The road to Brussels

The Remainers are on the march. The newly ennobled Lord Cameron is back in the saddle as No 3 in the Sunak government and while his first overseas visits were predictably to Ukraine and Israel, his major task is to rebuild economic and diplomatic bridges with the European Union.
    Rishi Sunak has made it clear that he’s not going to do anything to rock the Brexit boat in the run-up to the next election. But the return of David Cameron to the Foreign Office is more than a sop to the Remainers in his ranks. It’s a victory for those sections of the ruling class that want Britain back in the UK and it can only help build their block in Parliament. The Scottish nationalists and the Liberal-Democrats are long-time Returners. So are most Labour MPs. The next strep for the Remainers is to move for the return of the prominenti kicked out by Boris Johnson in 2019 when they tried to stop the no-deal Brexit. This will then, they hope, create enough cross-party support for a second-referendum in the near future regardless of who’s in power at the time.
    The Tory Brexiteers are rudderless. Their self-appointed parliamentary leader was Boris Johnson – now seen for the fool he always was. Their real leader was, of course, Nigel Farage who has abandoned politics for the more lucrative shores of reality TV. Johnson reduced the Eurosceptic argument to a crude choice between the Treaty of Rome and a Treaty of Washington which was a figment of his imagination. Now all these Brexiteers have got left is planes to Rwanda, racism and anti-immigrant hysteria.
    But the European Union isn’t a benevolent society. It’s a fraud, an institution designed solely for the benefit of the oppressors and exploiters. What few benefits the EU has brought, such as increased trade and open borders, could all have been achieved through separate agreements and treaties.
Johnson had a golden opportunity to make Brexit work. He squandered it with all this nonsense about a deal with Donald Trump that was never going to happen. But it still can work if the UK takes Brexit seriously and open its doors to free trade with China and the rest of the world.

The Covid enquiry

The nonsense about “herd immunity”; the callous and incompetent response to the pandemic that led to many avoidable deaths amongst the frail and the elderly and the indifference of a Prime Minister who most of them time seemingly let Dominic Cummings, his Rasputin-like aide, steer the ship of state. It’s all coming out in the Covid inquiry. None of this should surprise us. Johnson’s despicable conduct, and that of his henchmen showed how totally unfit all of them were for high office.
    Johnson counts for nothing in the political arena now. Crawling to the Trump crowd in the United States and grand-standing amongst the Ukrainians is all that Johnson’s got left these days. Johnson is fortunately gone. Sunak will, hopefully soon follow.
    Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, may have jumped the gun when she claimed the UK could be on the path to rejoining the European Union last week. But she clearly reflects the thinking of the European old guard that want to see Britain speedily returning to the European fold.

Health is not a commodity!

