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.

'Black Ribbon Day': more lies from the bourgeois camp!

By Nikos Mottas

The European Union  once again resorts to hideous anti-communism on the occasion of the so-called ‘European Day of Remembrance for victims of Stalinism and Nazism’ (known as ‘Black Ribbon Day’), which is observed annually on 23rd August.
    In a joint statement, the vice-president of the EU Commission Vera Jourova and the EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders reproduce the same old anti-communist slanders about the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Without any respect for history, the EU officials repeat the blatant lie about the supposed “alliance between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany”.
    In their statement, Jourova and Reynders shamelessly write that the Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact “plunged Europe into darkness” and “led to the violation of the fundamental rights of millions of Europeans and it claimed the lives of millions more”.
    Once again the EU proves that anti-communism is a core part of its official ideology. The above statement by EU officials distorts history in order to vilify the Soviet Union and communism.
    Vera Jourova and Didier Reynders hide the fact that the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact followed the 1938 Munich Agreement between Nazi Germany, Italy, Britain and France. The apologists of imperialism try to downgrade the significance of the 1938 Munich Agreement; however, it had a tremendous impact as an act of appeasement towards the Nazis. Following the agreement, Nazi Germany annexed Czechoslovakia and intensified their expansionist aggression towards Eastern Europe.
    The EU deliberately hides the fact that long before the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression Pact, the Soviet Union tried many times to reach a defensive deal with Britain and France. Even a few months before the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, on 23rd July 1939, the Soviets proposed the formation of a defence plan to Britain and France in case of a German attack; they refused, as long as the British had been secretly negotiating in London a non-aggression pact with Hitler’s representatives.
    What the EU and its bourgeois governments and parties are trying to do is to sow the seeds of anti-communism in the younger generations. That is why they blatantly distort history by shamelessly equating Communism with Nazism.
    The EU establishes “memorial days against totalitarianism” in order to hide that the only existing totalitarianism is the one of capitalist barbarity. Behind the rhetoric about “democracy” and “human rights”, the EU hides its participation in imperialist crimes, wars and interventions.
    But what kind of ‘democracy’ exists in Poland or the Baltic States where the communist parties face persecution, where communist symbols are banned, where the communists are being imprisoned?
    What ‘human rights’ does the EU defend when it participates in imperialist wars against the people of other countries (such as Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq and Syria), or when it promotes and sponsors openly fascist coups such as the one in Ukraine?
    The people of Europe must draw conclusions. The EU’s anti-communism goes hand-in-hand with the intensification of the attack against workers’ rights; it is connected to the strengthening of repression mechanisms in every member-state.
    Let the EU imperialists and their stooges – conservative, social democratic or liberals alike – be aware: Anti-communism shall not pass!

Vote Labour!

We will be voting in an election next week that will be decisive for the future of our country. A massive vote for Labour can stop austerity in its tracks. A Corbyn government will stop an American take-over of the NHS. Labour will restore key parts of the public sector that were criminally sold-off in the Thatcher era, support industrial development and create new jobs to end the unemployment and destitution that has blighted the lives of so many working class families in recent years.

            The alternative? Five more years of Tory misrule. Five more years of bread-line wages. Five more years of austerity and pay curbs to ensure that the rich can continue to live their worthless lives in the manner they’ve long been accustomed to.

The Tories dream of making Britain the “Singapore of Europe” – a spivs’ paradise for the money-launderers, drug-lords and oligarchs who have already turned London into a millionaires’ playground.

Labour promises to bring in a new, green industrial revolution; rebuild our public services and tackle poverty and inequality. For the many. Not the few.

But it’s also a climate election, an investment election, an NHS election, a living standards election, an education election, a poverty election, a fair taxes election. Above all, it’s the change election.

The Tories wanted the December poll to revolve around Brexit and Boris Johnson’s withdrawal agreement which is just another version of the May plan that was repeatedly rejected by the old parliament. Johnson wants to swap the Treaty of Rome with a new ‘Treaty of Washington’ that would allow the big American pharmaceutical corporations to plunder the health service in return for cheap food imports that we could get from America anytime on “no deal” World Trade Organisation terms.

While totally rejecting the proposed new trade agreement with US imperialism Labour’s stand on Europe has tilted more to the Remainer camp with a promise for a “second referendum”. But we must remember that most class battles are won in the field of struggle and not in parliamentary debate. The struggle outside parliament, which is a bourgeois institution, will be far more decisive than the struggle inside the House of Commons.

The battle to leave the European Union has still to be won in the big unions that still largely follow the social-democratic sell-out merchants in Brussels and the rest of Western Europe. The only way we can secure a genuine Brexit is to win the argument in the labour movement and that is yet to come.

The hidden hand of the Establishment, that reflects the dominant Europhile wing of the ruling class, is working to produce another hung parliament and a “national government” or Labour-led coalition that will do little apart from hold another referendum in conditions set by the Remainers themselves.

