SO the farce continues. The LibDems, having received a drubbing at the hands of the electorate for their treachery, are now pledging, through their leader Clegg, to jump right back into bed with the ‘ruthless’ Tories, but this time to fight them all the way. It is to be tough love, on such issues as the NHS privatisation bill, we are asked to believe.
The message is that if they cannot get the bill changed then they will block it and break up the coalition.
This declaration is the height of cynicism.
The Tories have experienced a huge and sustained opposition to their health privatisation programme. Cameron is taking away the control of the passage of this measure out of the hands of Health Secretary Lansley, and aims to make cosmetic changes to the bill, to be able to boast that it is all changed, so as to allow the completely unprincipled Liberal Democrats to back it and remain in the government.
In fact, the ‘ruthless’ Tories are gloating over their destruction of the credibility of the LibDems, who, if they quit the cabinet and bring down the government, stand in danger, almost to a man and a woman, of losing their parliamentary seats.
The Tories reckon that when the choice comes between embracing a new form of words in the health bill and also retaining a ministerial or junior ministerial post with all of the perks and prospects that go with it, or blocking it and forcing an election, and losing all that has been gained but retaining a sense of principle, the perks will win handsomely over any remaining doubts.
The Labour debacle in Scotland, where their election ‘campaign’ was founded on the notion that a collapse of the LibDems would automatically mean that they would win many more seats and become the government, has revealed once again the complete bankruptcy of the Miliband gang.
The electors who refused to vote LibDem again voted for the SNP on the basis that it had not followed the Tory-Labour road of NHS privatisation and tuition fees. To them, voting anti-Tory in Scotland meant ditching both the LibDems and the Brown-Blair cabal in the north.
The Labour leader Miliband has learnt nothing from this slap in the face by the electorate. He has just held out his hands to the completely unprincipled Liberal Democrats, telling them ‘come and join us’.
He said yesterday: ‘What I say to them very clearly is, “You’re being led by the nose by a Conservative government… and frankly, if I was in your position and I didn’t get that change in direction, then I wouldn’t stay in this government”.’
Clearly Miliband and the Labour leadership, having failed to win the Scottish workers with their policies, do not think that they will be able to win workers in the south to support Labour cuts as against Tory cuts.
Miliband is in favour of an alternative coalition with the same scurvy LibDems, which will put forward policies for saving capitalism and the bankers, and screwing workers, the middle class and students, and will not save the NHS, defend pensions and jobs or bring in socialist policies to benefit the working class and the middle class.
This is the measure of the bankruptcy of the Labourites. They have lost Scotland, which resolutely kept out the Thatcherites during all of the years of the Thatcher governments, and now seek to gain the support of the completely unprincipled LibDems to have an alternative anti-working class regime instead of the current one.
The News Line urges the working class to take action that will bring down the coalition. We know that it will not follow Miliband in reaching out to the LibDems to form an alternative coalition.
What is required is mass strike actions to defend wages, pensions, jobs and basic rights, and a general strike to bring down the coalition.
This will not bring Miliband and Clegg or Cable to power, but will bring in a workers government that will put an end to the capitalist system and expropriate the bosses and the bankers to bring in socialism.
