THE GIGANTIC farce of the Brexit negotiations hit a brick wall this week with EU officials accusing the British of failing to reveal its hand over how much money they are prepared to pay the EU for the privilege of leaving, and the UK negotiators hitting back, claiming that some of the claims for a financial settlement had no legal basis.
With accusations flying back and forth between the two sets of negotiators, and reports of frustration between the two sides reaching boiling point, it is clear to everyone that these talks have reached a complete impasse that will only be resolved if the British side completely capitulates, as did the Greeks before them.
While Tory negotiators throw their hands up at EU intransigence they can’t claim they were not warned. Before the ‘divorce’ negotiations started the ex-Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, told PM May bluntly that any attempt to negotiate a settlement with the EU would end in failure.
Varoufakis had first hand experience of such negotiations when he tried to re-negotiate the terms of the Greek bail-out with the same Brussels bureaucrats on behalf of the left-bourgeois Greek government, Syriza.
He recounted how he was given the run-around by EU officials who continually upped their demands with the deliberate intention of wearing Syriza down to the point where it caved in to the EU bankers.
Syriza finally collapsed despite having the overwhelming support of the Greek people to fight the austerity demands and has ended up acting as the EU bankers’ police, enforcing savage cuts on the Greek working class. Now the EU negotiators are using the same tactic over Brexit – they know no other!
What has given the capitalist class of Europe confidence in this war of attrition is the spineless treachery of the right-wing of the Labour Party and the leadership of the TUC.
Last week Labour’s shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, announced that with the agreement of Corbyn, the official Labour leadership had dumped its commitment to carrying out the decision of the referendum to leave the EU in favour of supporting continued membership of the single market and customs union for an undefined ‘transition period’.
This move, which in essence is a commitment to stay in the bosses and bankers’ EU for all time, was greeted with joy by Francis O’Grady, general secretary of the TUC, who called it ‘sensible and reasonable’, claiming it would give workers ‘certainty’ about their jobs and rights at work.
Those wanting certainty about jobs and rights within the EU only have to look across the channel at France where yesterday the French president, Macron, unveiled his plans to impose by diktat the destruction of every right French workers have.
He intends to introduce laws to make it easy for bosses to sack workers, cut the amount of compensation workers can claim for unfair dismissal and remove the right to national wage negotiations.
This coup inside the Labour Party is aimed at splitting the Labour Party and forming a common front with pro-EU Tories and bankers who are desperate to overturn the leave vote. With May facing a vote in Parliament on September 7th on the Brexit negotiations, this alliance of pro-EU Tories and Labour MPs are preparing for her defeat with the prospect of the government collapsing allowing a pro-EU right-wing coalition to contest a general election.
The working class must now act decisively to put an end to this scheming by demanding that the upcoming TUC Congress remove and replace O’Grady and the rest of the right-wing leaders, end all collaboration with the Tories, and immediately organise a general strike to bring down the May government and bring in a workers’ government that will break decisively with the capitalist EU.
A workers’ government will carry out the socialist revolution in the UK by expropriating the banks and industry, placing them under the management of working people. It will also join with the workers of France and Europe in the struggle to replace the EU with the United Socialist States of Europe.
We urge all workers and young people to join the WRP and Young Socialists lobby of the TUC Congress in Brighton on Monday September 11 to fight for these demands!
