WHEN the Tory Daily Telegraph runs on its front page a headline that Theresa May is ‘limping into oblivion’ it couldn’t be a clearer message that she is finished as prime minister.
But it is not just May that experienced a total meltdown at the end of the Tory conference on Wednesday; the entire Tory party, its government and the capitalist system they represent are broken.
May’s speech was supposed to be the start of the regeneration of the Tories following the massive defeats inflicted on them by workers and youth, first in the EU referendum, and then in this year’s general election.
It ended in complete farce with May struggling to even get her carefully composed speech across to a Tory party that looked on in dismay. She accepted without question the P45 form handed to her by a comedian and even more symbolically towards the end of her speech the entire set behind her started to collapse, a fitting end to a speech that marked the collapse of a broken prime minister, a broken Tory party and the broken capitalist system they serve.
Behind all the sympathetic outpourings from Tory MPs following her disaster, the knives are being sharpened and her political oblivion will be measured in days not weeks as the various factions within the Tory party fight it out for the leadership.
In fact, this mortally wounded Tory party, ruling through a minority government that must carry through unprecedented attacks on workers and young people through the most savage austerity cuts, is only clinging on to power because of the outright refusal of the Labour leadership to bring it down.
Indeed, it is becoming clear to everyone that Corbyn and the trade union leadership are afraid of bringing down the Tories. Instead of demanding the Tories are brought down immediately, the head of the TUC, Frances O’Grady, merely commented that May’s speech ‘was thin gruel – a missed opportunity to outline the new deal for working people that Britain so desperately needs’.
Len McCluskey, leader of the Unite union, just trotted out that: ‘Only Labour can act in the national, not narrow party interest.’ From Corbyn there was only silence. This cowardly refusal to act comes at a time when the working class are moving in a mass way towards a confrontation with Tory austerity as demonstrated by the massive vote by postal workers this week for strike action in defence of jobs, pay and conditions.
The general secretary of the postal workers union (CWU), Dave Ward, said: ‘The CWU have tapped into a mood amongst workers across the UK. Our members are prepared to stand up and fight to protect their terms and conditions and we will do everything within our means to defend them.’
Ward is right, the 89.1% vote for strike is a reflection of the determination not just of postal workers but the entire working class to fight – a determination not shared by Corbyn and the TUC.
They are running scared of taking power for the simple reason that Corbyn and his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, are only too aware that a Labour government will immediately find itself under an all-out attack from the banks and bosses.
McDonnell has already admitted that the Labour Party has been running a series of ‘war games’ designed to deal with the banks orchestrating an economic crisis for an incoming Labour government.
McDonnell is correct that the banks will cause a run on the pound and even pull out of Britain altogether in order to try to teach the working class a lesson by deliberately crashing the economy, but he and Corbyn have absolutely no idea of how to defeat a capitalist class intent on destroying even a weak reformist Labour government in order to discipline workers.
What this crisis demands is the complete smashing of capitalism and the working class taking power through the victory of a socialist revolution. This will answer the attacks of the bosses and bankers by expropriating them and establishing a planned socialist economy to satisfy people’s needs.
This task requires building the revolutionary leadership of the WRP – that is prepared to lead the fight for workers’ power. We call on every worker and young person to come to our rally to celebrate the centenary of the Russian Revolution on November 12th and join the WRP.
