THE publication of the EU’s draft separation treaty with the UK has intensified the conflict between the UK and the EU ruling classes and exacerbated their divisions to the point of a revolutionary explosion.
The EU Commission, representing the EU’s bosses and bankers, is not satisfied with a divorce settlement with the UK that will leave it between £39bn-45bn better off, and has proposed a ‘common regulatory area’ on the island of Ireland. This would detach northern Ireland from the UK, and encourage the SNP and Welsh nationalists to demand similar treatment, leading to the break-up of the United Kingdom.
There is no doubt that once under way, parts of England, namely the City of London, would demand a similar freedom, as Mayor Khan already has. The truth is that both the UK ruling class and the ruling classes of Europe are fighting for their lives. EU capitalism is in trouble. It has a revolution emerging in Spain, and massive class struggles developing in France and Italy, while in Germany the official opposition to a Merkel-Social Democratic government will be a neo-fascist party.
The Italian banks are so indebted that they threaten to bring down the whole of the EU. Perhaps that moment will come after the next Italian general election if Italy leaves the euro, as the growing mass opposition on the streets is demanding.
The EU is in a desperate crisis. Nevertheless, its EC dreams of a greater Europe, with its own European army that can take over the Ukraine, and other areas, as it tried to do in 2014. This is why a British mutiny must be crushed, to show everybody else what happens if you get out of line.
The UK bosses, meanwhile, who lost their empire and exported their major industries after closing down their basic industries under Thatcher, had no alternative but to throw their lot in with the EU or the USA. The pro-EU wing won the day. The City of London profited out of the EU and took over while the working class was robbed as its jobs were exported. The end result was Brexit!
All of the established political leaders voted to ‘remain’, and were distraught when the working class voted to leave, and have been seeking to undo the decision ever since. They were unable to do what the Irish ruling class did when it lost the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty – order an immediate re-run. In the UK, such conduct would have caused a workers revolution.
In the UK, a ‘remainer’ was appointed PM in the place of the fallen Cameron and Osborne, and a course was set where the EU would be able to grind the Brexit process down, to the point where a new referendum could be mooted after the parliamentary majority of remainers voted Brexit out and called a new referendum.
Enter Corbyn and his new ‘left’ Labour Party which has now embraced the customs union and wants to negotiate to remain in the single market or something ‘very similar to it’. The EU ultimatum over Northern Ireland is calculated to raise the tensions sky high in the UK, and to provoke a panic that a new civil war in Ireland must be avoided at all costs, and therefore the North must remain in the customs union and the EU, while the rest of the UK is manoeuvred into a similar position to save the UK union.
In fact, the only thing that can save the UK and develop it is a socialist revolution.
The working class must get ready to deal with any parliament that seeks to dump Brexit, and follow the example of the 17th century revolution that shut down parliaments that tried to halt the developing bourgeois revolution. The working class having voted for Brexit must now make sure it is carried out.
This means bringing down the May government and bringing in a workers government that will immediately break with the EU and solve the customs issue by expropriating the bosses and bankers, abolishing capitalism and bringing in socialism. This will encourage revolution throughout Europe to replace the bankrupt EU with the Socialist United States of Europe. This will allow oppressed nations such as the Irish and Catalans to decide on their own future.
