskism:
– reduces the communist revolution to a technique for capitalist power taking. Their alleged radicalism, their demagogy, their trap is to claim that conquering a minimum program of capitalist claims leads to the proletariat having to take power. And so “the proletariat in power” – or, more precisely, “the revolutionary labour party” mounted on the proletariat – would be responsible for guaranteeing jobs, wages, goods…. that is, exploitation— to all proletarians. And, of course, this technique also needs technicians: the party…. especially, clear are their leaders, candidates for new ministers, new organizers of the exploitation – that is, fair and scientific – of the proletariat. This is why “transitional society” is also an instrument for training these technicians of capitalist takeover.
– it manifests what is the starting point of Trotskism and backbone of all Trotskist ideology: “the crisis of direction of the proletariat”. The lack of revolutionary party is the balance and explanation of everything. And that even more so as Trotsky states that “the economic premise of the proletarian revolution has long reached the highest point it can reach under capitalism,” In other words: the “objective conditions” are ripe…. but the “subjective conditions”, i.e. the party is missing. A weighty argument for a power-taking technician looking to manufacture the instrument necessary for it. This is why the party must direct the masses. And for the masses to follow the party, the carrots are the “transitional demands.”
All of the reprint, with a new title, having now been distributed. North West members report:
“Our leaflet was called ‘YP – Labour 2.0?’ and argued that even if Your Party was ever able to form a government, it would inevitably suffer the same fate as the original Labour Party, meaning that YP would not change capitalism, capitalism would change YP. It’s quite possibly no coincidence that we handed Zara Sultana a leaflet in person, after which a YouTube video appeared in which she specifically denied that Your Party would turn into Labour 2.0.”
Others had been handing out leaflet about the YP becoming like the Labour Party, but they – in fact like our first leaflet – wrote of “Labour Mark 2”.
In any event, as far as we know, only our reprinted leaflet wrote of “Labour 0.2”.
https://x.com/zarahsultana/status/1994692841554247979/photo/1
Our leaflet was handed out yesterday in Liverpool and also on the Palestine March in London. Today it will be in Liverpool again and also at a trade union event in Frome in Somerset.
The SWP are reporting that they have been expelled from the new party:
Meanwhile the choice of names has been announced:
https://www.urban75.net/forums/attachments/img_7748-png.510594/
Are they serious? At least they won’t be mistaken for socialists.
