October election. But Labour is not ready in organisational terms, so the most likely date must be to coincide with the London Assembly elections in May 2008.
One thing is as certain as it gets in politics. By this time next year there will have been a general election and the most likely winner will be Gordon Brown.
Brown's agenda is to look different to Blair (in fact his main electoral asset is that he is not Tony Blair) but this does not mean there will be any change from a reactionary government with a hard-line neo-liberal agenda. IN CONTRAST to the stagnation and conservatism of the Respect leadership, a new left party Die Linke has been launched in Germany this summer, at a conference in June. 750 delegates voted to merge two parties into a new common party with 72,000 members, making it the third largest force in German politics: and opinion polls suggested it could immediately win 24 percent of the German vote.
Die Linke incorporates former Social Democratic Party (SP) leader Oskar Lafontaine as well as layers of activists and officials from the SPD and the former Communist Party, PDS. It has elected representation at national and local level; it spans a variety of currents and traditions, incorporating union activists, students and anti-globalisation campaigners.
But the process of unification into a single party began after Respect was already up and running, and while Respect's leadership has clung to the notion of a "coalition" and rejected all calls for progress towards a single party, the German experience shows how attractive a genuine merger can be to workers and voters desperate to see a serious left wing alternative. council by-election in Shadwell in a very sharp political fight with Labour. This shows that Respect's validity remains intact: in fact its validity is enhanced by the arrival of Brown.
It shows that Respect's support remains strong where it has won bases and bastions out of its anti-war stance and the anti-war vote.
In the parliamentary byEaling Southall, however, the story was very different. Respect secured a very poor result, winning no more than any left candidate would get who went into a campaign without adequate McDonnell campaign was and remains a major challenge to those who cling to a reclaim Labour perspective. I made proposal in June for an initiative towards the Labour left, the trade union left, and the CPB in the light of the McDonnell defeat which could continue the discussion started by the conference organised earlier by the CPB and the one organised by the RMT, both of which took up the issue of labour representation in one way or another.
As far as I know this has not been discussed by Respect's officers. Yet Respect cannot advance prioritise building the organisation and which works to create an inclusive, democratic space in which people from a variety of political currents can cooperate in leading the organisation.
• Respect needs an effective means of propaganda, preferably a newspaper, as well as a much more dynamic website, broad sheets and leaflets, which can get Respect's ideas and policies across in a more systematic way and persuade other elements on the left that we are serious about building an organisation on a firm political basis.
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Respect needs an effective means of propaganda, preferably a newspaper, as well as a much more dynamic website
• It needs a much more serious approach to