YESTERDAY the Tory prime minister, David Cameron, wielded the British veto over the Franco-German proposals to try and prop up the collapsing euro through the European Union taking complete dictatorial control over the finances of eurozone countries.
What Cameron objected to was not the prospect of a EU diktat over national parliaments, but the plan insisted upon by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that the European banks be forced to accept a small measure of control over their unfettered right to screw as much profit as possible out of this crisis, a crisis which they themselves created.
Cameron demanded exemption for the City of London from all European legislation aimed at regulating the activities of banks throughout Europe. While the British workers and the middle class are bitterly hostile to the bankers that caused the current capitalist crisis, Cameron is resolved to defend their interests to the end.
Initially standing alongside Britain, but on the issue of defending national sovereignty, were a quartet of Hungary, Romania, Sweden and the Czech Republic. However, with alarm spreading at the weaker than expected position of the German banks, the resistance of the quartet just melted away.
In the face of the British veto the eurozone countries, who have all agreed these proposals, announced that they would go ahead anyway with financial integration thus creating in effect a two-tier European Union.
This in turn will inevitably lead to huge conflicts between those in and those out of the eurozone, especially with British bourgeois who are furious at being driven out of Europe by the combined Franco-German power.
The Merkel/Sarkozy plan is for the EU bureaucracy and legal institutions to be used to impose on bankrupt states like Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy, austerity measures that would drive the working and middle classes along with small farmers into complete destitution in order to repay the banks.
The split with Cameron will mean a growing conflict with the UK since Cameron has made clear that Britain will challenge the legality of using EU resources to further the aims of a separate ‘club within a club’, and will thus be accused of attempting to drive the EU onto the rocks.
The scene is set for the complete bust-up and disintegration of the entire pipedream of a united capitalist Europe as the various nation states begin fighting it out over who will survive the Armageddon of the death agony of capitalism.
In its acute crisis, the tendency of capitalism is to break down into warring nation states, united only in their determination to make the working class of their own countries and the masses throughout the world pay to keep the bankrupt system afloat.
While these bourgeois leaders were at each other’s throats in Brussels, the true depth of the banking crisis was emerging with the revelation that the mighty German banking system is as much of a basket case as the Greek or Spanish banks.
A Europeanwide ‘stress test’ of banks – designed to reassure the financial markets that the banks are solvent – showed that German banks are not the solid institutions they claim to be, requiring more than twice the amount of capital than thought.
German banks are now estimated to need over 13.1 billion euros to cover their exposure to eurozone debt.
What is being faced in the immediate future is a banking collapse involving every European bank, a collapse that will inevitably reverberate around the world bringing down the entire capitalist world financial system.
Small wonder then that it is being reported in the bourgeois press that within the corridors of banking power the dread words ‘run on the banks’ are being muttered.
What these bankers are dreading is that the banks will simply go bust provoking a run in which people will be queuing up for miles to get their money out – money that the banks do not have.
This is the revolutionary scenario that is haunting the bourgeoisie of Europe.
For the working class and their allies, the answer to this complete disintegration and collapse of the anarchic capitalist system lies in carrying through the revolutionary struggle to bring down the capitalist governments in Europe and go forward to seize the power and advance to socialism and the Socialist United States of Europe.
