The News Line: Editorial
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
Tories face ‘historic defeat’ in elections – forward to kicking them out and bringing in a workers government
THE TORIES face a ‘historic defeat’ in Thursday’s local elections, with a top Tory polling expert predicting they are on course to lose over 800 out of their 4,682 seats.
Tory peer and poll analyst, Robert Haywood, placed the blame for this election wipe-out on May and her government’s failure to pass her Brexit deal. Haywood predicted an unusually low turnout because of ‘disenchantment’, not just with the Tories but with every major party.
Such is the panic in Tory circles, that leading Tory Brexiteer Boris Johnson yesterday made a desperate appeal to voters to put to one side their disgust at May and the Tory leadership over ‘our current dismal failure to leave the EU’, and instead back ‘hard-working Tory councillors’ and not punish them for knifing Brexit in the back.
The Tories weren’t the only ones to urge those voting in local elections to put aside their disgust and hatred of the chaos and splits in Parliament, and the coup carried out to try to overturn the 2016 binding referendum result to leave the EU.
Yesterday Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn added his voice to the plea for voters to vote on local issues and ignore the meltdown in Parliament. He wrote on Twitter: ‘The local elections on Thursday are your chance to elect Labour councillors who will stand up for your community.’
Corbyn is as desperate as the Tories to try to convince workers and the middle class to ignore the complete break up of his own party as the right-wing manoeuvre to ditch Brexit completely and ditch Corbyn along with it.
This was made clear by the right-wing deputy leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson who, over the weekend, stepped up his demand for a second vote on any Brexit deal to be included in the Labour Party’s election manifesto for the EU elections. Watson’s intervention comes ahead of a crunch meeting of Labour’s ruling NEC today to try to cobble together a manifesto for these elections.
Watson, who has already established a ‘party within a party’, launched an unprecedented attack on Corbyn in the press accusing him of being ‘mealy-mouthed’ about Brexit, in a clear move to organise right-wing Labour MPs to force through a second referendum and kick out Corbyn in the process.
At last year’s Labour Party conference the right-wing forced through the policy that if May’s deal was voted down in Parliament then there should be a general election, but if there was no general election then Labour ‘must support all options remaining’ including a second referendum.
Even this treacherous betrayal of the Labour manifesto – on which it fought the last general election and smashed the Tory majority – which pledged to honour the 2016 referendum result is not enough for Watson and the right-wing.
When May’s deal was defeated, Labour refused to fight for a general election. They were terrified that a Corbyn government would be elected, propelled into power by millions of workers and young people determined to see an end to capitalist austerity – imposed to keep the bosses and bankers from collapse – and determined to leave the EU Now, Watson and the right-wing are demanding a second referendum to ensure that Brexit is overturned completely.
Meanwhile, Corbyn is still engaged in talks with May to reach a deal with her to stay tied to the apron strings of the EU though a customs union – talks that are just about keeping her government staggering on. The working class must take action and intervene decisively to put an end to all this reactionary chaos and plotting. The EU elections must be boycotted and the full industrial and political strength of the working class used to bring down the discredited May government and go forward to a workers government.
A workers government will break with the EU and end austerity by expropriating the banks and major industries and placing them under workers’ management as part of a planned socialist economy. Socialist revolution in Britain will win the support of the working class of Europe who will enthusiastically join the fight to overthrow the EU and replace it with the United Socialist States of Europe.
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