The New Communist Party’s electoral policy

The NCP’s electoral policy calls on supporters to vote Labour in all elections, while boycotting European elections (this is because we do not regard the governing bodies of the EU as democratically representative).

Our call to vote Labour is not because we support the right-wing policies of New Labour, Tony Blair or Gordon Brown, or because we think a Labour government can solve the problems of working people - that is not possible in a capitalist 'democracy'.

A Labour government is simply the best possible outcome in the current political circumstances, in which Britain is governed through a bourgeois parliamentary democracy.

In our view a Labour government, with the organisational links connecting the Labour Party, trade unions and the Labour movement, offers the best option for the working class currently available. This is why the right wing and their supporters in the capitalist media have made so many attempts to break the Labour Party’s links with trade unions.

We believe that alternative electoral policies to achieve a leftist or socialist government are nothing more than a mirage. The only realistically possible alternative governments would involve Tories or Liberal Democrats and would be more anti-working class than a Labour government.

We believe there have been gains since 1997 which would not have happened under the Tories, including the peace process in Ireland, improved terms and conditions for workers, reduced child poverty, the restoration of the Greater London Authority, and the GLA’s successes under Ken Livingstone.

The removal of Tony Blair to some extent reflects the pressures from Labour Party members and the labour movement to end the war in Iraq, end privatisation and PFI and tackle the obscene inequalities in wealth distribution.

Of course these goals are far from being achieved with the installation of a Gordon Brown government, but the labour movement can still have greater influence than it would under a Tory or Lib Dem regime.

Our electoral policy does not represent our ultimate goals for the working class in Britain. Solving the problems of working people, and ending Britain’s imperialist role in the world, in our view can only come about through a socialist revolution, and putting the working class in power.