THURSDAY’S by-election in Clacton, caused by the defection to UKIP of the sitting Tory MP, Douglas Carswell, saw the Tory party completely routed.
Carswell won by 21,113 votes (59.66%) to the Tory’s 8,709 (24.6%) on a 51.2% turnout, with Labour coming third with 3,957 votes, while the LibDems lost their deposit again.
Completely split from top to bottom by the impact of the crisis, this result will inevitably see droves of Tory MPs seeking to save their political careers by jumping the sinking ship and joining UKIP.
Already, they face another by-election shortly, caused by the defection of Tory MP Mark Reckless on the eve of the recent Tory party conference.
Nigel Farage, UKIP leader, is now calling on Tory MPs to join these two but not to resign their seats forcing elections but to continue just changing their allegiances in the Commons to UKIP.
The splits in the Tory ranks and the rise of UKIP result from the huge economic crisis of capitalism and the devastating effect it is having on a weak British capitalist system.
With no industry and completely reliant on a banking system that was smashed beyond repair in the 2008 international banking collapse, the capitalist class is irreparably torn between those who believe that they can only survive by staying in the economic catastrophe of the EU as a vassal of Germany and those who cannot stomach the thought and want to leave the EU whatever the cost.
This is the crisis tearing the Tories apart. The other by-election on the same day took place in the Greater Manchester constituency of Heywood and Middleton caused by the death of the sitting Labour MP.
In this Labour stronghold, UKIP came within 617 votes of defeating the Labour candidate on a much-reduced turnout of 36%.
The closeness of the vote has caused the bourgeois press to declare that the working class vote had collapsed in much the same way as the Tories in Clacton – however there was a significant difference.
Labour in this election saw its number of votes fall but it actually increased their share of the vote, albeit by a mere 1% on the lower turnout.
Despite the treachery of the Labour Party, which pledged at its conference to take all the ‘hard decisions’ needed to rescue the banks and capitalism and carry on with all the Tories’ austerity cuts, workers did not defect to the right-wing populists of UKIP, instead they either voted Labour reluctantly or abstained.
This was a class vote that does not disguise the fact that the working class despise and distrust the leadership of the Labour Party that has betrayed them at every turn.
A betrayal mirrored by the reformist leadership of the trade unions.
At a time when the coalition parties are being torn apart, these leaders, instead of taking on the enemy that has vowed to destroy every gain made by the working class, choose to throw in the towel.
The three days of strike action by 1.5 million workers due next week over the public sector pay freeze has been abandoned at the last minute by the leaders of Unite, GMB and Unison.
The rail workers’ union (RMT) has also suspended a tube strike on Monday called to coincide with this action claiming ‘significant movement’ by the bosses, a claim denied by London Underground.
This has left NHS and civil service workers alone in strike action next week.
These leaders have no intention of leading any action to defend their members and the gains of the working class.
Under pressure from their members, they are forced to call limited strike action only to call it off at the last moment at all costs trying to exhaust the militancy of workers and divert them from the central issue of a general strike.
The only way forward for workers is precisely in organising a general strike to kick out this collapsing Tory coalition and replace it with a workers government and socialism.
This requires removing this reformist leadership and replacing it with a new revolutionary leadership – that is the leadership of the Workers Revolutionary Party.
