The News Line: Editorial
Saturday, 4 May 2019
Tories & Labour are punished in council elections for refusing to carry out Brexit!
BOTH the Tories and Labour suffered huge defeats in the council elections yesterday for their cowardly refusal to implement the 2016 EU referendum result.
Polls took place in 248 English councils, six mayors and all 11 councils in the north of Ireland. The Tories had lost as many as 450 seats and 18 English councils by yesterday lunchtime with results still coming in. Labour lost over 85 seats and control of two councils.
The electorate showed what they think of Labour’s betrayal of the EU referendum vote and the Tories complete refusal to carry it out. And these Labour losses come at a time when the Tories are the most hated party in history. They are a party on their knees, split from top to bottom, leaderless and in total disarray.
In this situation, Labour did not make gains. In fact, it made serious losses in some of its heartland constituencies. Labour can’t take advantage of the Tories’ crisis because they are part of the Brexit betrayal!
In their 2017 election manifesto, they promised to ‘respect the result of the EU referendum’. This they junked, in favour of calling for permanent membership of a Customs Union and close alignment with the Single Market.
They then went even further to the right by openly calling for a second referendum, with Labour’s right wing developing its killer blow, demanding a second referendum even if parliament voted to accept an EU deal.
Because of this betrayal, Labour now faces the threat of a second SDP moment. To try and get their way to remain in the EU, Watson and Co. will threaten to break with Labour, and split the party to form a common front with the LibDems, as their predecessors the ‘Gang of Four’ did in 1981 with the SDP, when they helped Margaret Thatcher stay in power to make war on the miners.
The trade unions must now take action to defend the basic democratic rights of the UK working class and middle class, specifically their right to decide to ‘Leave’. The unions must purge the discredited TUC leadership and call a general strike to bring down the completely discredited Tories, to take Britain out of the EU.
Further, they must bring in a workers’ government that will carry on from where the referendum left off, by expropriating the bosses and the bankers and bringing in a socialist planned economy that will defend the basic rights, and fulfil the basic needs of the UK working class.
Such a move will be welcomed in the UK and all over the EU, where workers are already taking action against the EU governments to bring down the EU and go forward to a socialist Europe. The UK trade unions must now take the lead in the fight for Brexit. Otherwise, an all-party group of political rats will seize the political initiative and the moment to force the UK population to accept remaining in the EU under the most humiliating conditions possible.
A party combined of all these rats together will seek to complete the job and scupper Brexit, revoking article 50 and remaining in the EU. The time for the trade unions and millions of workers to act is now! What has begun as a tragedy, Labour being hit hard with the loss of more than 85 councillors, will be continued with UK politicians standing in the EU elections to become the representatives of the very institution that 17.4 million workers and middle class people directed them to leave.
The working class has had enough of all of this. They are demanding their trade unions take action and they must, before a right-wing national government is formed, operating as a dictatorship, not to express the will of the people but to dictate the will of the European bankers and bosses. This crisis-ridden government must be brought down now, through mass action and a general strike by the entire working class.
The working class must rapidly build up the alternative revolutionary leadership of the WRP and the Young Socialists to lead a socialist revolution to implement the 2016 referendum decision, and then to join hands with the workers of the EU to go forward to the Socialist United States of Europe. This is the only way forward!
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