THE CRISIS-ridden Tory leadership has launched its campaign to elect a new leader to replace the shattered May, who betrayed Brexit and then piloted the Tory Party into the European elections disaster!
Only three of the 10 candidates for the Tory leadership have declared that, if elected leader, they will see to it that the UK leaves the EU on October 31.
They are Boris Johnson, who has tried to ease his way to the Premiership by keeping as quiet as possible, limiting himself to pledging tax cuts for the rich as the key to winning the leadership election.
In fact, Johnson started off by being a ‘Leaver’ on ‘no deal terms if necessary’, but then, in the last vote on May’s Withdrawal Agreement with the EU, voted with the now completely discredited leader.
He now figures that the less he says the better, leaving Dominic Raab and Esther McVey the only openly declared ‘Leavers’ in this Tory election, so far.
The co-leader of the 2016 ‘Leave’ campaign, Gove, has discarded any notion that he is set to lead the UK out of the the EU on October 31 if he becomes Tory leader. He is running scared of the constitutional crisis that is set to explode on that date.
After his speech announcing his candidature, Gove said: ‘There are some other candidates in this race including the person whom I am told is the front runner (Boris Johnson) who have said that if it were the case that we had made a bit of progress, and were on the cusp of a deal but we hadn’t dotted every I and crossed every T by midnight on October 31st, that they would junk all that progress that had been made and immediately say “let’s leave without a deal”.
‘We all know what would happen then, there would be a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, which the government would lose, there would be a general election, and we would have Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street by Christmas – someone dedicated to breaking up our United Knigdom, to ensuring that there was no Brexit and to destroying this country’s economy.
‘So yes, I would be willing to delay, for a day, or a week, or whatever was required, to get that deal over the line.’ He is falling in line behind Speaker Bercow who has said that ending the current session of Parliament to force through a no-deal Brexit to quit the EU on October 31 is ‘simply not going to happen’.
Every parliamentary session is ended when it is ‘prorogued’ by the Queen. It is technically at the Queen’s ‘command’ but such a request to the monarch, made by the government to get the UK out of the EU, would be opposed tooth and nail by ‘Remain’ MPs of all parties.
Tory Work and Pensions secretary Amber Rudd has condemned the proposal, saying: ‘I think it’s outrageous to consider proroguing Parliament. We are not Stuart kings.’
International Development Secretary Rory Stewart called the suggestion ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘undemocratic’ adding: ‘It wouldn’t work,’ while Labour’s Chris Bryant said it would be on ‘a Venezuelan scale of outrage’.
Meanwhile, as the Tory crisis deepens over leaving on October 31, and with it the prospect of a crisis general election, Labour’s right wing are not calling for a ‘Corbyn government by Christmas’. In fact they are stepping up their campaign to remove Corbyn.
They are just as much opposed to a Corbyn ‘Left’ Labour government as are the Tories! Currently they are seeking to ‘curb Corbyn’ by disciplining the Labour winner of the recent Peterborough by-election, making it clear that there is only one force in the UK that is more opposed to a Corbyn government than the Tory Party – and that force is Labour’s right wing.
During a ‘heated’ meeting in Parliament, Labour’s right wing called for the victor of the Peterborough by-election, Lisa Forbes, who took her seat in Parliament on Monday, to have the whip suspended. While Corbyn thanked all those MPs who contributed to Labour’s successful campaign in Peterborough, he was accused of ‘allowing institutional anti-Jewish racism on your watch’.
The working class and the trade unions must now intervene in this crisis. The trade unions must call a general strike on October 31 to propel the UK out of the EU and put the UK on the road to socialism by bringing in a workers government.
