BIG questions about Britain’s future hang over the working-class movement.

They motivate thousands who will march against racism and fascism in London on Saturday, determined to show that far-right thug “Tommy Robinson” does not speak for the majority with his own anti-immigrant rally.

They will motivate others in the Stop Trump Coalition who will rally next Wednesday September 17 against the US president’s second state visit, at a time when the genocide in Gaza, Trump’s open contempt for international law and his brazen interference in our domestic politics are leading more people to question the “special relationship” with Washington than ever before.

They will inspire those demonstrating next weekend on the Make Them Pay protest, calling for action against the super-rich and polluting corporations to fund public services and a plan to address climate change.

None of them are likely to feature, though, in the Labour Party’s deputy leadership election.

The heightened bar to get onto the ballot paper, raised to prevent any repetition of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership wins in 2015 and 2016, combined with the absurdly truncated timetable allowed to candidates to gather nominations, has ensured that members can only pick between two highly conservative, Keir Starmer-supporting candidates.

The deputy leader of the Labour Party is not a powerful position. But the stitch-up, as Leeds East MP Richard Burgon rightly termed it, symbolises this Labour government’s inability to discuss, let alone tackle, the big political questions facing our country.

It is afraid of debate on tax, on public ownership, on racism, on foreign policy. It cannot handle it.

The recently re-disgraced Peter Mandelson said in the Blair years that Labour’s few socialist MPs should be so isolated they would effectively inhabit a “sealed tomb.”

The analogy could apply more truly to the Starmer government, given its determination to shut out the voices and concerns of people in the real world: a world changing rapidly as neoliberal globalisation gives way to great-power rivalries and trade blocs, as climate chaos spells droughts, floods and ruined harvests, as “tech-bro” plutocrats seek absolute power over us through control of data, communications and AI.

Our government is not grappling with any of those questions. The left has to.

Sepulchral voices like Lord Kinnock’s, claiming a new left party will let Nigel Farage into Downing Street, are entirely wrong.

The far right will not be beaten unless its racism is challenged: Labour echoes it.

It will not be beaten either unless we offer different answers to people’s accurate perception that Britain is becoming a run-down, ramshackle country of enfeebled services, collapsing infrastructure and falling living standards. Labour clings to Thatcherite orthodoxies on privatisation, unfettered banks and all-powerful markets long after the public have seen through the rip-off.

The right have the wind in their sails because their narrative, that immigration is the main cause of this country’s ills, has been allowed to crowd out others. We need public campaigning on the real issues: the cost of living, the council cuts. The NHS: where a Trump trade deal forcing up medicine prices is ideal ground to battle a far right that idolises him.

As these arguments are not being made by Labour, they need to be made by others.

That does not have to be “Your Party”: trades councils could take the lead in some communities, or local alliances like Birmingham’s Brum, Rise Up, or Morning Star readers’ and supporters’ groups, but it is clear that the enthusiasm generated by a new left party is mobilising local activity across Britain, and that is an essential starting point for a fightback.

Labour’s politics is that of a discredited — increasingly hated — Establishment feebly trying to keep up with an insurgent, angry right. That will not change without Starmer’s removal, if at all. The onus is on the labour movement to act in its despite.