A Windsor Knot

Rishi Sunak may not have achieved much during his tenure in No 10 over the past five months. But the “Windsor Agreement” that resolved the long-standing dispute over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit relations with the European Union was no mean achievement for the Tory leader who had to ride rough-shod over the protests from his Unionist allies in the north of Ireland and amongst his own back-benchers.
    The agreement was given a diplomatic and highly symbolic blessing by King Charles and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, over tea at Windsor Castle last week. But the donkey work was done by Sunak’s team, who together with their Irish and Brussels counterparts, managed to settle the dispute over the movement of goods between the European Single Market and the United Kingdom to the satisfaction of all the players with the exception of the northern Irish bigots and Boris Johnson.
    Johnson, who clearly hoped to exploit the issue to pave the way for his political come-back, predictably says he cannot support this new Brexit deal. The Democratic Unionists are equally sceptical claiming the new agreement may undermine Northern Ireland’s status as part of the United Kingdom. But Sinn Féin Vice-President Michelle O'Neill said "I rarely find myself agreeing with a British prime minister but access to both markets has to be grabbed with both hands".
    The Irish government, the rest of the European Union and the majority on both sides of the House of Commons have welcomed the Windsor Framework. More importantly, as far as the British ruling class is concerned, so has the White House.
    The Remainers are, naturally, hoping that this will create a new and favourable climate to greater co-operation with the European Union. Regardless of who wins the next general election they’re working in their think-tanks and their less than secret conferences for some sort of associate status with the EU that would create the climate for a second referendum and a return to full membership of the Brussels club.
    They say Brexit isn’t working but that’s not true. There have been problems but these were almost entirely due to the short-sighted policy of the Johnson government that placed all its bets on replacing the Treaty of Rome with a “Treaty of Washington” that would create a colossal trans-Atlantic free trade area. It was a pipe-dream that depended entirely on Donald Trump getting re-elected. And we all know what happened next.
    What Johnson should have done – and what Sunak should do now is to reach free trade agreements with our other major trading partners – like China – and ending the sanctions regime against Russia which had pushed energy prices to breaking point. There is an alternative to slavishly imposing sanctions at the behest of the Americans. Sunak could pursue an independent economic policy to revive the ailing British economy. We could return to the “golden era” of trade with China that existed when David Cameron was at the helm. We could access cheap gas from Russia if we stopped supporting the American sanctions regime.
    But Sunak won’t. Neither will Starmer. The bourgeois consensus that all the leaders of the mainstream parties reflect is that British imperialism’s future can only be guaranteed by American might – and that can only be secured by doing America’s bidding.
    It may work for them but it doesn’t work for us. Socialism is the only answer to the crisis and we have to put it back on the working class agenda now!