ON TUESDAY night prime minister Theresa May suffered the biggest political defeat in British parliamentary history when her Brexit deal, signed and sealed with the EU, was defeated by 432 to 202 votes, a massive majority of 230.
In ordinary times, this would have led to an immediate resignation and a general election, but instead May volunteered that she would create a space for the leader of the Labour opposition, Corbyn, to move a no confidence vote; in fact she invited him to put down such a vote.
He duly obliged when his turn came to speak, and announced that he would move a no-confidence vote which took place last night. May did not resign, and will not resign. She and her government must be forced out. She is a woman with a mission. After the referendum disaster for the Tories in 2016, she was selected by the 1922 Committee to run the Tory Party and to abort the referendum result to keep the UK under the thumb of the EU.
She went from ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ to a ‘bad deal is better than no deal’, and then to her current position that ‘no deal’ is absolutely out of the question. She intends to soldier on. On the vote of no confidence she is not just banking on the desire of Tory MPs to keep their seats and not suffer a general election that under the present circumstances would be like a weapon of mass destruction, as far as the split and divided Tory party is concerned.
She has perceived that Labour, behind its sometime sound and fury, actually wants a deal with her. Corbyn does not relish fighting a general election under a banner that will see his assurances of 2017, that he would see Brexit through, cast aside – plus the pledges that got rid of the Tory majority cast aside – in favour of seeing both sides of the argument and urging a permanent customs union and a single market with the EU.
Labour’s John McDonnell has attacked May for just offering to talk to Labour personalities and not wanting to talk and work with himself and his leader Corbyn. Labour understands that remaining in a permanent customs union will require a May- and Corbyn-led alliance: a government of national unity that will see the UK remain in the EU and be subject to the laws of the European Commission and the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
The prospect is then that Corbyn will seek to avoid a general election and become part of a government of national unity to establish a permanent customs union and a permanent single market with the EU. That this would completely overturn the 2016 referendum result is obvious.
Labour Party members and Labour voters must insist that Labour stays loyal to the 2017 general election manifesto programme that removed May’s majority, and made her dependent on the DUP.
Labour must demand a general election now and fight it on leaving the EU at once, to carry out the 2016 referendum decision. It must also guarantee the jobs and living standards of the UK workers by nationalising the banks and the major industries and by putting them under workers’ management bringing in socialism.
Such a policy will receive huge support from the UK working class, and will receive full support from the workers of France, Italy, Hungary, Greece and Germany who are experiencing wage cuts, huge rises in the cost of living and austerity at the hands of the EU bankers and bosses.
The UK must leave the EU now and the UK workers must ally themselves with the workers and youth of the EU to bring down the EU and its bankers and bosses and bring in the Socialist United States of Europe. This is the way forward. If Labour does a Ramsay Mac and allies itself with the Tories to remain in the European Union, the Labour Party will never recover from the disaster of its own making.
We urge workers that the best way to see Brexit through is to join the WRP and the Young Socialists to build a revolutionary leadership. This will see Brexit through by organising a socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism in the UK and throughout Europe, and replace the EU with the Socialist United States of Europe.