Secret plans to withdraw hospital care from the over-70s in the case of a catastrophic pandemic have come out this week. According to revelations in the mainstream media elderly people would be denied treatment to prevent the hospitals from being overwhelmed during a health crisis. Instead they would be placed on an “end of life pathway” reminiscent of the euphemisms used by the death doctors of the Third Reich to justify the “mercy killing” of those the Nazis deemed unfit to live.
     The strategy, drawn up in 2017 and 2018, reportedly stipulated that in a “severe” flu pandemic, the health secretary could authorise medics to prioritise some patients over others with people in nursing homes offered “end of life pathways” instead of medical assistance. Under the plan, the triaging process would be based on patients' “probability of survival” rather than clinical need.
    The Government says the proposals related to “hypothetical scenarios” and claim they were never adopted as official policy. But Age UK charity director Caroline Abrahams claims that Britain had come “perilously close” to an approach of this sort at the height of the pandemic last year.
    The Johnson government was slow to take action from the very start clearly embracing the crackpot do-nothing “herd immunity” theory that was followed by the Trump administration in the USA and the Bolsonaro regime in Brazil with disastrous consequences for millions of people left defenceless against the coronavirus plague. Though the Government did eventually yield to scientific pressure to bring in the national lockdowns that curbed the plague before the vaccines were developed some 42,000 elderly people died from Covid in care homes -- largely spread by infected arrivals discharged from hospitals to free up beds,
    Dominic Cummings maintains it is “complete nonsense” to say that the government “put a shield around care homes”. According to Johnson’s embittered former guru “the opposite happened” as the NHS “sent people with Covid back to care homes”.
    There’s going to be an independent public inquiry into the government's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. But it’s not going to start its proceedings until the spring of next year. We can’t wait that long.
    Jeremy Corbyn, the former Labour leader, called for a people’s inquiry into Covid. It’s already begun with the Keep Our NHS Public campaign.
    Chaired by the human rights lawyer Michael Mansfield QC, the people’s inquiry has held nine sessions gathering evidence from expert witnesses, key workers, patients, and bereaved people. The People’s Covid Inquiry has recently published interim recommendations and it is expected to publish its final report and recommendations in the autumn.
    In the meantime it has concluded that the delay in recognising the gravity of the situation was caused by a failure of leadership and the deaths of 150,000 people, most of whom died needlessly, have been the result of incompetence. Timings of lockdowns and failure to put in place travel restrictions and quarantine contributed significantly to accelerating the spread of Covid.
    We want a health service that is free at the point of need. The service and the morale of its workers must be reinstated to the full, to guarantee the sick, young and elderly, receive the treatment and service needed, including dental, fully supported by our tax system and at no extra cost to the patients and their families. It is the workers who create the wealth by their toil and provide the funding in the form of taxes, not the bourgeoisie, who live off the backs of the workers. We will continue to fight to save our services.
    A national health service, delivered free to all at the time of need, is an essential requirement if people are to play an active part in society. The capitalists view health as a commodity. We do not.

Another Tory bites the dust

 Health Secretary Matt Hancock has fallen on his sword after an angry backlash over his breach of COVID‑19 rules hit the headlines last week.
    When the media front-paged the footage of him kissing his mistress Gina Coladangelo at the Department of Health’s HQ in blatant breach of the COVID‑19 rules no-one could save him – not even Boris Johnson who, according to Dominic Cummings, had privately said that Hancock’s handling of the coronavirus crisis was “totally fucking hopeless”.
    Johnson’s bitter former guru now says that Hancock lied about COVID‑19-testing people before they returned to care homes in the early part of the pandemic. Some 40,000 elderly people subsequently died in care homes from coronavirus-related illnesses according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
    The mysteriously leaked footage, taken from a CCTV camera in Hancock’s own office, was reportedly taken on 6th May – when England's law banned indoor social gatherings of people from different households, and guidance urged people to stay two metres apart and avoid “face to face contact”.
    We may never know who was behind the leak that sealed Matt Hancock’s fate although his departure will certain please Cummings, who said Hancock was a “guaranteed disaster. It is urgent for public safety that he is removed”.
    No-one will miss Hancock. He should have gone long ago.

What a difference a day makes

 Or not in Dominic Cummings’ case. Last week Boris Johnson’s former chief adviser spent seven hours telling a parliamentary committee how bad his former chief was. He said government officials, including himself, had fallen “disastrously short of the standards that the public has a right to expect” and that the “government failed” over the coronavirus crisis. Health Secretary Matt Hancock should have been fired for lying, and that frontline workers and civil servants were "lions led by donkeys". As for Boris Johnson, "thousands" of people were better suited to run the country than him and that he was not a "fit and proper person" to get the UK through the pandemic.
    Some say Cummings still hopes to return to the corridors of power through the patronage of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak or his old mentor, Michael Gove. But who can trust him?
    This man was once seen as the éminence grise of the Johnson administration. Tories, with varying degrees of affection, called him “Dom”, “The Mekon” or “Rasputin”. Now it’s just “Judas” – the man who betrays his master in revenge for being sacked.
    Cummings may have thought his revelations would lead to a Cabinet crisis or even force the resignation of Hancock and Johnson. But he was wrong. Most Tories still think Boris Johnson walks on water. The utterly useless leader of the opposition, Sir Kier Starmer, has totally failed to exploit the situation in Labour’s favour whilst the Remainer grandees stand back to watch the Brexiteers fight amongst themselves for a change. It has done nothing to dent the Tory lead in the opinion polls.

