THE JUST-elected Tory leader Boris Johnson has already faced an attempt to remove him by Tory Minister of State for Europe Sir Alan Duncan, even before his victory was announced yesterday mid-day.
Duncan resigned on Monday in an attempt to trigger an emergency debate in the House of Commons on Johnson becoming Prime Minister. This failed when Speaker John Bercow thought better of the adventure and turned down his application.
Duncan revealed: ‘Well the real story of today is that actually the timing of my resignation was to try and prompt an emergency debate in the Commons ahead of Boris becoming Prime Minister.’
Duncan told the BBC on Monday: ‘And I thought, in order to voice a constitutional crisis, we should test that on the Tuesday, tomorrow, before he goes to the Palace on the Wednesday and the Speaker has denied me and the House that opportunity.’
Following the interview, The BBC’s Kuenssberg tweeted: ‘Sir Alan astonished that Bercow has turned his request down, and fears much bigger meltdown after recess when next PM can’t hold a majority in the Commons – his critics may reckon he was trying to kill off a Johnson govt before he’s even gone to the Palace.’
She added: ‘It’s still pretty extraordinary that a Tory wants to give the Commons the opportunity to stop the next Tory leader getting into Number 10 . . . this move is clearly not something Duncan dreamt up overnight – and that may be the worrying thing for Team Johnson!’
In fact, Tory leadership contender Rory Stewart, ex-Chancellor Hammond, and David Gauke all told Johnson that they will quit the cabinet before he takes office rather than serve in his cabinet.
The now PM Johnson goes into battle against the EU bureaucrats, with the latter knowing that they have a big ‘Fifth Column’ of Tory ‘Remainers’ at work in the UK.
Supported by Labour, SNP and Lib Dem ‘Remainers’ they are determined to use any means necessary – from appeals to the Supreme Court to make Brexit illegal, to occupying the House of Commons to prevent any proroguing through Article 50, to organising a no-confidence vote in the new government inside parliament to bring the Johnson government down – to keep the UK in the EU.
This perspective amounts to a massive slap in the face for bourgeois democracy and the 17.4 million that responded to an appeal by parliament to decide whether the UK should remain the EU, by voting to leave. The essence of the issue is that British capitalism is out of date, has run out of time and deserves to perish.
For workers it is not just a question of leaving the EU, and preventing the UK becoming a province of the EU bosses and bankers, nor by attaching the UK to the US capitalist system to become some 52nd state of the USA providing cheap labour and military forces for the future military adventures of US capitalism – this is the Johnson agenda.
The working class requires a socialist future for it and its children, after almost 12 years of super-austerity when life has changed for the worse.
British capitalism is seeking to return the UK to the wages, conditions and housing of the early 20th century, when wages were low and slum housing was the rule with no education and no future.
However, ‘Do or Die’ Johnson may well prove to be an inferior version of the capitulator May when he is put to the test by the EU. However, what Johnson does is not the decisive issue for the working class.
If he surrenders to the EU then the working class will see to it with a general strike to bring down his government and bring in a workers government to do the job and leave the EU on October 31.
If he does not ‘do a May’ and quits the EU, with the support of the working class, on October 31 it is to be expected that the UK bosses and bankers will move to make the workers suffer for their decisive role in Brexit, by shifting their capital out of the UK.
In that event, the working class must take indefinite general strike action to bring down the Johnson government, and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries under workers’ management and bring in socialism.
This is what must be done in the days ahead. There is no doubt that such a revolutionary development in the UK will spread all over Europe bringing an end to the EU, and bringing in a Socialist United States of Europe. It will also influence the mighty US working class to go forward and carry out their own Socialist Revolution!
