THE imperialist powers are not only in their greatest crisis ever, they are completely split and divided.
The UK is prepared to take legal action against France over the ongoing row about post-Brexit fishing rights.
In retaliation, France has threatened to block British boats from some of its ports and cut electricity off to Jersey. British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss told the BBC that France was acting ‘unfairly’ in setting a deadline for issuing more fishing permits. Officials in Paris say that, unless this happens by today, they will take action.
A handful of fishing permits have brought France and the UK close to blows. France’s minister for Europe, Clément Beaune, accused the UK of making a ‘political choice’ by rejecting ‘more than 40%’ of French boats’ applications.
Truss warned unless France withdraws its threats, the UK is prepared to ‘use the dispute resolution mechanism in the trade deal we signed with the EU to take action against the French. We’re simply not going to roll over in the face of these threats,’ she added.
The Labour traitors have added their support to Truss with Labour, Shadow Business Secretary Ed Miliband telling Sky News he ‘didn’t like the way the French had behaved’.
The reality is that France’s President Emmanuel Macron is under massive pressure from the nationalist right in France in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election. He is seeking to regain popularity by denouncing ‘Perfidious Albion’. PM Boris Johnson is playing the same game!
UK-French tensions were further inflamed on Friday, when a letter emerged from French Prime Minister Jean Castex to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggesting the fishing dispute was an opportunity to show that EU countries risked more damage from leaving the bloc than staying in.
Macron has meanwhile turned on Australia, saying Australia’s PM Scott Morrison lied to him about the scrapped French-Australian submarine deal – that the US and the UK have taken over.
Asked whether he thinks Morrison was untruthful, the president replied: ‘I don’t think, I know.’ Macron is furious after Australia cancelled a $37bn (£27bn) deal to build 12 submarines, and instead signed the Aukus pact with the US and the UK
The cancelled deal launched a bitter rift between France, Australia and the US. French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian denounced the decision as ‘a stab in the back’, and Paris temporarily recalled its ambassadors to Australia and the US.
Meanwhile, EU Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said he is ‘increasingly concerned’ the UK is embarking on ‘a path of confrontation’.
The UK wants key changes to the plan, known officially as the Northern Ireland Protocol, while the EU has suggested a more modest package of measures that would reduce its practical impact. ‘Peace is too precious in Northern Ireland to be put at risk’ says the EU.
The truth is that the world crisis of capitalism has been immeasurably deepened in the wake of the Covid 19 crisis. The capitalist world is up to its neck in colossal debts that have to be repaid. Meanwhile, interest rates are set to climb, driving up the cost of living in every capitalist country. The capitalists plan to force the workers of the world to pay the colossal bill.
It is under these conditions that the EU is collapsing, with Poland unable to agree to the primacy of the EU Courts and the UK unable to continue to agree to a customs arrangement for the North of Ireland in which the European Court is primary.
Faced with the rapidly deepening world crisis, the UK and French governments are all in favour of raising tensions between the UK and France as a way for the Johnson and Macron regimes to survive, even if it means economic or even military hostilities on the high seas between the former allies.
It is in this crisis atmosphere that France has already signed a treaty with Greece to jointly confront Turkey in the oil-rich Eastern Med, while the US-UK and NATO have stepped up their anti-Russia and anti-China positions, with British ships active in the Black Sea and the Pacific, threatening both Russia and China.
In this crisis situation, the WRP declares that the enemy is at home and that the way forward is for the UK trade unions to bring down the Johnson government with a general strike to bring in a workers’ government.
We hold out our hands to the German and French workers and all the workers of Europe urging them to join with the UK working class to bring down the EU through socialist revolutions and replacing it with the Socialist United States of Europe. We also urge US workers to do the same. This is the way forward. It will create the conditions for worldwide socialism, and for the restoration of the Soviet Union and for rule through workers’ soviets in China.
