Brexit

UCU ballot opens University staff belonging to UCU are being balloted for strike action this autumn over pay equality, job security, workload and pay deflation. Working conditions in higher education have been deteriorating. The gender pay gap is over 15%; over 100,000 staff across the sector are on fixed-term contracts; academic staff work over 50 hours in a typical week; and in the past ten years pay has declined by 20% in real terms. In 2018 an impressive strike forced pre-92 universities to back down on massive pension cuts, but since then employers have refused to compromise and now they...

PCS nationally has made a clear statement against Johnson’s coup, and is encouraging members to join protests. Our National Executive Committee (NEC) meets this week [starting 2 Sep], and will discuss the unfolding situation in more detail. Our conference policy on Brexit is to remain neutral on the question itself, which the NEC can’t overturn, but obviously we will need to think about how we respond, particularly as it’s PCS members’ labour that will be relied upon to a large extent to “deliver Brexit”. It may be during the NEC meeting itself that a general election is announced. We would...

Johnson’s coup is all the fault of the anti-Brexit MPs, according to the Morning Star’s editorial on 29 August: “It comes in circumstances that have been created by anti-Brexit MPs and the House of Commons. They have had three years to agree a way to honour the people’s vote to leave the EU. Moreover, the vast majority of those MPs were elected on pledges to do just that. “Instead, they have tried every parliamentary trick in the book – in this case Erskine May’s Parliamentary Practice – to block and delay any kind of exit from the EU. Moreover, the vast majority of those MP’s were elected on...

So far, so good! — as we go to press, on Wednesday 4 September. Britain’s poundshop Mussolini, the lying public-school bully-boy prime minister Boris Johnson, has been decisively beaten in two House of Commons votes. There will be almost surely a request to the European Union for an extension of the leaving date to 31 January 2020. Johnson does not have enough support in the House of Commons to carry out his threat to get round the decision by calling an instant general election. Johnson tried to override parliamentary democracy by shutting down Parliament, hoping that would give him space to...

A lot of people have been mesmerised by the speed and decisiveness of the Johnson regime — and of course there’s a legitimate worry that by resisting his moves we’re playing into his hands in an election. But what that misses is the total blindness of elite technocrats like Cummings and Johnson to mass action. By going on the street we’ve changed the situation. A few of us decided to call people onto the streets at a few hours notice and we got something like five or ten thousand people. By doing that we created a radical moment. We gave confidence to people who have up to now been mainly...

Parliament does not decide when it does or doesn’t sit. The Queen, on the advice of the Prime Minister, does that. Parliament does not decide what Bills can or cannot be debated. The government largely does that, with some small rights of input from the official Opposition. Only in situations where the government does not have a majority, and where the governing party is in the process of splitting, like now, does that open up more. It looks like the Johnson government will not dare go through with it, but it is possible for a government simply to refuse to recognise a law passed through...

The Communist Party of Britain (Morning Star) claims that Boris Johnson’s shutdown of Parliament was really the fault of the anti-Brexiters in Parliament. Other left groups and papers which have backed Brexit have been less off-the-wall, but maybe more confusing. Socialist Worker essentially calls on its readers to shout other slogans so loudly as to drown out all thoughts about Brexit. It writes: “There was fury at Johnson [at the anti-coup protests]. Beyond that people came with a range of views. “A substantial number had EU flags or anti-Brexit placards. But others were focused on fighting...

Boris Johnson is shutting down Parliament. His plan will limit, and is designed to prevent, Parliament passing legislation to stop Britain exiting the EU on 31 October without a deal. Johnson may also calculate he can dodge or face down the consequences of a vote of no-confidence once Parliament reconvenes next week. Labour′s preferred ″option″ of a general election before 31 October will be a non-starter. In any general election that is called after that date, