PM CAMERON received an almighty slap in the face on Wednesday when the Obama administration effectively told him to shut up and drop all talk about holding referendums on Britain’s continued membership of the European Union.
Well in advance of Cameron’s much promised landmark speech on Europe due to be delivered later this month, in which he is widely expected to promise a referendum on a ‘new settlement’ over Europe, the US assistant secretary for European affairs, Philip Gordon, bluntly told the prime minister: ‘We want to see a strong British involvement in that European Union. That is the American interest.’
Any attempt to renegotiate membership of the EU, let alone the prospect of leaving it, is viewed with alarm by Washington and, as Gordon made absolutely clear, the US government doesn’t even want the matter to be discussed let alone voted on.
He said: ‘It would be fair to say that every hour at an EU summit spent debating the institutional makeup of the European Union is one less hour spent talking about how we can solve our common challenges of jobs, growth and international peace around the world.’
The message to Cameron and the Tory euro-sceptics couldn’t be more plain – British capitalism is too weak to survive on its own, don’t expect US capitalism to bail it out.
The interest of US imperialism is to try and keep the EU staggering on, as its inevitable break-up will engulf the entire international capitalist system and break the back of the weak US economy.
The weakness of British capitalism was underlined earlier in the week in a letter to the Financial Times signed by ten self-styled ‘leading business figures’ who echoed US demands that Cameron stop all talk about referendums and leaving the EU – their message was equally succinct: British capitalism is just too weak to survive on its own.
Given that the EU and the eurozone countries are facing economic collapse on a grand scale, the picture that emerges is that of drowning men clinging desperately to a sinking lifeboat.
The EU was not the only issue that has prompted Washington to issue instructions to Cameron this month.
On the 1st January the US Ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, warned the British government that it must reverse its military cuts and invest any money saved through its defeat in Afghanistan to re-equip and beef up its military.
Daalder warned that Britain could no longer rely upon the US military to come to its aid, at a time when Washington has made the Far East and China its ‘new strategic priority’.
He was particularly scathing about the inability of the British and French governments to wage their dirty little war to overthrow Gadaffi in Libya without the aid of the US military.
This new priority is nothing less than US imperialism desperately preparing for a war to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy in China and reclaim this vast country with its huge markets and wealth for capitalism.
To have any chance of realising this new priority, US imperialism is quite prepared to cut Britain and Europe adrift, both economically and militarily, and demand that they stand on their own two feet.
The very weakness of British imperialism makes these demands impossible for Cameron to meet as he faces political splits within his own party and an economy that is in ruins.
Without doubt, Cameron will faithfully attempt to carry out the wishes of his US masters, and so precipitate a crisis within the Tories that could bring about the implosion of the Coalition.
So unstable is the political and economic situation for British capitalism that crises pile up one upon the other.
The issue for the working class is to take advantage of this weakness and mobilise immediately to bring down the government and replace it with a workers government and socialism.