YESTERDAY’S meeting of the Tory ‘Brexit War Cabinet’ at Chequers was convened under conditions where the entire Tory leadership was openly at war with itself, split and divided as never before and with May having to deny that she had agreed a strategy of keeping British capitalism tied to the bosses’ and bankers’ EU indefinitely.
The latest round of bitter in-fighting resulted from an official document released on Wednesday and sent to the EU nations outlining Theresa May’s negotiating strategy for the transitional period after Brexit. This document issued by the Foreign Office called on the EU bureaucrats to rethink their position that the transition out of the EU must end on New Year’s Eve 2020.
It states: ‘The UK believes the period’s duration should be determined simply by how long it will take to prepare and implement the new processes and new systems that will underpin the future partnership. The UK agrees this points to a period of around two years, but wishes to discuss with the EU the assessment that supports its proposed end dates.’
In plain words, this official document is proposing endless talks about new processes and systems designed to drag on forever as a means of keeping Britain in the EU forever.
It would mean the UK having to conform to every single piece of EU legislation without even having the right to vote on it.
This new strategy to overturn the referendum result by having an open-ended transitional period stretching out indefinitely immediately brought down the wrath of the Eurosceptic wing of Tory cabinet ministers, furious that this official document had not been put to or agreed by the full cabinet.
The leading Tory MP and avid Eurosceptic, Jacob Rees-Mogg wrote in the Telegraph that the document would lead to ‘Brexit in name only’ and blasted it as a ‘perversion of democracy’.
While the Tories are quite literally tearing political lumps out of one another in public and Rees-Mogg openly damning Remainers in the cabinet as enemies of democracy, the question is how does this wreck of a Tory government survive for even one day? The answer is down to the outright refusal of the Labour leadership to mount any real fight to bring them down.
Corbyn has stubbornly resisted demanding that the Tories resign and for an immediate general election, even as the government collapses on a daily basis. The reason for this is that the right-wing of the Labour Party are working hand-in-hand with the Tory Remainers and preparing to split the party in order to stay within the EU.
The leading pro-Remain Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, said of this latest crisis in the Tory leadership: ‘The government’s vision for a Brexit transition period should be the final nail in the coffin of the idea that Brexit means “taking back control”. The reality is the complete opposite, we are losing control.’
Umunna is one of the leaders of ‘Open Britain’, a virulently pro-EU group that last week co-ordinated a mass lobbying campaign to overturn the party’s official policy to leave the EU and the single market in accordance with the referendum result of 2016.
This group of Labour MPs are all in favour of being under the control of European capitalism and remaining as vassals of the EU bosses and bankers and they are piling on the pressure for Corbyn to renounce Labour Party policy. Corbyn himself has remained silent about this attempt to tear up the referendum result and impose a parliamentary coup over the democratic rights of the millions of workers who defied the ruling elite to vote decisively for Brexit.
The Tories in their crisis have torn aside the facade of bourgeois democracy and exposed it for the sham it is; nothing more than a figleaf for the interests of the capitalist class that can be dispensed with when it doesn’t fit their plans.
The only answer to this crisis is for the working class to take action by demanding a general strike to bring down this Tory government and advance to a workers government that will immediately leave the EU and go forward to socialism.