THE TORY and Labour Party leaders, Johnson and Corbyn, revealed their feet of clay during their first general election debate on Tuesday night, when audience participation revealed an electorate that has little confidence in its would-be PMs.
Johnson came unstuck with a question that was asked by the debate host, Julie Etchingham ‘Does the truth matter in this election?’ When he replied, ‘Yes I think it does’, laughter broke out in the audience.
After all, Johnson is the PM that declared that he would rather ‘die in a ditch’ than write a letter to the EU requesting a postponement of the then EU leaving date from October 31 2019 to January 31, 2020. He said it was ‘do or die!’
His defiance was very short-lived. He wrote to a Scottish Court that he would never break the law, and indeed wrote an unsigned letter to the EU, and then accepted the postponement. At this point his political death began!
Previously he vowed to fight PM May’s ‘surrender deal’ to the bitter end, and then voted for it in the last parliamentary attempt to push it through.
He declared that May’s scheme to remain in a customs union was treason but has since then decided that Northern Ireland should remain in a customs union, with a customs border running down the Irish Sea.
He is hardly to be believed. He is not a politician to stake your all on. The audience knew this and laughed at his profession of the ‘importance of truth’ during a general election.
His fellow debater, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, revealed that he is the prisoner of his right wing and has been gagged by them.
He was asked nine times how he would vote in a second referendum and refused to answer the inquiry, declaring he wanted to bring the people together.
In fact, Corbyn is a prisoner of war of the right wing of the Labour Party. He is on a very short lead and has been banned from adopting the position of the 2017 Labour Party election manifesto, when the party agreed to support and implement the Brexit referendum result.
In fact, the majority of Labour MPs either abstained or voted against the motion that he put down for a general election. In the vote, passed by 438 to 20, 104 Labour MPs defied the Labour whip and abstained while 127 voted for.
On top of this, a further 11 Labour MPs, including leading right-wingers Margaret Becket, Ann Clwyd, David Lammy, Barry Sheerman and Owen Smith were amongst the 20 who voted against.
Owen Smith, who was the right-wing’s candidate to unseat Corbyn in the last leadership contest, promptly announced he would be standing down at the next general election.
Amongst those abstaining were prominent Labour right-wingers including Harriet Harman and Margaret Hodge – the MP notorious for her concerted campaign to smash up Labour with smears of anti-Semitism.
These are the forces that have put the handcuffs on Corbyn, placed a gag over his mouth to the point where he was humiliated on this issue at this debate.
Corbyn’s degeneration has now reached the point where he has refused to deny that in the latter stages of a Labour government, supported by the Scottish Nationalists, he would agree to a second Scottish independence referendum.
However, the millions of working people that are watching this situation are getting angrier and angrier at the way that the Labour Party is being turned into its opposite by its right wing, who are now prepared to put up with Corbyn till the election is over.
The WRP calls to vote Labour along with millions of workers in a class vote to dump the Johnson-led Tory government.
We also call for the workers to prepare for a general strike action, after the election, to force Brexit through and to establish socialism in the UK by nationalising the banks and the major industries under workers management. Then the four-day week will be a moderate and entirely attainable demand.
As also will be an appeal to the workers of Europe to dump the EU, overthrow the Brussels bureaucracy and establish the Socialist United States of Europe, in which the UK working class would be delighted to participate.
