WHILE the Prime Minister is being hailed by the anti-EU section of the Tory Party as standing up for the UK like a genuine ‘British Bulldog’ – albeit without any teeth – his deputy PM and coalition partner, Clegg, the Liberal Democratic leader, declared that Cameron’s veto at the EU summit, to protect the City’s bankrupt banks that broke the back of the UK, was ‘spectacularly misguided’ and ‘potentially damaging for Britain as a whole’.
In fact, the UK is already massively damaged beyond repair. It is deep in debt. Its gross external debt, according to the World Bank and the IMF, three fifths of which is banking debt, is calculated to be four times its GDP, making some £5 trillion of debt.
The banks that the PM has taken ‘decisive action’ to defend against EU attempts at regulation are already broken.
It is a matter of record that Cameron was willing to sign up to the Merkel, Sarkozy treaty, designed to destroy the power of the EU’s parliaments, handing dictatorial powers over financial and industrial policy to non-elected bureaucrats, provided the treaty was willing to look after the interests of the City of London parasites.
They weren’t willing to prop up the City of London, so Cameron played the patriot card and ran back to London.
However, the UK’s workers and middle class have no great love for these broken but still predatory banks. This will be seen the next time that they require billions more of public money.
The fault lines in the coalition are now exposed, and it is clear that the coalition will be blown apart as the crisis of the European banks develops to explosion point.
As the crisis deepens, banks will fail all over Europe, including the UK, and the class struggle by the 99 per cent, who will be told that they must pay for this new crisis, will sharpen as they say ‘NO’ in words and deeds.
Therefore, it is not just a question of the UK being drummed out of the EU, and then standing alone, until it is proven to be right and then normal business will proceed.
The issue is that Europe is now the centre of the world crisis of capitalism and what is being proven by this crisis is that the capitalists of Europe are incapable of uniting it, since the only way that it can be united is by going beyond capitalism to socialism.
The reaction of the Miliband Labourites to the developing crisis is typically petty and narrow-minded.
It is that their policy must be directed to wooing Clegg and Cable to renew the coalition with Labour taking the place of the Tories with as many pro-EU Tories that can be mustered.
The job of any new coalition will be the same as the current coalition. It will be to make the working class pay for the crisis, but in a closer relationship with the bourgeoisie of the EU.
But it is the EU and world capitalism that are in their death agony.
The future of the working class of Europe, whether in the eurozone or outside it, must not be one of paying the costs of the crisis of European capitalism.
Its future rests with organising the socialist revolution throughout Europe.
Replacing Cameron-Clegg with a Miliband-Clegg-Clarke coalition will not bring any relief to the working class, the middle class and the poor of the UK. They will carry on paying for the crisis.
The way forward is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout Europe to organise the European socialist revolution.
In Britain, the working class must organise a general strike to bring down the coalition and any other crisis-ridden coalition that takes its place, in order to bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
The conduct of this struggle throughout Europe is in fact the struggle to replace the already bankrupt European Union with the socialist United States of Europe, where the bankers and bosses will be expropriated and a socialist planned economy will be organised to satisfy the needs of the people.
This is the only way forward for Europe, as part of the world socialist revolution.