THERESA May’s leadership crashed and burned on Monday when she suddenly announced that there would be no vote on her deal with the EU. For weeks everyone, including her chief whip, has been warning May that the entire House of Commons is united in opposing the deal which is designed to keep British capitalism legally tied to the single market and customs union through the backstop clause and unable to break free without the consent of Brussels.
Her deal was dead in the water from the outset, with the Remainers, who are in the majority across all political parties in Parliament, refusing to vote for it as they are demanding the complete overturn of the Brexit referendum result either through holding a second referendum or through abandoning Brexit completely by a Parliamentary coup.
The Brexiteers of course couldn’t vote for it because of the legally binding backstop clause. Faced with the prospect of certain defeat May had no alternative but to cut and run and prolong the inevitability of defeat for a few weeks.
She ran off to Europe yesterday for meetings with Angela Merkel and other EU leaders to beg for a fig-leaf of meaningless concessions to take back with her. Her illusions were dashed before she even left Britain, with the EU’s chief negotiator Jean-Claude Junker stating bluntly that there is ‘no room whatsoever for renegotiations’.
All May has done is postpone the inevitability of her political demise and with it a Tory government that is on the point of destruction. The only thing keeping her going is the outright refusal of the Labour Party to call for her removal.
Corbyn refused point-blank to demand a vote of no confidence in the government on Monday following May’s humiliation instead, he opted for an emergency motion on May cancelling yesterday’s vote saying: ‘The government’s incompetence can’t be used as an excuse to threaten the country with no-deal.’
Corbyn has made it clear – he stands with the Tory Remainers against the millions of workers and young people who voted in 2016, in a binding referendum, to leave the bosses’ and bankers’ EU. He and his fellow ‘lefts’ have torn up Labour’s commitment at the last general election to accept the referendum result.
May wasn’t the only political leader to face utter humiliation on Monday. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, was forced to make a televised national address in which he admitted there exists a ‘state of social and economic emergency’ and that France is at a ‘historic juncture’.
The man, who just last week boasted he would crush the month-long uprising of French workers, middle class and youth – the Yellow Vests, grovelled saying: ‘I know that I have managed to wound some of you through my comments’ before going on to pledge that he would raise the minimum wage by 100 euros a month, and reverse the levy on pensioners along with temporarily halting the increases in diesel fuel.
This grovelling public apology by Macron has not impressed the overwhelming majority of workers who noted that he still intends to push through ‘reforms’ of social security and pensions, and they have no intention of pulling back from the streets until the ex-banker is kicked out and all the austerity measures demanded by the EU bankers are reversed for good.
The British working class will learn from the struggle of their French brothers and sisters that this historical political and economic crisis of capitalism can only be resolved by the working class taking action and mobilising its enormous strength to march on Parliament and demand it either breaks with the EU immediately or be abolished and replaced by a workers’ council and government.
A workers government will deal with the economic crisis by expropriating industry and the banks and placing them under the control and management of the working class as part of a socialist planned economy.
This taking of power by the working class in Britain will instantly gain the enthusiastic support of workers across Europe and open the floodgates of revolution to put an end to the capitalist EU and advance to the United Socialist States of Europe.
