Tuesday 16 January 2018

The real Brexit bombshell

Whoever ever thought PFI would work?

The decrepit British government's latest struggle is with the Carillion smash - another giant outsourcing junket that threatens jobs and pensions and more than a £ billion of taxpayers money. Among the list of Carillion scandals, as ministers poured more tax money into a collapsing, wealth-creation machine, it is easy to see the company as a metaphor for the whole government's course. And still the British people continue to experience the virtually self-confessed eight year disaster of its government's main policy of austerity - for all except the rich. They watch as the Tory/Ulster Democratic Party produces failure after failure. Social and political anger and contempt is regularly registered in polls as growing. But the particular origins of this insane idea, where government money, social infrastructure and key public services were all to be tied to the spinning lottery-wheel of private capital, belongs to Labour's long-serving Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. His Private Finance Initiative, PFI, launched the initial wave of 500 public/private 'arrangements' amounting to a bill for the public of £250 billion.

Carillion is just the latest.

Teresa May's Tory / Democratic Unionist Party government will be seen in the earliest history books as a calamity. From the latest collapse of the UK's ridiculous 'special relationship' with the US, to the Cabinet de-shuffle, to the National Health Service crisis, they appear to get nothing right. Undoubtedly, Britain is the major weakest link in western capitalism today and its traditional politics are in deep crisis. Only the dread and fear of Corbyn holds the hapless, factional, sack of cats that comprises May's government together. Corbyn calls for the reverse of May and of Brown's drastic PFI experiment, mixing social services with private profit. And the polls show that the British public overwhelmingly support him.

Danger looming

The government has generated a storm as a result of its domino failures. Some critical news in the last week has thereby not received the attention that it might. The turmoil of Tory led Brexit has blown up new political weather system on the horizon and not just one but now two ghosts from the past have loomed into view. Blair, Labour's general in the Iraq war, has already called for a new referendum over Brexit. Now ex United Kingdom Independence Party leader, Farage, has reconstituted himself, as the government's muddle over Brexit becomes more and more critical. He too wants another Brexit referendum. At the same time a legal lightening bolt has clarified how the Tory's broken down Brexit will certainly come to a bitter end by March 2019 (if the government has not already collapsed.)

Lawyers talk

The legal opinion of Lord (John) Kerr, the leading UK former diplomat who designed the part of the treaty that allows countries to withdraw from the EU, Article 50, stated that the UK retained its option of withdrawing its notice to leave the EU. He argued that May can rescind her 'Article 50' letter on withdrawing from the European Union at any time before 29 March 2019 – with the consequence that the UK would remain a member of the EU. No other member state would be able to stop the UK’s withdrawal of its Article 50 letter. And now three leading Queen's Councillors (top lawyers) have confirmed Kerr's view and sent their findings to the Prime Minister.

Implications for May

The point here is that there is no doubt Britain's Supreme Court would support the right of the option for a Parliamentary vote on a return to the EU if such an option was proposed by any party in Parliament. But the point is that this vote will inevitably emerge given that the Government has already stated that there will be a vote on the 'deal' before 29 March 2019. Up to now May has said the vote in Parliament will simply be a vote to accept the deal or a vote to leave the EU without a deal. Now it is guaranteed that the vote in Parliament would have a third option - to remain in the EU.

The party-political crisis of all crises

What would happen if Parliament voted on what would become the three options? The Liberal Democrats and the Scottish National Party would call for the Kerr option to be attached to the Parliamentary vote on the final deal and they would vote, under all conditions, to stay in the EU. Labour would face the choice of an anti-working class deal, no deal or remaining in the EU. In this context the 'retainers' in Parliament would be likely to hold the largest bloc of votes. It is certain therefore that May's government would call an early General Election. How early? As the disasters unfold, from Grenfell to Carillion, the pressure for an early General Election becomes irresistible.

And Corbyn's Labour Party?

At the moment Corbyn and the Labour Party have deliberately stepped back from giving priority to Brexit. Up to the end of 2017 it has been ten months since Corbyn posed a question about Brexit in the PM's question time slot. Instead he has laid down some principles, based on working class interests, designed to carry out the referendum. The Labour Party is opposed to another referendum on the EU. As the Tories become embroiled in their struggle for no EU tariffs on British exports but a closed shop on immigration and no legal sharing of conditions for trade, Labour will criticise Tory proposals that harm jobs or risk key benefits for the majority of the population. And it is virtually inevitable that Corbyn's Labour Party will reject the Tory version of Brexit. When the inevitable early General Election comes, Labour will fight the election on the new future needed for Britain and the Tories will fight it on the premise that they are the only Party that stands for any 'real' sort of Brexit.

And the consequences?

The Tories are in a disastrous position. Factional from top to bottom and incoherent throughout, they stagger through a succession of domestic disasters. Paradoxically it is only their association with Brexit that keeps them afloat. As March 2019 gets closer and the second fantasy, this time of an EU 'special relationship' with the UK dissolves in the mist so the Faragian spectre will loom larger for the Tory Trumpeteers as will the unavoidable need for a General Election as opposed to the frightening vote on May's EU deal in Parliament.

If there were a General Election before March 2019, despite the solid domestic ground Corbyn's Labour has made through its 2017 Manifesto, offering as it did real alternatives to the current shambles of British capitalism, it would be a serious mistake by Corbyn's Labour Party to step away from the EU issues. The weakness of the Tory's leverage in the EU becomes more and more apparent, so Labour has to begin to state its own policy on the EU and the major allies that it seeks across the Continent against austerity; the collective need to challenge racism and to resist the right wing upsurge in Europe that echoes the 1930s; how fair trade, with equal wage levels, going global, overturns so called 'free trade'; how common resources and mutual support opens a new chapter in Europe's relations with the Syrian, the North African and Central Asian peoples. Corbyn's new Labour Government can offer a new European Charter offering the alliances that can win equality.

Standing against Macron's vision of a puffed up, re-centralised, 'core' EU, Corbyn's Labour Party in government has to reject a turn backwards and offer European people instead, as with Britain, a new vision of a different society to the benefit of the many.

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