WHEN the leaders of the Coalition are forced to pledge publicly that it will go the distance and will not split apart, the writing is truly on the wall for them, and by implication for the bosses and bankers that stand behind them.
Yesterday, LibDem leader Nick Clegg said: ‘This coalition has been remarkably radical. It still has work to do.’ He added for good measure that he ‘could not envisage any circumstances’ in which there would be an early election.
David Cameron, his fingers badly singed by the EU crisis, and the gay marriage issue, when Miliband and Balls were forced to openly rescue him from the fury of his MPs, is insisting the coalition will stay together until the 2015 election, and that the government will focus exclusively on ‘big picture’ issues such as the economy from now on.
LibDem MPs and members are meanwhile smarting from the huge losses of votes that they suffered in recent elections, and more and more of them are arguing that since the going is going to get much rougher, the time has come to ditch the coalition and try to save themselves with a more people-friendly line.
However, it is not the stupidity of Cameron and Co in pushing the gay marriage issue in the parts of the Tory Party, in the shires, that are still semi-feudal in character and outlook, that is the cause of the trouble. It is the world crisis of capitalism that is ripping the Tory Party and all establishment parties apart, and shredding them.
The miscalculations of Cameron are not just very stupid mistakes of an inexperienced leader. They are the expression of the fact that the eruption of the greatest crisis ever of the capitalist system, has completed the job of destroying the power of British imperialism, which had earlier been greatly weakened in two world wars, which ended with the loss of their empire, leaving them to face a huge working class with very much diminished assets.
The Thatcher regime revealed all of this dilemma. She used the Falklands war and the vast North Sea oil wealth to plan, prepare and then execute a war to destroy the major trade unions, the NUM, and in alliance with Murdoch, the print unions.
These struggles in 1984-87 involved a colossal expenditure and the mobilisation of every branch of the state forces.
The period ended, not in victory for the bosses, but with Thatcher brought down by the masses when she sought to emulate the feudal monarchy of Richard II and bring in a poll tax.
She left Downing Street crying.
She also left a debilitating outlook, that manufacturing was bad, and led to big trade unions, and should be left to the Chinese – the banks were the future.
Their creative activities would make trillions, some of which, by the grace of god and the banking class, would trickle down to the poor in the service industries.
She never even asked the question as to what was to happen when the banks went bust, leaving the UK nude, without any assets.
Now we know. The EU has been broken along with the attempt of the bourgeoisie to unite Europe, while the UK has been completely bankrupted, leaving the ruling class just a shadow of what it was, distracted and disoriented in its desperate attempt to restore its position.
They are spinning like tops with no real gains to show from any of their policies except for mountains of corpses in Iraq, Libya and now Syria.
Their current programme, dictated by the crisis, is to go much further than Thatcher dared, and to restore the power of the ruling class through destroying the NHS, the Welfare State and all of the basic gains of the working class.
This has placed a weakened and disorientated ruling class in complete opposition to the masses of the population who will never surrender their basic gains.
This is the desperate situation that moved Miliband to rapidly move to the rescue earlier this week.
The working class must now take action to bring this coalition down with a general strike to bring in, not Miliband and Balls, but a workers’ government and socialism. This is the only way that the UK is going to go forward.