A bad week for Boris

It’s been a bad week for Boris Johnson. The aging lothario once basked in the applause of the Tory rank-and-file who dismissed his bumbling indiscretions as the foibles of a renaissance man who led them to victory in the 2019 general election and took Britain out of the European Union.
    The bourgeois media called him “Boris” or “BoJo”and praised his “blundering brilliance” and his supposed classical knowledge and learning. Or at least they did until his sacked former aide, Dominic Cummings, stabbed him in the back last week.
     Now Johnson is being compared to Shakespeare’s Lear, the mad king who is betrayed by his daughters and dies of grief in the last act. If the leaked “let the bodies pile high” reports are true it’ll be King Herod next.
     The grandees never had much time for Johnson. Ken Clarke famously said: “Boris is great fun as company and all the rest of it, but he couldn't run a whelk stall. I really... I don't think I could follow him on any complicated or serious policy issue!” But most of them were Remainers whose grip on the Tory party faltered when they lost the 2016 European Union referendum.
     The others, the movers and shakers, thought Johnson walked on water. This was the man who could preside over the government’s incompetent handling of the coronavirus plague and fund a colossally expensive trace and trace system that didn’t work yet still take the credit for the NHS that bailed the country out with a national vaccine programme.
     The snobbery, callousness and sleaze exposed by the leaks in the mainstream media are, indeed, damning. But bourgeois politicians wear corruption as a badge of honour these days and the Tories are still way ahead of Labour in the opinion polls. Why this should this all change because of the revelations of a former aide who is hardly a pillar of virtue himself?
     Well we don’t know the answer but it almost certainly is part of the continuing struggle over Europe.
    In the past the ruling class has always closed ranks during times of economic crisis. But this slump only sharpened the divisions between those who believe that the future for British capitalism lies in greater European integration, those who think British imperial interests are still best served through the alliance with the United States and those who believe that British imperialism can extract the maximum benefit by playing off one against the other by acting as a trans-Atlantic “bridge” between American imperialism and that of France and Germany.
    The Remainers lost the referendum but they have not given up the fight. Hopes that Sir Keir Starmer would become the focus for a second referendum campaign have been dashed by his utter inability to mobilise Labour to win anything – let alone a new vote on Europe. But getting Johnson to dump Cummings in November was a master-stroke. It weakened Johnson and divided the Tory Brexiteers who are now fighting amongst themselves.
    The next step is the return of the Remainer grandees to the Tory fold to help build a new Europhile consensus in Parliament. They don’t have to worry about Starmer. If the pollsters are right he’ll fall on his sword after the Spring elections. Whoever takes his place will invariably be another Remainer.
    Johnson will go when he is no longer of any further use to the ruling class. Speed the day by helping the mass movement democratise the unions and the Labour Party while fighting to put the communist answer to the crisis back on the working class agenda throughout the country.

So long Dominic Cummings

As the Trump era ends in acrimony in Washington the waves of discontent ripple across the Atlantic. None of us will shed a tear at the departure of Dominic Cummings or his shadowy side-kick Lee Cain from the corridors of power. The loathsome Rasputin-like adviser who seemed pull all the strings in the Johnson government has now gone. Some say that this is largely down to disagreements with Boris Johnson’s partner, Carrie Symonds. Others suspect that the ousting of two of the most prominent Leavers in the Tory camp has more to do with Johnson’s need to appease the new Biden administration.
    Boris Johnson knows that Joe Biden’s victory means the end of his dream of trans-Atlantic free-trade deal to replace the Treaty of Rome. The Brexit transitional period ends at the end of the year and without an agreement with Brussels Johnson’s options, within the parameters set by the ruling class, are limited.
    A “no deal” Brexit would clear the decks for free trade agreements with People’s China, India and Russia that would easily off-set any losses sustained from departing from the European Union. But there’s little enthusiasm within the Establishment for anything that could jeopardise British imperialism’s existing relationships with American and Franco-German imperialism.
    Cummings, whose departure was welcomed by the Tory grandees, stood in the way of any reset of the British position toward the European Union. Now he can write his book…

