THE TORY government suffered two defeats in Parliament on Wednesday after the £1 billion bribe paid out by Theresa May to the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to keep her minority government in office, turned out to be inadequate for the task.
The DUP refused to support the Tories on two motions before the House of Commons from the Labour Party which called for an increase in pay for NHS workers and for a halt to increasing tuition fees for students.
What happened when these motions were heard turned into complete farce, a farce that exposed not just the terminal weakness of the Tory government but the absolute spinelessness of Corbyn and the Labour Party leadership, who are openly propping May up and by doing so are collaborating in the Tory war against workers and youth.
In fact, it went beyond farce – when it came to the speaker calling for those who supported Labour’s motion to shout ‘aye’ and those against to shout ‘nay’, every single Tory MP remained silent.
Under the arcane rules of Parliament this meant the motions were carried without opposition and therefore did not require a physical vote, a vote that would have exposed the fact that the Tory government has no majority, only staying in power because Labour refuses to bring it down.
Passing these motions that completely reverse the Tory policy on NHS pay and tuition fees resulted in absolutely nothing. There was no demand from Labour that the Tories resign just Corbyn claiming a ‘moral victory’. However, if you are hungry you can’t eat a moral victory.
Corbyn completely accepted the decision by the Tories that this vote was non-binding on Parliament. A non-binding vote is merely a vote expressing an opinion about something that Parliament cannot in practice influence; it is usually just an expression of moral outrage.
By accepting the Tory position that these defeats of the government were merely an expression of disapproval for their wage cuts and tuition fee increases Corbyn and the Labour leadership have delivered a massive and treacherous stab in the back to NHS workers, youth and the entire working class.
The Tories are tearing up the facade of bourgeois parliamentary democracy in order to cling on to power and carry on with their attacks on workers. This assault on democracy is being extended to the referendum vote to leave the EU itself, with Labour’s right-wing MPs saying that this vote is equally ‘non-binding’ and must be reversed by Parliamentary decree.
Of course these Labour right-wingers have made their move already to orchestrate a coup within Labour’s ruling National Executive to dump the Labour Manifesto policy of Brexit in favour of staying within the single market indefinitely, in other words staying in the capitalist EU forever.
They have made Corbyn their prisoner, nothing more than a left-talking front for the right wing who have absolutely no intention of bringing down the Tories. They prefer to keep May in power and let her take the flak of Brexit negotiations with the intention of stepping in with some coalition with pro-Remain Tories that they hope will form a government of ‘national salvation’ to rescue a bankrupt British capitalist system.
Corbyn’s speech to the TUC annual conference on Tuesday showed just how far he has become a creature of the right-wing. There was no call to bring down the Tories, just the usual litany about ‘uncaring’ Tories and the plight of workers driven into poverty by wage cuts.
Workers don’t need Corbyn to tell them about how they have suffered under the Tories. They don’t want ‘moral victories’ over May, what they are demanding is an end to this Tory government, an end to austerity where the bosses and bankers grow fat while workers are forced to rely on food banks and go hungry.
While Corbyn deliberately never once used the word socialism, only socialism can provide a future for workers and youth today. With Corbyn refusing to fight the Tories, the trade union leaders must be forced to act to end the Parliamentary farce by calling a political general strike to bring down the Tories and advance to a workers’ republic and government that will expropriate the bosses and banks, immediately break with the capitalist EU and join with the working class of Europe in the fight for the United Socialist States of Europe.