We don’t want a Labour administration that’s been pawned to the Scottish nationalists and the Liberal Democrats. We don’t want a ‘people’s vote’. We want a people’s government for social justice and an end to austerity. Vote Labour on 12^th December!

The only vote that counts

All sorts of nonsense has been spouted by Remainer politicians claiming that there’s been a sea-change in opinion towards a second referendum with most people now wanting to remain inside the European Union (EU). Wishful thinking and peculiarly framed opinion polls that avoided asking the question that was put to voters during the 2016 referendum have been used to justify calls for second ‘people’s vote’ or, like the Liberal Democrats, simply to ignore the first one.

But a huge new survey shows that 50 per cent want to Leave the EU, with 42 per cent wanting to Remain. With 'don't knows' removed, 54 per cent would back Leave compared with 46 per cent in support of Remain. Some 26,000 people took part in the poll, organised by ComRes and Channel Five.

This was the biggest Brexit poll since the 2016 referendum and it confirms what we’ve been saying all along. But the only real poll that counts is the one that took place in June 2016. The Labour Remainers in parliament should remember this in future.

Postal workers vote for action

Royal Mail workers voted by an overwhelming 97 per cent on a 76 per cent turnout for industrial action over the Christmas period, which is by the busiest period of the year. Their move is in defence of terms and conditions that Management seems set to undermine seriously. Their union, the CWU, says Royal Mail is reneging on an agreement reached between Royal Mail and the union. Entitled {The Four Pillars}, agreement it covered pay rises, pensions, and a move to reduce working hours from 39 to 35 per week by 2022 depending on productivity improvements.

The CWU's general secretary, Dave Ward, has now urged Royal Mail to enter “serious negotiations” with the union. If they’re realistic and genuinely want a negotiated settlement before Christmas, Royal Mail’s management should start talking now.

Making America Great Again?

The imperialist politicians who are now shedding crocodile tears over the plight of the Kurds of northern Syria have no real concern for the Kurdish people. If they did, they would have supported the Kurdish struggle in Turkish Kurdistan – where most of the Kurds live. Instead, they simply sought to use them as pawns to foster regime change in Iraq and Syria.

The fate of the Syrian Kurds now depends on the Syrian army and the Russian peace-keepers – not NATO nor the Turks that for so long abetted Washington’s efforts to bring down Assad’s popular front government in Damascus.

Donald Trump was quite right to pull the troops out of northern Syria. They shouldn’t have been there in the first place. If he really wants to ‘make America great again’ he should pull them out of Europe, the Middle East and south Korea as well!

A Nightmare on Downing Street

Boris Johnson achieved his childhood ambition when he stepped into Downing Street this week. The successor to Mrs May has called on all Tories to close ranks around his new government that he says is going to “Deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn”. But Johnson can’t deliver Brexit. He can’t unite his own party let alone the country and most pundits believe that the new government will be brought down in the autumn when Remainers on both sides of the House of Commons combine to block a ‘no-deal’ Brexit.

The Johnson camp talk about winning better withdrawal terms from Brussels but none of them seriously believe it’s going to happen. They say that the only alternative is to walk out on ‘no-deal’ World Trade Organisation terms – which is what we thought we were voting for in the first place. But that’s not going to happen either. The Remainers, who’ve been working day and night to reverse the results of the historic 2016 referendum, now have the numbers in the Commons to stop a ‘no-deal’ Brexit.

All the Labour leaders are now in the bag, The Liberal Democrats, the Scottish and Welsh nationalists, and the maverick MPs who have left the mainstream parties over Europe can now overturn the Government – whose parlous majority of two includes the 10 votes of the bigots from northern Ireland.

The Johnson team tell us that whilst Boris likes to play the fool a shrewd intelligence lies behind his oafish persona. To give him a common touch they call him “Boris” or “BoJo”.

But Johnson’s rivals prefer, in an equally childish way, to call him the “Heffalump” or “Bunter” in mocking reference to the new Tory leader’s supposed conduct and girth.

Johnson may not be an Einstein but he can clearly add up, so he must know that he simply cannot achieve in 100 days what Mrs May failed to get in her two and a half years in office.

Some might point the finger at the incompetence of the Tory Brexiteers who have been clearly out-manœuvred by the Remainers and the Europhile Establishment. But for us the lesson is simply that workers can never rely on any other class to defend their interests. The independent working class campaign to leave the European Union (EU), which the New Communist Party argued for time and time again over the years, was dismissed by those who tried to build an anti-EU platform with right-wingers, reactionaries and racists in the name of “broad campaigning”. Now, very late in the day, they understand the need for a Left Exit campaign to counter the Brussels propaganda that most of our unions have embraced.

In 2016 we took part in a referendum that asked a simple ‘In or Out’ question. Fifty-two per cent of the voters elected to leave the EU. We don’t want another referendum. We want a general election and a Labour government that respects the will of people.

In 2016 millions of people voted decisively to leave the EU. The alternative is the EU with its austerity regime, the highest food prices in the world, ham-strung unions, and mass unemployment in Greece, Spain, Italy and throughout eastern Europe. We voted for Brexit. That’s what we want.