THE Cameron-led debate in the House of Commons on Monday disclosed a Tory Party split down the middle, with Boris Johnson leading a revolt and Cameron enjoying the cheers of a Labour Party MPs’ support group.
Right at the start, Cameron put paid to the notion that he is concerned with principles of British democracy. He stated: ‘If you want to run Europe, you must be in Europe.’ In case anybody missed the point he added: ‘There will be much debate about sovereignty, and rightly so. To me, what matters most is the power to get things done for our people, for our country and for our future.’
Later in the session he presented the UK as the USA’s representative to the European Union. Tory MP Mark Pritchard asked: ‘Does the Prime Minister recognise and acknowledge the concerns of the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and international players that have already been mentioned that Britain and Europe need to stand together in an unsafe world?’
Cameron responded: ‘My hon. Friend makes an important point. ‘I do not believe that the American view is based simply on: “Well, it’s easier to make one phone call rather than many”. I think it is based on the fact that they believe that Britain will be a stronger partner and more able to get things done and to bend the will of other countries in our and America’s direction when it comes to solving great crises.’
Corbyn’s response to the Cameron introduction was one of a beaten man, a left leader who had been told by the trade union leaders and Labour’s right wing that he must support the EU. He said: ‘We welcome the fact that it is now in the hands of the people of this country to decide that issue.
‘The Labour Party and the trade union movement are overwhelmingly for staying in because we believe that the European Union has brought investment, jobs and protection for workers, consumers and the environment, and we are convinced that a vote to remain is in the best interests of the people.’
He added: ‘However, we see the influence of Tory Party funders on the Prime Minister’s special status not for Britain but for City of London interests. It is the same incentive that caused his friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to rush to Europe with an army of lawyers to oppose any regulation of the grotesque level of bankers’ bonuses.
‘It is necessary to protect the rights of non-eurozone states, but not to undermine EU-wide efforts to regulate the financial sector, including the boardroom pocket stuffing in the City of London.’
Cameron responded ‘Where I disagree profoundly with the right hon. Gentleman is that I think these trade deals are good for Britain and that the sooner we do the deal with America the better.’
Then Labour’s open admirers of Cameron took over the debate. Ex-leader Miliband said: ‘Let me thank the Prime Minister for quoting and implementing parts of the 2015 Labour manifesto. I want to go to the big picture question, which is about how we influence things in our national interest . . . Surely the answer is that we have more influence inside the EU, not outside.’
Alan Johnson MP – the leader of Labour’s pro-EU campaign – intervened to make a joke about Johnson. Labour MP Yvette Cooper added: ‘Will the Prime Minister invite the Mayor to wake up to the 21st century, in which the European economy is six times larger than the British economy and in which it took seven years for Canada to get a trade deal?
‘Does he agree that with so much uncertainty in the world economy, it would be deeply disruptive to increase the risks for British exporters, British manufacturers and British jobs?’
As the MPs spoke, the pound was sinking. The split in the Tory Party has now seen Labour rush to Cameron’s rescue headed by the parliamentary party and the trade union leaders.
If Cameron wins the referendum, Labour’s right wing will prop him up and form a national government with the pro-EU section of the Tory Party to wage war on the working class. If Cameron loses, there will be a crisis election in a revolutionary situation with shares and banks crashing!
Struggles like that of the junior doctors will grow rapidly into a general strike movement that poses the working class with taking power. The task of the hour is the building of the revolutionary leadership of the WRP and the Young Socialists to lead the working class to smash British capitalism with a socialist revolution and to bring down the EU replacing it with the Socialist United States of Europe.
