Europe

The suffering of the Greek people is deep, very deep. Austerity is pushing larger and larger sections of the population into poverty. With this comes also a seriously worsening healthcare situation which is a direct consequence of the cuts imposed by the Troika, and suicides have also been going up in line with the increase in unemployment.

Yesterday evening, as Theresa May prepared to move into 10 Downing Street and continue the Tories’ programme of austerity, privatisation, and attacks on workers and migrants, Jeremy Corbyn emerged from a tense meeting of Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to confirm that he would be automatically on the ballot paper in the upcoming Labour leadership contest. With hundreds of thousands of new members joining the Party over the past year because of Corbyn’s leadership, the Blairite back-stabbers are now resigned to the fact that their attempted coup has failed.

We are living in a period of sharp and sudden changes. The result of the British EU referendum was yet another such sharp and sudden changes. In a further dramatic turn of events yesterday the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party voted by a majority of 14 to 18 to allow Jeremy Corbyn to defend his position as Labour leader without having to seek nomination by Labour MPs.

The Chilcot report into the 2003 Iraq war and how Britain was dragged into it has finally been published after a delay of seven years. It fell like a bombshell on the British political scene that was already reeling from the effects of the EU referendum.

One year ago 60% of the Greek population said OXI [No] to the Troika’s austerity. One year later we see austerity continuing and getting much worse! I have been travelling to Greece at least once a year for close to twenty years to attend meetings and conferences and in the recent period the decline in living standards has been palpable.

It was like a scene from the Living Dead, with the Blairite zombies out in full force over the weekend calling on Corbyn to resign. The mummified remains of Lord Kinnock – who lost two general elections – joined up with Ed Miliband, the previous Labour leader who failed to win an election, to demand that Corbyn stand down…in order to make Labour “electable”! Of all the cheek - our greatest failures offering advice to Labour on how to win an election!

Over the past week, thousands have turned out at demonstrations and rallies in cities across the country in protest against the Blairite coup and in defence of Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party. We publish here a collection of brief reports, pictures, and videos that provide a vivid expression of the enormous rank-and-file movement behind Corbyn.

There are some very powerful reasons why the British capitalists are not keen on Britain having to leave the European Union. Some of them have been looking at ways of getting around the result of the recent referendum. The question is: can they succeed? And what would the consequences be on the political front?

As the Blairites continue to plot their coup against Corbyn, mass meetings and rallies of Corbyn supporters have begun to sprout up in city after city across the country. A rebellion of Labour members against the careerists in the Parliamentary Labour Party has begun.

Greece has been in and out of the news headlines, as other more pressing events push it into the background, such as the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, or the risk of a Brexit vote in the UK referendum on the EU, or the tumultuous class conflict gripping France. Nonetheless, Greece remains the weak point within the EU. Its crisis is being “managed”, i.e. delayed, but the country moves inexorably onwards towards a major crisis that will affect the whole of Europe.

Britain is in a state of turmoil. There is a political crisis, which will be followed by a constitutional crisis. Independence is again on the cards in Scotland. There is fear in European establishment that Brexit could spark a continent-wide revolt.

The Rubicon has been crossed. The die is cast. With their vote of no confidence against Jeremy Corbyn (by 172 votes to 40), the den of thieves that is the Parliamentary Labour Party have declared all-out war against the democratically elected leader and the vast majority of grassroots members. Tensions have reached breaking point. As the Financial Times, the reliable mouthpiece of the ruling class, correctly asserts, “having unsheathed the dagger, Labour MPs cannot now draw back.”

On June 26 Spaniards were called to the polls in an atmosphere of polarisation and expectation. These elections came after months of political stalemate, where no party was able to form a government. The polls predicted that the radical left coalition Unidos Podemos (UP) would do well, coming second, and that the parties of the establishment would take a serious hit.

The fat is on the fire. A right-wing coup is under way to oust Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. This shabby coup, instigated by Labour's Tory Tendency, has been prepared a long time ago by those who never accepted his democratic election by an overwhelming majority. They are the Blairites: right-wing Tories who infiltrated the Labour Party to further their careers. They are indistinguishable from the Tories in their dress, manners, outlook and ideas.

The events in Macedonia over the past 2 years have shown that the negotiations of political elites have no capacity to bear fruitful, real or reliable solutions to systemic problems that perpetually generate space for criminal and authoritarian practice.