NEARLY one year ago the Tories under Boris Johnson won a resounding victory in the general election winning a massive 80-seat majority in the Commons.
Johnson and the Tories emerged triumphant from the general election last December, but today that triumphant Johnson government is nothing more than a political wreckage torn apart by infighting.
This was brought into the open on Wednesday over the seemingly inconsequential resignation of one of Johnson’s top aides.
The departure of Lee Cain, a man unknown outside the small circle of Tory politicians, has caused a complete meltdown at the heart of Johnson’s government.
Cain, who was the press officer for the Vote Leave campaign under Dominic Cummings, was brought in by Johnson as his director of communications. As one of his closest advisors, Johnson wanted to promote Cain to become his chief of staff.
This provoked outrage amongst Tory MPs who saw Cain as nothing more than a puppet of Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief advisor. Cummings himself is hated by many Tory MPs who view him as Johnson’s evil puppet master, a man who is open in his contempt for all MPs especially Tories.
According to Tory insiders this promotion also ran up against the objections of Johnson’s fiancée Carrie Symonds who put her foot down. Symonds is now being talked of as the real power behind the throne, while Cummings has been seen as a modern day Rasputin pulling the strings of Johnson.
Johnson obeyed Symonds and withdrew the offer prompting Cain to flounce off and Cummings to threaten to resign as Johnson’s chief ‘advisor’ – a threat he has apparently withdrawn.
A senior Tory MP told the Evening Standard Johnson must now sack Cummings saying: ‘If they have got rid of one of the Kray brothers, they have to get rid of Cummings as well,’ adding, Johnson ‘should take back control’. This stark admission that Johnson is not in control of his government reflects the splits tearing the Tories apart.
It came out in the news that in the week when the country recorded over 50,000 deaths from Covid-19 at least 70 Tory MPs have joined a rebel group to oppose any further extension of lockdown and are preparing to dump Johnson who is seen as weak over the question of flinging the economy open and letting Covid-19 go unchecked.
The political crisis engulfing the Tory government is itself a reflection of the massive economic crisis swamping British capitalism.
The degeneration of the Tory Party and of the entire political order of capitalism is being driven by the disintegration of British capitalism drowning in unprecedented national debt of over £2.2 trillion – debt that can only be repaid by driving the working class into the gutter of mass unemployment and wage-cutting starvation.
The Tory government is more and more resembling the last days of the Romanovs in 1917 Russia, complete with their own Rasputin and a consort acting as a power behind the throne.
With the old political order collapsing the ruling class are preparing to ditch Parliament as the means of rule and turn to the forces of the state, the police and military, to maintain its rule and impose the economic crisis on the backs of the working class through force.
This was behind the recent granting of immunity for any crimes committed by state forces, including murder, in ‘the interests of the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom’.
In Russia, in February 1917, the Tsarist monarchy collapsed following an uprising of workers against food shortages. At the time there was no revolutionary party in Russia prepared to lead the working class in seizing power immediately.
It was only when Lenin returned in April that year and built the Bolshevik Party into the leadership of the working class that the first successful socialist revolution in history could be achieved in October 1917.
The lesson for the working class today is that there is not a moment to lose in grasping the revolutionary situation that is destroying the Tory Party and tearing capitalism apart by immediately building the WRP to lead the working class forward by seizing power, smashing this degenerating capitalist system and replacing it with socialism.
