THE BRITISH Prime Minister was given the ‘Greek plus’ treatment by the EU leadership on Monday when the EU assembled British ‘Remainers’ to boo him, and then expected him to speak at a press conference in the open – with the same anti-Brexit mob ridiculing his every word.
In fact, Luxembourg’s PM Bettel refused Johnson’s request to have, as usual, an indoor press conference without the pro-EU mob, leaving Johnson with the only alternative of walking away from the press conference with the mob baying at him.
The EU’s Brexit co-ordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, then tweeted a photograph of the empty podium (with Union Jack flying) from which Johnson had been due to speak alongside Bettel, with the caption: ‘From Incredible Hulk to incredible sulk’.
Over the weekend Johnson had told the media that the UK would break out of its ‘manacles’ like the Incredible Hulk – with or without a deal.
In fact, after the working lunch with Juncker and Barnier, Johnson had said he had been encouraged by the EU’s willingness to engage with the UK in their shared desire to avoid a No-Deal exit – but there had not been a ‘total breakthrough’. Johnson has been taken for a ride, a similar ride to that May was taken on!
Bettel then held a pro-EU rally in place of a press conference attacking Johnson’s approach to Brexit, calling the situation a ‘nightmare’, adding that the British government had failed to put forward any serious proposals for a new deal, and that the UK’s Brexit campaign in 2016 had been a mass of lies.
To add insult to injury, Bettel added that the existing Withdrawal Agreement was the ‘only solution’.
In fact, Johnson is not going to get any deal with an EU that is treating the UK as it treated Greece, by grinding it down and then breaking it.
Johnson says that he is working ‘very hard’ to get a deal, and there would be no agreement unless the EU shifts its position on the Backstop – the insurance policy to maintain an open border on the island of Ireland unless and until another solution is found. ‘If we can’t get movement from them on that crucial issue … we won’t be able to get it through the House of Commons, no way.’
However, events are moving on.
The Liberal Democrats, now busily recruiting Labour renegades, have just decided at their annual conference that if they become the government they will have nothing to do with a second referendum and that they now favour dictatorship, and revoking Article 50 in the House of Commons to remain in the EU.
That this would take a LibDem dictatorship to carry out is obvious, since such a move would be met with massive hostility by the working class which would hit back. Nevertheless, these are desperate times for the EU and capitalism, and truly desperate measures are required.
In fact, this issue could be on the parliamentary agenda well before there is a Liberal Democrat government. Currently, the Supreme Court is in session and will decide whether the current proroguing of the Parliament by Johnson is illegal.
If it decides that it is, then Parliament will be brought back into session, and the Remain parliamentary majority will be in a position where the LibDems could move the immediate revoking of Article 50.
Such a move will put the cat amongst all the pigeons.
In such an event, the fate of Brexit will depend on the working class rising up to shut down such a Parliament and bring in a workers’ government that will make sure the UK not only leaves the EU on October 31st, but that the working class goes forward to expropriate the bosses and bankers and brings in a socialist planned economy.
This is the only way forward.
The British ruling class is split and divided and is incapable of breaking with the EU as the last over three years have proven.
This is a job that only the working class can carry out, to lay the basis for a socialist UK and get rid of the EU and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe.
Only the WRP fights for this policy and this socialist perspective. Make sure that you join the WRP and its youth movement the Young Socialists today!
