EVEN before Theresa May stood up to deliver her statement yesterday on the Brexit deal, she had agreed with the EU her government was collapsing around her ears, with the resignations of Dominic Raab her chief Brexit negotiator, and Works and Pensions minister Esther McVey.
Raab resigned from the cabinet saying that he couldn’t support the deal which he himself had negotiated claiming the EU has been ‘blackmailing’ the UK. With up to 11 further resignations from the cabinet expected and the Tories torn apart, May’s position as prime minister is as dead in the water as her deal.
Despite her efforts May could not hide the fact that this so-called interim agreement, which she claimed would only operate until 2020, contained a clause that meant it will be extended indefinitely unless the EU agree otherwise – so keeping Britain tied indefinitely to the single market and customs union.
EU laws will dominate with the UK government having no vote or say in their implementation, and for this privilege of becoming a vassal state, Britain will pay £39 billion to the EU bosses and bankers with the promise of more to come. The uproar over this deal was unprecedented as Tory MPs rose one after another to denounce it as ‘selling the country’s sovereignty’ to Brussels.
With Tory MPs lining up to demand that the deal be thrown out they were joined by Labour, SNP and DUP MPs. Against this massive opposition there is no chance of this draft agreement being passed by parliament and no chance that May can survive as Tory leader.
During the debate the leading Tory Brexit campaigner Jacob Rees-Mogg pointedly asked May if he should write a letter to the chairman of the Tory backbench 1922 committee – these are the letters calling for a no confidence vote in her as party leader, and it is believed more than the 48 letters required to trigger a leadership challenge have been sent already. With May and her EU-dictated deal completely destroyed it leaves the issue of who will replace her?
This is a desperate crisis for the ruling class. The issue is who can step in and ensure that a weak British capitalist system stays tied hand and foot to the EU. Yesterday, a clear strategy emerged in the speeches by Tory and Labour MPs – the demand for a second referendum to completely overturn the result of the 2016 vote to leave, and the call for a government of national unity to take over from a discredited and broken Tory government to try to carry out this counter-revolution.
A reactionary national government will work for the ‘national interest’, in other words for the interest of the bankers and industrialists against the interests of the working class of Britain and Europe. The ruling class is caught in a vicious dilemma; if it leaves the EU, despite the fact that it is in a state of economic collapse, British capitalism will be all the weaker in the face of working class anger.
However, by attempting to overturn the referendum result it will face the full anger of a working class that hates the austerity imposed by the bankers as much as it hates the EU, which has imposed austerity across the continent. The ruling class are looking to bring together the right wing of the Labour Party in alliance with the Tories to betray the working class and keep it enslaved by the bankers and capitalists of Europe.
In fact, the working class precipitated this political crisis when it defied its own leaders in the trade unions and Labour Party by voting to leave the EU over two years ago.
Today the working class alone can resolve this historic crisis by taking action, strikes and mass demonstrations across the country to bring down this rotten Tory government and bring in a workers government that will immediately break with the EU.
A workers government will expropriate the capitalist class by nationalising the banks and industry placing them under workers’ management and control.
A workers government in Britain will be a beacon to the working class of Europe to carry out socialist revolutions throughout the continent to put an end to the bosses and bankers of the European Union and replace it with the United Socialist States of Europe.
