With just two weeks to go before May 22nd, the campaign for the European and local elections has finally taken centre stage.
But the odds are, that when the results of the European election - the only nation-wide vote on that day and, therefore, the most significant politically - are announced, the biggest "party" will be the party of abstention.
And how could it be otherwise, when for the working class majority of the electorate, there is absolutely nothing to choose between the parties standing in these elections and nothing to expect from them?
Spokesmen for the City
Yes, voting for the main parties, whether for those in the ruling coalition or for the Labour party, is no choice at all. It would be endorsing the way in which these parties have been making the working class pay for the capitalists' crisis right from the start and condoning their support for big business at the expense of the poorest. What's more, it would be giving them a blank cheque to do more of the same against us in the future!
No wonder opinion polls point to Ukip as the front-runner in the European election. But what is Ukip, if not yet another electoral con - an opportunistic party trying gets its share of the parliamentary cake, by capitalising on the frustration caused by the policies of the main parties in the crisis, while wooing prejudices and feeding fears.
Is it a coincidence that Ukip's leader is a former City broker, or that its logo is the City's favourite symbol - the pound sterling? Behind its populist, "anti-establishment" demagogy, Ukip is just another fig leaf for the profiteers, whose role is to mislead voters into believing that they do have a choice in this election, after all.
The unaffordable capitalist burden
No, the working class cannot feel represented by the main parties standing in this election. So, why should we endorse the capitalist interests they represent, by voting for them?
There is nothing new in this situation, of course. Working class interests have seldom been represented by parties or candidates in past elections. But this is especially true in this election, because every party resorts to some form of scapegoating against one section or another of our class, in order to conceal its pro-business policies in the crisis.
Whether it be the scapegoating of welfare claimants and the jobless, under the pretext that they would be an "unaffordable" burden on public funds, or the scapegoating of migrant workers - from the EU or beyond - under the same pretext, or on the grounds that they supposedly "deprive" British workers of their jobs. Either way, this scapegoating is designed to split working class ranks and divert our attention from the real cause of our problems.
Because the only "unaffordable" burden on society today is the parasitism of a capitalist class which uses the state as a milch cow and piles up massive wealth at the expense of our jobs, wages and conditions.
Our class is international
As to the political football of Britain's membership of the EU, it is also just a big con.
The EU was designed to suit the interests of Europe's biggest capitalists - including Britain's - by allowing them to trade, do business and transfer funds across its member states without questions asked. That's all there is to it. And the politicians who whine about Britain's "loss of sovereignty" to Brussels are just lying.
But, even if they were right, in what way would this concern the working class? Have its interests been represented in the House of Commons better than they have in Brussels? It wasn't Brussels which organised the privatisation of public services in the 1980s-90s, nor the systematic onslaught on working conditions and welfare over the past two decades - it was the British Parliament of the day, its government and its very "British" politicians!
So, no, the working class has nothing to fear from Britain's membership of the EU. Nor does it have anything to fear from an inflow of migrant workers from the EU. Hasn't the British working class built its strength, through history, thanks to successive waves of migrants coming from Ireland, Eastern Europe, the West Indies, Asia and Africa?
So, the more fresh blood which comes into this country, from the EU and beyond, the more our ranks will be reinforced - and the stronger we will be, the day we decide to take on British capital in order to regain all of the ground lost during the crisis!