Boris sinks deeper

Boris Johnson sinks deeper and deeper into the Remainer trap that was set for him as soon as he stepped into Downing Street with his crackpot plan to by-pass Parliament and push through Brexit by the end of October. The Supreme Court and the “Rebel Alliance” that has united virtually all the opposition in the House of Commons, including the Tory grandees who sided against the Brexiteers, has thwarted every one of Johnson’s schemes.

            Johnson’s Tories are now a minority in the Commons. If the Labour opposition could combine with the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, the Tory rebels and the other ‘independents’ they would now have a 40-plus majority in parliament. A united opposition could easily defeat any new “no-deal” proposal with support that is clearly enough to form the “Government of National Unity” that the Remainers believe can replace the Johnson government without a general election. Whether the Remainers can agree on who is going to lead this “government of all talents” is another matter altogether. Johnson clearly thinks they can’t and he may well be proved right.

  Under the new five-year fixed term parliament rules the leader of the opposition gets first crack at forming an administration if the Government loses a confidence vote in parliament. That leader is Jeremy Corbyn and his aides say that Labour won’t move to oust Johnson unless Corbyn is guaranteed the top job. But Jo Swinson, the Liberal-Democrat leader says that her Liberal-Democrats will not accept Jeremy Corbyn as national leader, claiming he cannot command the support of the majority of his own parliamentary party – which may or may not be true.

            Ms Swinson has put others forward, including former Tory Chancellor Ken Clarke, the veteran Europhile who has already said he would serve under Corbyn to stop a no-deal Brexit. But Johnson, who is Prime Minister, can justifiably argue that if the Leader of the Opposition cannot form a government the only alternative, under existing rules, is to call a snap election – which is what Johnson wants.

            It’s what we want as well. Some Labour supporters have been taken in by the false promise of a Corbyn-led “national government” because they believe that the European Union can be reformed and all the other nonsense coming from the social-democratic sell-outs in the rest of the EU.

This “national” government would not be led by Labour and it certainly wouldn’t be “national”. Jeremy Corbyn would simply be the figure-head leading a Remainer government that would exist solely to reverse the historic 2016 referendum result and keep us within the European Union forever.

We don’t want the bogus ‘people’s vote’. We want a people’s government that will restore the national health service and the rest of the ‘welfare state’ that existed until the Tories destroyed it in the Thatcher era.

A snap election will give workers a chance to kick the Tories out and sweep Labour back into power. Labour can win if it pledges to honour the Brexit vote and mobilises the mass support that swept Corbyn to the helm of the party in the first place. Only Labour can end austerity and empower the unions to raise the standard of living of every worker across the country. Let’s make sure it does.