AS THE Tory Party continues to disintegrate by the hour, demands from the ruling class for a new right-wing party to emerge from the ashes are becoming more and more strident.
The emergence of a new reactionary break with the old ‘conservatism’ that paid lip service to governing the country for the benefit of all has been clear since the Tory Party conference at the start of October.
The public split at this conference became even deeper and open after Rishi Sunak sacked Suella Braverman as Home Secretary last week, with the ‘New Conservatives’ caucus of right-wing Tory MPs announcing it would be raising funds and recruiting members to act as a party within a party to drive an extreme right-wing agenda out of the crumbling ruins of the Tory Party.
On Tuesday, the Daily Telegraph, a reliable commentator on the manoeuvres taking place in the higher echelons of the Tory Party and ruling class circles, published an article headed: ‘A new right-wing party will replace the Tories if they keep surrendering to the establishment’ which opens with the warning: ‘The spectre of revolution is returning to British politics.’
The article, by Sherelle Jacobs, asserts that: ‘Both major parties are out of their depth in the face of multiple national crises’ and: ‘The reality of national decline has penetrated the collective consciousness’ but that this ‘is somehow lost on the British establishment.’
There can be no denying that millions of workers and youth in Britain are acutely aware that British capitalism is bankrupt and can offer only a future of economic recession, wage cuts and mass unemployment.
They are also aware that, while the Tory Party is splitting apart, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer offers no alternative.
Starmer is as committed to carrying out the same ‘financially prudent’ policies as Sunak, only spending as much as a bankrupt British capitalism can afford – precisely nothing – while he has gone out of his way to demonstrate to the capitalist class his hatred of workers striking for decent wages.
What Jacobs is clearly worried about is that neither Sunak nor any Starmer government is up to the job of inflicting this crisis on the backs of workers.
What is required is a new party that will completely smash the old ‘established order’ and do what is necessary to protect the profits of the bosses and bankers.
She sneers at the Tory government’s belief that minor tax cuts for the rich or deporting just a few hundred migrants to Rwanda will solve the economic debt mountain crashing down on British capitalism.
Instead, she claims that the British economy has been ‘brought to its knees’ because ‘the model of propping up an ever-expanding welfare state through cheap debt has fallen apart.’
In fact, the massive debt pile that has brought British capitalism to its knees was run up after the 2008 global banking crash to prop up the banks, and to provide the bankers and speculators with an endless supply of paper money to ensure astronomical profits.
But today, when that debt has to be repaid, the capitalist class is determined that the working class must pick up the bill by seeing the entire welfare state, including the NHS, stripped of cash and allowed to collapse.
This cannot be achieved in any peaceful way; it requires precisely a new party of the ruling class which is being called for by sections of the ruling class today – one that is prepared to unleash the might of the capitalist state forces to physically smash the working class and its trade unions.
The powerful working class will never passively accept seeing all the gains of the past destroyed and being driven into acute poverty to save the profits of the ruling class.
The time has come for workers to demand the TUC use this power by calling a general strike to bring down this Tory government and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
The spectre of revolution is haunting Britain – the spectre of socialist revolution.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British socialist revolution – there is no time to lose.
