PRIME Minister Brown’s alliance with the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party has paid off with the passage by nine votes of his amendment to the terror laws allowing the police to hold a ‘terror suspect’ for up to 42 days without having to charge them with any crime.
The fact is, despite all appearances, the Tory leadership is in fundamental agreement with Brown on his range of policies.
On the issue of the abolition of the 10p rate of taxation for the lowest paid, Tory leader Cameron has admitted that despite loudly opposing the measure in the House of Commons, a Tory government would not reinstate the 10p tax rate.
Similarly, on the issue of the 42 days detention without charge. In the House of Commons, Cameron has opposed the measure loudly. The crunch came for this piece of opportunism, when his ex-Shadow Home Secretary, Davis, pledged that the first day of a new Tory regime would not pass without the measure being repealed.
The opportunist Cameron would not agree to this – now Davis has resigned, leaving Cameron, Osborn and Hague to prop up the Brown government.
Brown has shown himself to be a very determined defender of the needs of the British ruling class, not hesitating to push £100 billions plus into the coffers of the banks, at the same time as he cuts public sector wages, and food and oil prices shoot through the roof, without any kind of relief for the millions who are suffering.
He stands four-square for the interests of the British capitalists, to the point where the Bank of England is poised to go on a raise-the-rates spree, which will ruin millions of mortgage holders.
Brown understands that the ruling class cannot afford to mess about in this situation and must have at its disposal the most draconian laws for use against the working class and the middle class.
He is putting himself forward as the leader of the Party of Order, prepared to do what the ruling class requires, drive back the working class so that it and the middle class bear the full burden of the worsening capitalist catastrophe.
Davis, meanwhile has resigned and will fight a by-election, unopposed by the Liberals, as the champion of bourgeois democratic freedom and the Magna Carta.
Yesterday he said: ‘The state has security powers to clamp down on peaceful protest and so-called hate laws to stifle legitimate debate, whilst those who incite violence get off scot-free.
‘This cannot go on, it must be stopped. . . .
‘I will fight it, I will argue this by-election against the slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms by this Government. . . .
‘The ever-intrusive power of the state on our lives, the loss of privacy, the loss of freedom and a steady attrition undermining the rule of law. And if they do send me back here, it will be with a single, simple message – that the monstrosity of a law that we passed yesterday will not stand.’
There is no doubt that the revisionists will flock to the banner, being unfurled by Davis, of a popular front to defend Magna Carta and the freedom of the British people.
There is only one fly in this ointment. The Libertarian Tory Davis is only for bourgeois freedom. He is for keeping every one of the Tory and Labour anti-union laws that keep the working class in chains, and if anything thinks that they should be strengthened.
He is also not opposed to the working class and the middle class being made to pay the full price of the capitalist crisis.
What Davis is proposing is a bourgeois popular front to unite both right and left against the growth of state power, and also to bar the road to a socialist revolution.
No doubt the liberals and the supporters of Respect and the SWP will flock to this banner.
The WRP will not be joining any popular front.
We urge the working class to bring down the Brown government to go forward to a workers government that will expropriate the bankers and the bosses and bring in socialism, smashing the capitalist state and all its reactionary laws in the process.
