TORY leadership candidate Dominic Raab has threatened to prorogue Parliament, shutting it down at the end of October to ensure that the UK leaves the European Union and to stop Remainers in Parliament attempting to scupper the process.
At the end of every parliamentary session, which usually lasts around a year and starts with the State Opening of Parliament and a Queen’s Speech, Parliament is ‘prorogued’ by the Queen.
The proposal is to advise the Queen to prorogue Parliament before October 31, therefore sending MPs away so that they can’t do anything to stop Brexit. Whether the Queen would be prepared to do this is in itself extremely doubtful, since it would favour the majority who voted to Leave in the 2016 referendum, against the majority of MPs and the sections of the capitalist state that support these ‘Remaining’ MPs.
Raab’s statement provoked the Speaker of the House, John Bercow, an ardent Remainer, to exclaim: ‘The idea the House won’t have its say is for the birds. Parliament is a big player in this. The idea that Parliament is going to be evacuated from the centre stage of debate on Brexit is simply unimaginable.
‘My reading of the situation is that legally the default position, in the absence of agreement, is Brexit on 31 October. That is the legal position. There can however be a difference between what the law says and what political movement, political activity between now and then decrees.
‘I’m very clear in my mind that … there is a difference between a legal default position and what the interplay of different political forces in Parliament will facilitate.’
What has opened up is a chasm between the majority of the people and the majority of MPs, a chasm between the people and Parliament.
Tory Works and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd condemned the prorogation proposal. Looking back to the 1640s, when a King lost his head for defying the parliament, which at that time represented progress, she said: ‘I think it’s outrageous to consider proroguing Parliament. We are not Stuart kings.’
In the 1640s, it was the Stuart Kings that had to go, at the hands of a revolutionary wing of the parliament. Today the opposite is the case. The capitalist ruling class is in its death agony. It has to go!
The British manufacturing base has been smashed, the capitalist economy is in tatters, one section is desperate to cling on to the sinking ship of the EU, the other to hang on to the coat tails of the US, pandering to President Trump, desperate for a trade deal.
However the UK has nothing to trade. Honda is closing in Swindon, Ford is shutting in Bridgend, the last of the steel industry is going down the pan and its high speed rail ambitions have gone horribly wrong. The only asset the UK possesses that the US wants to get its hands on is the NHS!
The working class has no truck with the US rulers or the EU rulers. It represents the future – that is socialism. The working class rose up and voted to leave the EU in 2016, in response to the massive austerity imposed on a permanent basis after the banking crash of 2008. It wants to get out of the EU and it is driven towards socialism.
In fact, the Brexit vote was part and parcel of the uprising that is taking place across Europe, that Trump is so frightened will spread to the USA, as he sloganises ‘America First’ and tries to export the crisis everywhere else.
In this country, Parliament stands firmly in the way of Brexit and progress towards socialism. It is clear that the Remainers in Parliament, who have found their voice in the supposedly ‘politically neutral’ speaker Bercow, will do whatever it takes to scupper Brexit, and will take every opportunity to do so in the lead up to October 31.
This is in complete defiance of the 17.4 million people who voted to leave the European Union in the EU referendum.
When you have a Parliament that is in opposition to the majority of people in the UK, then you clearly have a revolutionary situation, Parliament versus the people. A civil war situation has opened up in Britain.
What is required is not another Cromwell, but for the working class to shut down Parliament on October 31 and insist that the UK leaves the EU and that the UK goes forward to socialism!
