THE MAY government is now in a full Brexit retreat, a retreat that is turning into a rout!
There is to be a vote this week putting into law that the UK will leave the EU on March 29th 2019. However, May has capitulated to Tory pro-EU MPs who are saying that they will defeat this amendment alongside their Labour and SNP allies.
She has now agreed on an amendment that will say that this date is not written in stone, and can be changed pending the negotiations that are taking place. It is obvious that May, to maintain her government in office, is about to give a green light to the EU not to make a deal before or on March 29th, but to delay and dawdle for as long as they consider necessary to keep the UK inside the EU.
Her Chancellor Hammond visiting China has given an indication of what the already agreed ‘transitional period’ will mean if it happens on March 29 2019. Hammond told businessmen and women: ‘What they should expect as a result of the agreement we’ve reached this week with the European Union is a transition, or implementation period, which will start at the end of March 2019, during which we will no longer be members of the European Union, we won’t technically or legally be in the customs union, or in the single market.
‘But we’re committed, as a result of the agreement we’ve made this week, to creating an environment which will effectively replicate the current status quo so that businesses can carry on trading with their commercial partners across the European Union, as they do now. Borders will operate as they do now, and financial service businesses will be able to carry on conducting their business across borders as they do now.’
When pressed on whether the government would have a say in EU decision-making during the period, the Chancellor responded: ‘We won’t be members of the European Union, and therefore we won’t sit in the European Council or any of its subordinate bodies, and we won’t have a vote.’
Chancellor Hammond added when asked whether the UK would remain subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and participate in the single market and customs union, during the transition phase after Brexit… ‘In a word yes.’
Tory backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg said on Saturday night that accepting the rulings of the European Court of Justice for two years, while the UK has no say in EU decisions, would effectively make Britain a ‘vassal state’ of the bloc. Speaking on Newsnight, he said: ‘We cannot be a colony of the EU for two years from 2019 to 2021, accepting new laws that are made without any say so of the British people or Parliament or government. That is not leaving the EU, that is being a vassal state of the EU….’
He warned: ‘The British government would be very unwise to accept’ the EU’s intention that ‘in the transition period we will be bound by the single market, the European Court and the acquis’. However, May, who voted ‘remain’ is now set to ally herself with the Labour leaders to prepare the way for a permanent stay in the EU.
No doubt Labour is getting ready to say that if there is no deal by March 29 2019, and we do not leave the EU as the amendment to the March 29th 2019 leaving date would allow, it is better to stay inside the EU and be a ‘vassal state’ with a vote, rather than be a ‘vassal state’ outside the EU for two years plus without a vote.
Clearly the time is overdue for the 17 million plus workers who told Parliament that the UK must leave the EU to have their say on this matter. The Tory Party cannot deliver the referendum result since the majority of its MPs voted Remain; while Labour which said in its election manifesto that it would leave the single market and the customs union has reneged on its solemn pledges and now wants to terminate the leaving date entirely.
The working class must move into action to bring the May Tory government down and bring in a workers government that will shut down the treacherous Parliament and expropriate the bosses and bankers to bring in socialism. This will be the first step to an alliance with workers throughout the EU to bring it down and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe!