IT EMERGED at the weekend that the latest stage in a coup to overturn the Brexit referendum result by an alliance of right-wing Labour MPs, Tory Remainers, LibDems and the Green Party will take the form of an attempt to copy a Donald Trump style shutdown of parliament.
This reactionary alliance is being led by the right-wing Blairite and former Labour cabinet minister Yvette Cooper who heads a group of select committee leaders all of whom have tabled amendments to the Finance Bill due to come before the Commons today.
These amendments if passed would make government spending on anything related to a ‘no-deal’ Brexit illegal without the consent of Parliament. In effect this would mean that the Treasury would be starved of cash leading to a shutdown of the government similar to the shutdown Trump has orchestrated in the US as he tries to force through funding for his wall across the border with Mexico in the face of opposition from the Democrat-controlled Congress.
Cooper leads this coupist group which includes former Tory ministers Nicky Morgan, Oliver Letwin and Nick Bowles and which has the support of fellow Labour right-wingers who also lead select committees in the Commons, Hilary Benn, Rachel Reeves, Sarah Wollaston, Harriet Harman and Frank Field (who resigned from the party last year).
Cooper made clear their plot when she told the press: ‘Our amendment would block some of the treasury’s no-deal powers unless Parliament has explicitly voted for a no deal or unless the government has requested an extension of article 50.’ She added: ‘We’ll be looking to table similar safeguards to all government legislation.’
The Finance Bill is the mechanism which gives the Treasury the authority to spend money on all government spending including preparations for the UK to leave the EU. A second amendment being proposed by the LibDems, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru would stop the Treasury from raising any income or corporation tax unless Parliament approved a Brexit deal that kept the UK tied to the capitalist EU.
LibDem leader Vince Cable said: ‘The time has now come for MPs to assert their authority by making it impossible for the government to collect crucial taxes if they do pursue a damaging no deal.’
Preventing any money being spent would lead to ‘total paralysis’ at the top of government, according to two Tory cabinet members. In fact it would paralyse not just the top of the government but completely shutdown Parliament.
All public spending could be halted overnight with the entire state grinding to a standstill just as Trump has done in America where a quarter of federal government agencies have been closed and 800,000 Federal workers have either been sent home or forced to work without pay.
These Labour right-wingers and their Tory allies will stop at nothing to carry out a Parliamentary coup to overturn the result of the binding Brexit referendum by shutting down Parliament and imposing some form of a dictatorship of the bosses and bankers over the working class, so desperate are they to cling to the capitalist EU.
The working class and its powerful trade union movement are the only force that can prevent this and ensure that the will of the people is obeyed. They must take a leaf out of the book of these reactionary MPs.
If the ruling class and their Parliamentary lackeys are preparing to smash bourgeois democracy, close down Parliament and impose a virtual dictatorship then the working class must respond in kind by marching on the House of Commons and shutting it down themselves and imposing the dictatorship of the proletariat over the capitalist class by replacing Parliament with a central workers council that will run the
country.
A workers government will break with the EU, expropriate the bosses and bankers and join with the working class of Europe in the struggle to replace the EU with the Socialist United States of Europe. The vital issue of the day is the building of the revolutionary leadership of the WRP and Young Socialists in Britain and sections of the Fourth International in every country to lead the socialist revolution to victory.
