THE PATHETIC political collapse of PM May is the result of the massive hostility of the UK working class to her ripping up the result of the 2016 EU referendum, whose instruction from the electorate was that the UK must leave the EU.
May desperately tried to do the opposite, to remain. She was put into the premiership to do this, by the 1922 Committee. Her evolution from pre-referendum ‘Remainer to ‘Leaver’ and then back into ‘Remainer’ was rapid.
She went from ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’, to a very bad deal is better than ‘no deal’, and then concluded with ‘no deal’ is out of the question.
She was the author of the customs union ‘backstop’ for Northern Ireland, authorising the UK’s permanent membership of the EU customs union, if the EU wished it be so. The ship was steered onto the rocks, to the massive anger of the UK working class, and to the delight of all the Remainers.
Her failure was not a personal failure, it was an expression of the fact that British capitalism and its ruling class is no longer a great world power, and that its bosses and bankers desperately need to be in the EU, to maintain their businesses and banks, and profits, and of course as an insurance policy against their main enemy, the UK working class.
It is the anger of the working class that brought May down. However, those that she left behind are of the same ilk. Among those Tory MPs that have rushed in to try to take her place as PM, are Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Jeremy Hunt, Rory Stewart, Matt Hancock and Esther McVey.
Hunt, Stewart and Hancock voted against leaving the EU in the 2016 referendum and can be expected to sabotage any move for a ‘no deal’ solution to the EU crisis on the leaving date, October 31st.
For the ‘Leavers’, Leadsom, played a leading role in the ‘Leave’ campaign and then stood against May for the leadership, after the referendum put paid to Cameron. She however, allowed the 1922 Committee to achieve their aim to get her out of the election, leaving the ‘Remainer May’ as the only candidate and therefore the unelected leader.
Gove played a leading role in the Leave Campaign. After sabotaging Boris Johnson’s bid for the Tory leadership he became a ‘May loyalist’ overnight, and voted for the various versions of the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement.
Boris Johnson in fact, gave up on Brexit, and voted for May’s Withdrawal Bill in its final version, and then announced that he was opposed to the UK leaving the EU without a deal!
His mistake was to arrogantly dismiss the anger of the UK working class over the Brexit betrayal. When May was brought down, he suddenly changed his tune 100%, exhibiting his extreme opportunism for all to see! Now with May in her last days of office he is trying to turn the clock back and insist that he will push through a ‘no deal’ solution. But workers have learnt from this whole experience.
They know that Jeremy Corbyn publicly turned down May’s final appeasement offer of a customs union and a referendum on the grounds that she was finished. Corbyn told her on Wednesday May 22nd in the House of Commons that her ‘time has run out’ and that ‘she no longer has the authority to offer a compromise and cannot deliver’.
May responded: ‘The government has indeed compromised. We have recognised there are issues on which this House will need to decide, that is the plain fact.’
She concluded saying that her Withdrawal Bill is the best way to do it ‘so that then this House can finally make its mind up as to what it wants the future customs arrangements to be, and to whether it thinks there should be a second referendum’.
Labour will move on from May and now seek to make a national government-type deal with the Tories. Leaders like Chancellor Hammond and Labour’s Shadow Chancellor McDonnell will seek to join hands to bury Brexit and remain in the EU.
Only the working class can stop this great betrayal, by organising a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government.
This will quit the EU at once, organise a socialist transformation at home, and ally itself with the workers of Europe to overthrow the bankers and bosses of the EU and replace them and the EU with the Socialist United States of Europe.
