YESTERDAY Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn came out publicly to proclaim that he is prepared to go to any lengths to appease the right wing of the party, betray the working class and side with the bankers and bosses desperate to keep the country tied to the EU.
On the eve of the Labour Party conference, Corbyn appeared on the BBC’s Andrew Marr programme to insist that he would support a second referendum on Brexit, the so-called ‘people’s referendum’ if the party conference voted to change existing Labour policy when the issue is debated tomorrow.
Corbyn was at pains to insist that this policy of a second referendum was not his ‘first choice’ because he believed a general election was a better way to resolve the political crisis over Brexit, saying: ‘What comes out of conference I will adhere to. But I’m not calling for a second referendum. I hope we will agree the best way of resolving this is a general election.’
Corbyn is fooling no one with his double-talk about the sanctity of Labour Party conferences. He knows full well that ever since the referendum result in 2016, a result that shocked the capitalist class of Europe and Britain to its very core, the right-wing and the majority of trade union leaders have been working overtime to overturn it.
These reactionary forces in the trade union movement threw their entire weight behind the ‘Remain’ camp in the referendum, joining with the bosses to bombard their members with threats that leaving the EU would destroy their jobs and leave them helpless in the face of the employers without the legal ‘protection’ afforded by EU laws.
Now Corbyn is resorting to the same lying tactics employed then when he stated on the Marr programme that in 2016 ‘nobody voted to lose their jobs and for factories to close’.
Here we have it, the old refrain that the working class is too stupid to be trusted and must obey the dictats of their betters. Corbyn’s position is that if May doesn’t accept a deal that keeps Britain tied to the EU then he wants a general election and a Labour government that will keep British capitalism in the single market ruled by EU law. The only winner in this will be the EU!
By his treacherous capitulation to Labour’s right-wing, who have made it clear they will split if he doesn’t give in, Corbyn has invited the EU to continue to refuse any negotiations over Brexit and wait for a general election and a Corbyn-led Labour government that will hand them everything they want on a plate.
In fact the working class, far from being stupid, was only too aware of what the EU had done to the working class across Europe. Workers saw the bankers move in and take over Greece and inflict the most vicious austerity in that country with every state-owned company privatised, wages and pensions slashed and massive unemployment inflicted on workers and youth – all to pay off the debts of Greek capitalism to the German bankers.
It was EU laws outlawing state aid to industry and the insistence that public services be put out to private tender that the Tories used to force through the privatisation of rail and the post office in the UK. When Corbyn states that a future Labour government would do exactly what the EU wants, to stay within the customs union and obey all the laws regarding trade, he didn’t explain how this was compatible with the his reformist programme of partial re-nationalisation of industries like the railways and increased state investment; all of which are illegal under the very EU rules Corbyn is so keen to sign up to.
In fact these EU laws will be used to neuter any Labour government and Corbyn knows it. Labour won huge support from workers and youth at the last general election on a manifesto that clearly called for Britain to leave the EU, and this conference must reject any attempt to betray this commitment and reaffirm that a future Labour government will break with the EU immediately.
