THE Tory party leadership is now breaking apart at the seams with information about the leadership battle being leaked by the different contenders and their supporters.
It is now known that Brexit Secretary, Dave Davis, has the support of 30 Tory MPs for a leadership contest in October, just before the Tory Party Conference. Also, that one of his rivals Chancellor Hammond declared at the Tory Cabinet meeting last Tuesday that public sector workers are at least 10% better off than private sector workers when their pensions are taken into account.
Chancellor Hammond has denied the report but also cautioned that colleagues should not be leaking Cabinet discussions. He refused to confirm reports that he said at the same Cabinet meeting that public servants as a whole were ‘overpaid’. So much for alleged concerns about the ‘just about managing’.
Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell also entered the Sunday morning TV fray when he pledged that Labour would end the 1% cap on public sector pay rises. The Shadow Chancellor said his party had set aside £4bn on an annual basis to bring pay in line with inflation.
He, however, added that Labour would not be deciding on the pay offer for the public sector, saying that: ‘Unlike the government which has set a pay cap the review bodies have to follow, it will be up to the review bodies to make recommendations that we will adhere to.’
When asked by Andrew Marr: ‘Don’t you think public sector workers deserve a bit more than inflation, and actually deserve a pay rise?’ McDonnell replied: ‘I think they do but that will be up to the review bodies.’
So if the review bodies were to decide on 1%, while the millions of public sector workers would be fuming, Labour would accept, according to McDonnell. The truth of the matter is that Labour is pulling its punches while the Tory crisis is deepening at a massive rate as is the mounting fear that capitalism is heading for yet another 2007-type collapse.
We have had the Grenfell Tower Inferno, and the massive indifference that the survivors have faced. We have seen the 300,000 strong march to parliament on July 1st to get the Tories out, and yet the Tory party, split, divided and at each other’s throats is still there.
No wonder charlatans like Tony Blair, who are hated by the working class, have been able to intervene to suggest that action should be taken to ignore the decision of the 2016 Referendum to leave the EU.
The Blair-Brown governments extolled globalisation and deregulation of the city, exported millions of jobs, sold off the gold reserves, re-labelled the Labour Party as the ‘businessman’s party’, expunged Clause 4 from the Labour Party constitution and launched two major imperialist wars – bombing the Socialist Yugoslav Federation for 100 days in 1999; and in 2003 making war on Iraq, without UN support, based on a pack of lies, a war which killed hundreds of thousands, and provided the basis for the emergence of the ISIS movement.
Blair however did not stop with that. He disarmed Libya and welcomed Libya back to friendship with the West creating the conditions where the UK and France under Cameron and Sarkozy bombed the Islamists to power and murdered the Libyan leader Colonel Gadaffi.
Blair sickened millions of workers who decided that they would never vote Labour again, and lost Scotland completely for Labour. Now he is trying to return to trash the Brexit vote for the benefit of the EU bosses and bankers.
With Labour content to be a ‘government in waiting’ he is now trying to take the leadership of a large number of Labour right wing MPs and Tories to undo Brexit and stab the working class in the back once again.
The fact that he has been able to even attempt to take the initiative, after the damage that he has done to the UK and the working class of the world is shameful in itself. Labour must now get a grip on the situation. The Labour party leadership and the TUC must call a series of mass demonstrations and political strikes leading to a general strike to drive the Tories out of office and to bring in a workers’ government.
Such a government will not allow the EU bureaucrats to treat the UK workers like it treated the Greek workers and Syriza. The UK must quit the EU and nationalise the bosses and bankers in the UK, while joining hands with the workers of Europe to put an end to the EU of the bosses and bankers and replace it with the Socialist United States of Europe.