FOLLOWING 17m plus workers voting to ‘Leave’ in the 2016 EU Referendum, the UK is leaving the EU on March 29th 2019, two years after article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty was activated.
Article 50 spells out that any EU member state may decide to quit the EU, but that it must notify the European Council and negotiate its withdrawal with the EU, with two years to reach an agreement – unless everyone agrees to extend it – and that the exiting state cannot take part in EU internal discussions about its departure.
As is well known, the ruling class, the bosses and bankers, have been dragooned into Brexit after Cameron made the historic mistake of calling a referendum on the issue, allowing the working class to have its say and vote ‘Leave’ bringing him down.
His successor, May, a ‘Remainer’ was appointed since the 1922 Committee did not dare complete a leadership election. May then announced that she would see the issue through to leaving the EU on March 29th 2019.
Out of her depth completely, May repeated Cameron’s error and called a snap election, convinced that she would crush the professional protester Corbyn, and have a majority that would give her a personal dictatorship.
She lost her majority after workers voted for Corbyn when he opposed austerity and pledged he would carry out the Brexit referendum result. May remains politically on her back with a do not resuscitate note around her neck, being maintained by the DUP, whose services have been bought for a billion.
British capitalism is now in its death agony. Post 1945 it lost its empire and was forced into the EEC and then the EU because it had nowhere else to go. Its bosses and bankers want to remain in the EU at any cost. The leaders of the major trade unions are dutifully supporting their bosses and bankers.
The working class however is on the march. Its living standards were sacrificed by the Brown Labour government after the 2007 crash to prop up the banks. The Tories continued with the same policy. Many workers have not had a wage rise for 10 years, can’t feed their families and can’t pay their rents, and are determined that they are going to win back all that they had stripped off them.
The students and the masses of youth are in the same revolutionary mood. They have adopted this attitude just in time since the Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) has issued another warning that the world capitalist financial system is on the verge of a gigantic crash, as the debt pile reaches a historic high of $135 trillion in the G20 wealthiest countries.
The ruling class is now literally trembling with its Daily Telegraph warning in its Saturday editorial: ‘The UK must not lose its nerve on Brexit!’ Its nerve however has gone and Labour’s is not far behind. The EU continues with its Greek tactic saying that until it receives some £100bn there can be no discussions about any future trade relations.
Corbyn told the Co-op conference on Saturday: ‘Let’s be clear: no deal is the worst possible deal. It would leave us with World Trade Organisation tariffs and restrictions instead of the full access to European markets we need.’
Labour’s John McDonnell announced yesterday: ‘No deal is not an option. There are enough sensible people in the House of Commons to stop this happening.’ This was supported by Keith Starmer saying: ‘We want a vote on it and I can tell you we’ll vote against it.’
The temperature is rising to the point of a threatened anti-Brexit coup in the House of Commons.
However, the working class has not got any intention of going down with British capitalism. The trade unions must put an end to this attempt to knife the referendum result in the back.
If Oliver Cromwell could shut down parliaments that sought to stab the bourgeois revolution in the back then the working class has the right to do the same to see that Britain leaves the EU, and that the bosses and bankers are expropriated to pay for the crisis that they created, and to make way for a socialist UK and the struggle to replace the EU by the Socialist United States of Europe.