IN THE LATEST attempt to block a no-deal Brexit, Labour leader Corbyn has called on the civil service to move into action and do the bidding of the Remainer MPs in Parliament.
Corbyn has written to senior civil servant, Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill, seeking confirmation that Boris Johnson could not force through a no-deal Brexit ‘in the middle of a general election campaign’.
Johnson has said that he would never agree to having an election before the Brexit date of October 31. However, Remainer MPs plan to call a vote of no-confidence in Johnson, forcing an election if he loses the vote.
Since the Brecon and Radnorshire by-election, Johnson has only got a working majority in the House of Commons of one!
Nevertheless, Johnson has indicated that even if that were to happen and he lost a no-confidence vote, a new election would only take place after the Brexit date of October 31. It is set in law that the UK will leave the EU on 31st October with or without a deal unless Article 50 is extended or revoked.
Corbyn in his letter to Mark Sedwill has written: ‘Forcing through No Deal against a decision of Parliament, and denying the choice to the voters in a general election already underway, would be an unprecedented, unconstitutional and anti-democratic abuse of power by a Prime Minister elected, not by the public, but by a small number of unrepresentative Conservative Party members.’
Corbyn concludes in the letter: ‘I would therefore be grateful for your confirmation that, if the UK is due to leave the EU without a deal during a general election campaign, the government should seek a time-limited extension to Article 50, to let the electorate decide and the incoming government to take the next steps on the basis of the voters’ wishes.’
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has said that if there was a no confidence vote in Boris Johnson, and Johnson refused to quit he would ‘send Jeremy Corbyn to Buckingham Palace in a cab’ to tell the Queen that Labour was ready to take power, with Corbyn as the PM.
This may be what McDonnell is saying publicly, but behind the scenes, preparations are being made for a coalition government of Tory Remainers, Liberals, right-wing Labourites and Scottish Nationalists, united in a single aim … to stop Brexit at all costs and remain in the EU. It is not Corbyn that they are grooming to be the leader of such a rat-bag coalition, but McDonnell himself.
He has emerged as the arch Remainer, and on Tuesday in an interview in Edinburgh, broke with the official Labour Party policy of opposition to a second Scottish independence referendum. He is dumping any principled position that Labour has to block a second Scottish Referendum in order to form a coalition with the SNP to stop Brexit!
Workers dealt a decisive blow both against the rulers of the UK and the rulers of the EU with their revolutionary Brexit vote. Now, that struggle must be seen through to its revolutionary conclusion.
What was first expressed through a referendum and then blocked by Parliament, must be forced through by a workers’ purge of Parliament.
What is rapidly emerging is a battle between Parliament and the people. This is why there is so much discussion about the English Civil War, whose high point was ending the monarch’s ‘Rule by Divine Right’ when the King was put on trial as a traitor to his people and was decapitated.
Brexit is the form the struggle has taken, but the content is that since the banking crash of 2007/08 the entire weight of the capitalist crisis has been dumped on the backs of the working class and it has got so sharp that they cannot afford to live!
The smashing up of manufacture, industry and retail, the privatisation of the NHS, the destruction of council housing are driving the working class down the revolutionary road, to get rid of this rotten capitalist system.
The weapon the working class must wield is a revolutionary general strike to bring this country to a grinding halt and force through Brexit, bringing down Johnson and the Tory government, and bringing in a workers government. This will expropriate the bosses and bankers and bring in socialism, inspiring the workers of the EU to go forward to the United Socialist States of Europe.
