PM MAY yesterday made an appeal for MPs to ‘stand together as democrats and patriots’, to support her withdrawal deal.
This is after her resolution of last Thursday to extend Article 50 and delay Brexit was carried by 403 to 202 votes. However, almost two-thirds of her own Tory MPs, 189 in all, voted alongside ten Democratic Unionists and a smattering of Labour and Independent MPs, against extension.
So too did six Tory Secretaries of State: Steve Barclay, Liam Fox, Chris Grayling, Penny Mordaunt, Liz Truss, and Gavin Williamson.
Andrea Leadsom, who attends Cabinet in her role as Tory Leader of the House, also voted against. Alun Cairns voted in both lobbies to register what is known as a ‘positive abstention’.
Tories, Peter Bone and Will Wragg, who served as tellers bring the total to 189. Only 113 Tory MPs voted for May’s extension. It was the massed ranks of Labour MPs that won the day for May.
The fact of the matter is that the Brexit referendum result, when over 17 million workers, middle class people and youth voted to leave the EU, has smashed up the two-party system, and caused a major crisis for bourgeois democracy, the facade of the ruling class, behind which lies the mailed fist – the armed forces of the capitalist state.
The 2016 referendum result brought down the leadership of Cameron and Osborne and The 1922 Committee had to halt the leadership election to stop an out-and-out Brexiteer, Leadsom, becoming leader, instead shoeing in May who opposed Brexit.
May’s job was to water down Brexit, and prevent it from being implemented. She began with ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, progressed to a ‘bad deal is better than no deal’ and is now at the stage that if she is not supported by masses of Labour MPs next week she will be brought down by the mass anger of the working class.
She has done her job. She proposed the Irish backstop to bind the UK and the EU together in the Customs Union for as long as the EU wishes it to be so. This week her deal will be going for another vote.
Her battle cry is now ‘country not party’, ie the bosses’ and bankers’ British capitalism is in danger and must be saved at all costs.
The May government deserves to perish. However, the Labour leadership rescued her last Thursday and is contemplating propping her up again this week in another crisis vote, for ‘the good of the country’.
There is no doubt that Labour could bring down May at any time that its leadership decided to do the job.
However, the fact is that the anger of the working class after 10 years of austerity, and more to come, is huge. The great bourgeois fear is that a Labour government will see the masses surge forward and that colossal revolutionary forces would pay no attention to Corbyn.
The bosses’ fear is that Corbyn will not be able to control the masses and that capitalism will be in great danger. Labour propped up May last Thursday and this is why Labour may well put the bosses’ and bankers’ country first and prop her up this week, so that she can ask for a Brexit postponement.
The ruling group of bureaucrats may well decide on a postponement that will have to last for a number of months, or years, raising the perspective of European elections being forced on the UK working class, as if the UK is already an EU colony.
The refusal of parliament to carry out Brexit brings out in bold relief the real situation. This is that behind all the talk, bourgeois democracy is a form of ruling class dictatorship, to ensure that the bosses and bankers own and rule the UK, and continue to do so. This is why parliament is sabotaging Brexit.
The working class must put an end to this attempt to smash Brexit. It must take mass revolutionary action to make sure that the UK leaves the EU on March 29th and that this is the first giant step to the working class taking the power in the UK and replacing bankrupt capitalism with a socialist planned economy. Its motto will be ‘from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.’ It will be a great advance from capitalism.