Corbyn’s reinstatement

Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party membership has been restored in return for an appeasing statement following efforts by Unite and some left social-democratic MPs to end the crisis. The Corbynistas say this is a climb-down by Sir Keir Starmer, Corbyn’s ineffectual successor, and a victory for the Labour left. But this “victory” came at a price and it was hardly decisive.
     Instead of challenging the reactionary nonsense of the Zionists and Blairites Corbyn plays into his enemies’ hands when he says that “concerns about anti-semitism [within the Labour Party] are neither ‘exaggerated’ nor ‘overstated’”. But even that isn’t enough for the Blairite bloc that want him and all his followers out of the Labour Party. Corbyn remains excluded from the Parliamentary Labour Party and the hate campaign will continue reaction unabated.
    At every step of the way, the left around Jeremy Corbyn have refused to challenge the basis of the accusations or defend the right to speak out for Palestine. Instead they have made concession after concession, and apology after apology.
    Rank and file opposition to the Blairites and Zionists inside the labour movement is the only way we can combat the lies and filth of the bourgeois media.
    Marxists have always repudiated the theory and practice of Zionism. In1903, Lenin himself said that the concept itself of a Jewish nation had become a “Zionist idea absolutely false and essentially reactionary”.
     The Bolshevik leader exposed the reactionary essence of Zionism, emphasising that its dogmas are reactionary, false and contrary to the interests of the Jewish proletariat. He criticised the Zionists’ theses concerning the unique nature of the Jewish people, the alleged absence of class differences amongst the Jews and the imaginary communality of their interests, explaining that such assertions aimed to distract the Jewish toiling masses from the proletariat’s common class struggle. Lenin was right then and he is right now!

Time to Go!

Aides by their very definition are expendable. They get their money and they’re paid off when they are no longer needed. If they become an embarrassment to their masters they are expected to go quietly in return for some sort of reward for keeping their mouths shut. But when they get too big for their boots, others may intervene to help them on their way.

Rasputin went down in a hail of bullets when he became an embarrassment to prominent members of the Russian aristocracy during the First World War. We’ve moved on from those days and, in any case, most minions have played the bourgeois game in Britain to abide by the unwritten code of conduct that governs the behaviour of the Establishment. Dominic Cummings, however, thinks he’s a different breed that can flout the norms of the ruling class he claims to serve.

The Johnson camp claim that there’s a hidden Remainer agenda behind the campaign to get rid of Cummings. This is largely based on the childish belief that you can kick prominent Tories, including two former Chancellors, eight former Cabinet ministers and the grandson of Winston Churchill, out of the Conservative Party with impunity.

This may well be pay-back time for the Tory grandees who were purged last September for opposing Brexit. But there are plenty more who hate him.

This is the man who spouts on about “Odyssean education” and “super-forecasters”, and allegedly claimed that "a child's performance has more to do with genetic makeup than the standard of his or her education”.

This is the man that the Sunday Times claimed had told a private meeting in February that the Government's plan for dealing with the coronavirus plague was “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad”.

Johnson’s grief has clearly been brought on through Cummings’ own selfish actions. By breaking the lock-down rules he helped to devise he’s undermined the Government’s efforts to enforce the emergency regulations and made the Prime Minister look a fool. There cannot be one rule for Dominic Cummings and another for the British people.

Cummings is mocked in some sections of the Tory press. He’s jeered on the street where he lives and over 760,000 people have signed a petition calling for his dismissal. Labour and the other opposition parties are demanding the dismissal of the “chief adviser” to the Prime Minister. Some senior Tories and prominent members of the Church of England have also joined the chorus calling for Cummings to go. They can see that the Cummings affair has undermined public confidence in the lock-down regime as well as the credibility of the Tory Government.

“This is a fundamental test of character for Johnson,” John MacDonnell, the left Labour MP, said last week. “He’s dramatically failing it by defending the indefensible and doing it by obfuscation and avoidance. This is the sort of event from which the reputations of Prime Ministers do not recover.”

Once the story broke any other Prime Minister would have immediately told Cummings to fall on his sword to avoid embarrassing the Government. But Johnson is a weak man who likes to be surrounded by people lesser than himself.

Both men are rubbish. They should both go. The sooner the better.