THE Brexit Secretary Davis yesterday urged MPs not to ‘tie the prime minister’s hands’ and to defeat the two House of Lords amendments to the Article 50 motion on the UK leaving the EU. Davis emphasised: ‘What we can’t have is either Houses of Parliament reversing the decision of the British people – they haven’t got a veto.’
However, the May government in the space of days has managed to greatly weaken itself, totally unassisted by any other body. On Budget Day both the PM and Chancellor Hammond behaved with particular arrogance in the House of Commons with May doing an imitation of laughing herself silly at the leader of the opposition.
Nothing unusual here. This is how the Tory elite are taught in their private schools to treat the lower orders. May forgot that the Tory Party is deeply split by Brexit, and that in fact she is an unelected PM – she was appointed by the 1922 Committee – and that many Tory MPs are just waiting for the chance to bring her down. All this was brought home to her just seconds after Chancellor Hammond sat down.
Joker Hammond told MPs: ‘The Treasury has helpfully reminded me that I am not the first Chancellor to announce the “last Spring Budget”. Twenty-four years ago Norman Lamont also presented what was billed then as “the last Spring Budget”…
‘The then Prime Minister described it as the “right budget, at the right time, from the right Chancellor”. What they failed to remind me was… ten weeks later, he was sacked!’ Hammond then proceeded to announce that ‘from April 2018, when the Class 2 NIC is abolished, the main rate of Class 4 NICs for the self-employed will increase by 1% to 10%, with a further 1% increase in April 2019’. The arrogant Chancellor committed an unforgivable sin – he taxed the ‘wealth creators’.
Today, in the House of Commons many Tory MPs are determined to teach their leaders a lesson by voting for the two amendments that were carried by the House of Lords to be part of the Article 50 resolution serving notice to leave the EU.
Meanwhile, however, as the parliamentary opposition to the verdict of the UK’s EU referendum stiffens to the point of defiance, the EU is exploding. Yesterday, Dutch riot police clashed with protesters in Rotterdam after a Turkish minister was thrown out of the country. Water cannon and police on horseback were used to disperse about 1,000 people outside the Turkish consulate.
The minister was trying to win support among expatriates for a referendum on expanding Turkish presidential powers, just days before the Netherlands general election. The Turkish PM said that Turkey would respond in the ‘harshest ways’ to this ‘unacceptable behaviour’. Turkey holds the key to 3 million Syrian refugees and may now seek to pass the key to Europe.
In Greece, the IMF and European Central Bank negotiators have left the country unable to get a deal for new austerity cuts and privatisation measures to be imposed on the Greek people. In Italy, whose banks have collapsed, there was violent street fighting on Saturday when riot police attacked vast crowds of youth who barred the way to the Northern League racists entering Naples.
In Ireland, the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams, has said that it is his firm opinion that the unity of the island of Ireland is now achievable! Meanwhile, directly ahead are the French presidential elections in a situation where the Gaullist and Socialist establishments have been greatly discredited.
The dream of the European imperialists, that Europe could be forced together to make up a mighty imperialist power that could compete with the USA for worldwide domination, is crumbling into dust as the working class rises up from the UK to Athens and Rome.
The UK working class must now deal with its parliamentary Lilliputians. If they move to sabotage the 2016 Referendum result today, then the masses must rise up in a general strike that will abolish both the House of Lords and the House of Commons and bring in a workers’ government and a workers’ republic.
This will hold out its hands to the workers of Europe and propose that together we bring down the European Union, expropriate its banks and industries and put them under workers’ management to go forward to the Socialist United States of Europe.
This is the way forward!
