ON MONDAY night, Tory prime minister Rishi Sunak and European Commission president Ursula Von der Leyen announced that, after a high level meeting, Britain and the EU had signed off an agreement that finally achieved Brexit.
Sunak said at the start of the meeting that the UK and EU have had their differences but are now all friends and that this deal is the beginning of a ‘new chapter’ in relations.
Von der Leyen was equally effusive in praising Sunak who she referred to as ‘Dear Rishi’ during the press conference.
Her rapport with Sunak was founded on their shared support for the war against Russia being carried out by imperialism in Ukraine and the war against workers at home to make them pay for it.
‘We have so much in common’ she gushed. ‘We are fighting for the same values. We’re standing on the same side, shoulder to shoulder.’
Far from finally achieving Brexit, this deal cements the UK firmly back under the domination of EU capitalism and buries Brexit for good.
Amid all the praise being heaped on Sunak for achieving this Brexit breakthrough, an article in the Daily Telegraph by Sherelle Jacobs came close to nailing this fiction.
Headed ‘Sunak’s Protocol “breakthrough” won’t be enough to save Brexit from oblivion’ Jacobs points out that in the press conference Von der Leyen stated: ‘ “The European Court of Justice is the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law.” So the ECJ (European Court of Justice) will have the final say on all EU law and single market issues.’
Jacobs goes on: ‘And with that, Northern Ireland’s fate as a vassal state of Brussels was blandly confirmed.’
Not just the north of Ireland but the entire UK economy is officially a vassal state of the EU bosses and bankers despite all the talk about a ‘Stormont brake’, which is a mere diplomatic sop to the DUP to maintain the fiction that they have any say over implementation of EU law.
The Tories will never implement this ‘brake’ as it would derail the entire accord reached to bring back the UK to the EU and leave weak British capitalism floundering along in a historic world economic crisis at a time when Europe is up to its neck in an imperialist war.
The British ruling class have always hated Brexit, and have worked continually to overturn the result of the 2016 referendum. Only the working class had the power to force Brexit through in the face of opposition from the Labour and trade union leadership.
When Labour fought the 2019 general election on the policy of calling a second referendum to overturn Brexit the working class rejected Labour and put Boris Johnson into office.
The vote wasn’t for Johnson and the Tories but showed the determination of workers to push Brexit through and break completely with the European bosses and bankers.
For the European bourgeoisie, this is a desperate time that requires them to embrace Sunak and a Labour leadership that enthusiastically supports both the EU and the war against Russia.
In Britain they see a ruling class and Tory and Labour parties that are more than willing to send billions of pounds of weaponry to the fascist-supported Ukrainian regime while making savage austerity cuts to workers at home.
This is the unity that the EU and UK bourgeoisie are desperate to achieve.
With both Tory and Labour MPs clamouring to join in the fighting, the EU sees a British ruling class and parliament that is prepared to drive workers into the ground and make them foot soldiers for the imperialist war to weaken Russia.
The working class was powerful enough to force through Brexit and it is powerful enough to complete the job of breaking completely with the EU bosses and bankers by immediately demanding the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
This will be supported by workers all over Europe who will join the struggle to bring down the capitalist EU and replace it with a Socialist United States of Europe.
