FOLLOWING the intervention of ex-PM Tony Blair to demand that the UK remains in the EU, all the counter-revolutionary, anti-working class forces have begun to show their hand.
Tory Chancellor Hammond now states that there must be a three-year Brexit transitional deal to begin on 27th March 2019 and end by March 2022, which he says will be just before the next general election!
The ‘transitional deal’ means a period during which EU law will continue to apply to the UK, including the power of the European Court of Justice. This is after the UK has left the bloc – but in name alone!
Hammond has acknowledged that this means new trade deals with non-EU countries could not be signed during this transitional period. He says goods would ‘continue to flow across the border between the UK and the EU in much the same way as they do now’.
No wonder EU leaders are beginning to say that the UK could be remaining in the EU after all. ‘Brexit may not happen and a political leader in Britain should show courage and fight for a referendum on the terms of the country’s exit deal with the EU,’ the prime minister of Malta Joseph Muscat has said.
The cynical Muscat commented about the 2016 referendum result: ‘The will of the people can have disastrous consequences, history teaches us… I could name some examples, but they’re so horrendous they’d raise the wrath of my British friends.
‘For the first time, I’m starting to believe that Brexit will not happen. I am seeing hopeful signs that indicate things will change. I see encouraging signs that the tide is turning. I’m not saying the Brits have made a mistake, but the mood is changing.’
Closer to home, London’s Labour mayor, Sadiq Khan, said last Friday he was an ‘an optimist’ about the possibility of the UK staying in the European Union. He called to ‘trump the referendum’ of 2016 in which 52% opted to leave the EU with a fresh, democratic vote, which: ‘For it to have credibility with the British public, there would have to be a Labour manifesto offer, because the public would say, not unreasonably – “Hold on a sec, we voted to leave and you’re now sticking two fingers up at us”…. You’d have to spell out, in black and white, what we’d do if we won the general election. What could trump the referendum result is us having a manifesto offer saying, we would not leave the EU, or we would have a second referendum.’
That this would destroy the Labour Party and lose it massive support from the working class, since it fought the last election on the basis that the UK was leaving the EU, the Customs Union and the Single Market, is not a problem for Khan.
Labour’s Shadow Brexit Secretary, Sir Keir Starmer, is already on record as stating that staying in the Single Market and the Customs Union should stay on the table, as is Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, and Shadow Home Secretary, Diane Abbott.
It is clear that a growing number of Labour MPs are in favour of the Tories staying in office till March 2019, and then for an an additional three-year transition period till March 2022, and for Labour to then stand in a general election pledging to remain in the EU, to avoid the economy ‘falling off of a cliff edge’.
It is also clear that for this to happen the Labour right wing will have to split the Labour Party and oust Corbyn to form a pact and working relationship with Hammond and the pro-EU Tories. In place of the capitulation that Khan, Starmer and others are proposing, that is so delighting the Maltese PM, the working class and Labour MPs loyal to the working class must fight for a general election now, to boot out this discredited Tory government.
This is what the working class is demanding. A key part of this battle must be the deselection of all Labour MPs that agree with Sadiq Khan and are willing to stab Labour voters in the back. The Tory Party is split between those who want to bend the knee to Brussels and those who want to bend the knee to the USA. The Labour right wing wants to serve Brussels. The working class, after experiencing huge falls in its living standards and horrors like the Grenfell Tower fire, wants to get rid of UK capitalism and to go forward to socialism. This is what must be done!
