TORY PM May’s crisis over her Brexit deal, which is a complete capitulation to the EU, is reaching explosion point. She was the one who consistently repeated ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’. The only thing all parties, Brexiteers and Remainers, are in agreement on is that May’s deal is the bad deal.
The vote on her deal is scheduled for this coming Tuesday. The Brexiteers in her party say they will not vote for it because of the ‘backstop’ keeping the UK in the Customs Union and Single Market ‘indefinitely’.
The Remainers won’t vote for it because they want to create conditions to push for a second referendum and attempt to undo Brexit, while the more foolhardy are calling for an open coup by parliament against the British people, by the removal of Article 50 through which Parliament decided that Britain is leaving the EU on March 29.
The Labour Party says that Labour MPs are not voting for May’s deal because they want a complete capitulation to the EU. May is on her knees but Labour wants to get down lower – onto its belly. Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell said on Thursday that Labour will vote down May’s Brexit deal, will not accept no deal, but instead propose a deal with exactly the same relationship between the EU and the UK as now, in other words ‘Remain’.
Graham Brady, the chair of the Tories 1922 Committee, which runs the Conservative Party, has issued his own warning. Brady said: ‘If we were to enter the so-called “backstop arrangement” it is possible that the EU would keep us in that arrangement indefinitely even if we wanted to leave it.’ On delaying Tuesday’s vote, he said: ‘I don’t think that there is any point in ploughing ahead and losing the vote heavily.’
May may well do what Brady wants. However, a postponement of the vote will only create the conditions for an even bigger crisis. This crisis will erupt as the working class decides that it will not let the gangs of renegade politicians destroy their Brexit, and will halt their sabotage by adopting ‘French Tactics’, with mass strike actions backed by marches on Parliament to explain to MPs that they are the servants of the people, not their masters.
Parliament decided to let the people decide in the 2016 referendum whether the UK should remain or leave the EU. Workers decided to leave. It is time that the working class reminds MPs that ‘Leave means Leave’ and that if they will not ‘leave’ the masses of the workers will close Parliament down, and form a workers National Council of Action to make sure that the UK quits the EU.
In fact, workers will be following a good old British tradition, last seen in the period when Oliver Cromwell, whose statue is just outside Parliament, purged parliaments and shut down the House of Lords in the 17th century when the parliament tried to give up the struggle against the feudal Charles I.
When the ‘Remainers’ say that the working class is too stupid to decide these things and that this is why ‘we need a second referendum’ to annul the decision of the 2016 referendum, they are tempting fate in the same way that the Lords and Commons did in the 1640s when the Lords were abolished and the Commons were repeatedly purged.
Senior Tory Cabinet Minister Liam Fox said there is a risk MPs will ‘steal Brexit from the British people’ if May’s deal is rejected. In other words, it’s her deal or no Brexit.
This is where he is wrong. The working class is the most powerful class in society, and now it is getting angrier and angrier at the attempts that are being made to ‘steal’ its referendum, and is admiring the audacity and tactics of its French brothers and sisters with a view to emulation.
May treats Parliament with contempt and Parliament passes on the same treatment to the working class. They are playing with fire. Workers must follow the French example to push their referendum result through. They must mobilise their trade unions to march on Parliament to make it plain that they are the masters.
The referendum result must be carried out. The UK must break with the EU now. Then the masses will deal with the bosses by nationalising their businesses and bringing in socialism. This example will spread all over Europe like wildfire!
