AFTER her ‘Dancing Queen’ performance at the Tory Party conference, which acted as an introduction to extreme grovelling to Labour’s right wing, praising it from Attlee to Morrison, Barbara Castle, Kinnock John Smith, Blair, Brown and all as great patriots, PM May has got on with the job of seeking to rescue the Tory Party and British capitalism from its greatest ever crisis.
The crux of the problem is that, while the ruling class of bosses and bankers are desperate to remain in the EU, as are the majority of the trade union leaders plus the leaders of the Labour Party, Tory Party, SNP, Welsh Nationalists etc – the working class voted to leave. There is a real fear that a mere reversal of the decision by parliamentary decree, or even the calling of a second referendum to reverse the decision of the first – even though it was held as the ‘great decider’ that parliament would obey – will see the working class rise up to impose its will on the ruling class and its parliamentary riff-raff.
The truth is that the back of British imperialism has been broken. It is no longer a great power. It currently lives in fear that the working class and the majority of the middle class are getting ready to make the bosses and the bankers pay for the great 2008 crisis – that has led on to permanent austerity – with a great uprising.
The bankers and bosses are now so unpopular that May has to pretend that the Tory Party is somehow anti-boss, and believes in fairness for all, and that it is about to end austerity – right on the brink of a new banking crash!
May, meanwhile, has got on with the job. Having praised the right wing of Labour she is now canvassing leading Labour right wing MPs to get them to prop up the Tories.
The bargain is that May embraces the Customs Union, and Labour right wingers will not move to bring her down in a parliamentary vote that would cause a general election, but will vote with her to keep the UK in the Customs Union.
The Labour right wing is desperate to stay in the EU. They are also opposed to a leftist Corbyn government, arguing that the working class will rise up and be out of control, so a number have already agreed to prop up May, and not to vote with the Tory rebels to bring the government down, preferring her to a Corbyn-led regime.
We repeat that for them, staying in the EU single market and Customs Union would be their victory and as well avoid a left Labour government that would be forced by millions of workers to take great chunks out of capitalism.
In fact May is grabbing the life belt that Corbyn, no doubt inadvertently gave her, when he said that if she would consider Labour’s ‘Six Tests’ he would support her. May is now working for the Labour right wing to keep her in office, through torpedoing the Brexit referendum result, but she is not stopping there.
She has now called on Labour supporters to vote Tory and tried to show that she is more than a mite anti-capitalist, a very difficult task in itself. She is going all out to split the Labour Party, to remain in the customs union, and then to go for a general election, in alliance with Labour renegades, with a ‘programme for all of the people’.
Now is the time for workers to insist that the Labour Party leadership must show some steel. Any MPs that decide to vote to keep May in office must be deselected, and Labour must commit itself to oppose May’s ‘customs union’ and bring her government down, forcing a general election.
The working class and the trade unions must insist that the election is fought on the same ground as the 2017 general election, that the UK leaves the Single Market and the Customs Union, and that Labour will answer any bankers and bosses sabotage of the economy by expropriating them and bringing in a socialist planned economy.
With the EU already collapsing as the latest developments in Italy, France, Greece, Spain and Germany show, a British socialist revolution will spread like wildfire throughout the EU. To see this struggle through to its revolutionary conclusion the building up of the revolutionary leadership is essential, since the left Corbyn leadership is incapable of organising the overthrow of British capitalism.
The vital issue of building the WRP and the Fourth International will be at the centre of our 49th Anniversary of the News Line rally on November 4th. Make sure you are there.