CIVIL WAR in the Tory Party has erupted as Boris Johnson and his allies launch a coordinated attack on PM Rishi Sunak, with the threat of even more Tory MPs resigning their seats and forcing by-elections after challenging Sunak’s weakness over not attempting to organise a trade deal with the US when he visited Biden last week.
Adding petrol to the flames is the accusation that Sunak personally blocked the elevation of Johnson loyalists to the House of Lords.
Following the advanced copy of the inquiry’s report, handed to him on Friday, Johnson immediately declared his resignation as an MP, rather than face the inevitability of being suspended from parliament for ten days and being forced to fight for re-election in his highly marginal seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip.
Two Johnson loyalists also resigned over their hero’s forced departure after he was found to have lied to parliament over illegal parties during lockdown.
Johnson resigned with an explosive statement that he was the victim of a conspiracy to drive him out, implemented by a ‘kangaroo court’ acting on instructions from the ‘establishment’.
He officially left parliament on Monday vowing ‘I’ll be back’.
Over the weekend a source close to Johnson told the Telegraph that the three by-elections triggered by these resignations were an attempt to damage Sunak.
The paper reported that two further allies of Johnson were claimed to be on ‘resignation watch’, while another source said, ‘They think they can destroy Boris, which is obviously something that has never been achieved.’
Former cabinet minister, and devoted Johnson supporter, Jacob Rees-Mogg stoked up the fire on Sunday when he warned of ‘civil war’ in the Tory party if Johnson was blocked from standing in a safe seat.
In an open declaration of war to oust Sunak, Rees-Mogg wrote in the Mail on Sunday Johnson is ‘in pole position for a future leadership contest’.
On Monday, Sunak entered the fray in the row over the honours list, saying he absolutely refused to carry out Johnson’s request as it was ‘not right’ and then Johnson retorted that Sunak was ‘talking rubbish’.
Senior cabinet minister Grant Shapps attempted to play down the internecine war saying ‘the world has moved on’ from Boris Johnson, as if the meltdown destroying the Tory government was little more than a political squabble that could be wished away.
In fact this political meltdown of the Tories directly reflects the crisis of a ruling party gripped by a massive economic crisis from which the only solution for capitalism is to dump it on the backs of the working class.
This is a working class that is refusing to accept poverty level wages while inflation and imperialist war is driving the cost of living through the roof.
Figures released yesterday showed that the pay for public sector and low paid workers had only increased by just above 5% while inflation was still fluctuating at nearly 10%.
Even this slight increase has been held responsible by the Bank of England for ‘entrenching’ inflation, making it certain to cause further increases in the interest rates, driving inflation even higher.
The major crisis for the ruling class is that its Tory government is in a state of total collapse and is unable to wage the class war ferociously enough to impose poverty on millions of workers.
Labour leader Keir Starmer is now preparing the Labour Party to step into the breach and form a national government, along with Sunak to ‘save’ British capitalism from the working class.
Starmer has devoted all his energies to prepare the ground for joining a reactionary national government by driving out of the party anyone who doesn’t give their full support to capitalism, while assuring the capitalist class that under him, Labour is now the ‘party of business’ cleansed of any left-wing sympathies.
There has never been a better time for the working class to act to put an end to this collapsing Tory government and bar the way for a Starmer/Sunak national government, by forcing the TUC to call an indefinite general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
The socialist revolution is the only way forward for workers and young people today to smash backward capitalism and advance to socialism!
