THE working class has delivered a crushing blow not just to Tory leaders Cameron and his chancellor Osborne but to the bankers and capitalists who dominate the EU.
It is a victory reverberating around Europe and giving inspiration to the millions of workers and youth fighting the savage austerity measures demanded by the bankers and bosses.
Thursday’s vote was won by workers in their millions defying all the threats, blackmail and intimidation from the banks and speculators, threats backed up by the TUC and Labour Party leadership.
Cameron, who prior to Thursday’s vote vowed he would stay on as prime minister whatever the outcome, appeared on the steps of Number 10 yesterday morning to announce he would be standing down.
This was despite the fact that every one of his Tory opponents in the referendum had gone on TV to urge him to stay and provide ‘continuity’ for the Tory government.
Cameron was finished and he knew it.
Significantly, the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn also held back from calling for Cameron to resign. All through the referendum campaign, it has been clear that the only hope of securing a vote to remain rested on the shoulders of the Labour Party and trade union leadership and their ability to convince workers to vote with Cameron and ensure the survival of the Tory government.
The fact that workers across the country, most notably in the North East and Wales, areas that have been devastated by Tory austerity attacks, refused to be intimidated by these threats demonstrates the hatred felt towards the Tories and their austerity measures designed to save the banks from collapse.
The vote to leave the EU was equally a devastating blow to the reformists, both left and right, within the labour movement – the only honourable exceptions being the RMT, ASLEF and Bakers Union whose leadership stood alone in calling for a break with the EU.
This crisis has ruthlessly exposed these reformists for what they are – the main social prop of a dying capitalist system who see their job as keeping the system going at all costs by trying to hold back the working class from a struggle that poses the question of kicking out the Tories and going forward to taking power.
This was clear in Corbyn’s immediate reaction to Cameron’s resignation. Instead of calling for the Tories to go along with Cameron, he cringingly thanked the Tory leader for his ‘contribution to social issues’ while complaining about the instability that a three-month campaign for the Tory leadership would cause.
He went on to blame workers saying that ‘many people in Britain feel dislocated from the mainstream of society’. The mainstream of society for Corbyn means the continued dominance of the bankers and a bankrupt capitalists system that can provide nothing but poverty for working class families.
Even this grovelling by Corbyn isn’t enough for the right-wing who think he should have done more to keep Cameron in power and the working class tied hand and foot to the bosses’ and bankers’ EU. Led by the Blairite Margaret Hodge, they are demanding Corbyn be removed in preparation for a crisis coalition between right-wing Labourites and a Tory party that is so smashed apart that it cannot carry on alone.
The working class must now take the fight forward from this victory to bringing down the Tories immediately. This means they must deal with these reformists. The leadership of the Labour Party and TUC must be called to account for their treacherous support for Cameron and a bankrupt capitalist system that can only survive by dumping its crisis on the backs of workers and youth.
There must be an immediate demand for a recall of the TUC where those leaders who supported Cameron are removed from office at once and replaced by a new leadership that is prepared to go forward from this vote and the crisis in the Tory party through to the organisation of a general strike.
A general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government that will advance to socialism – this the way forward.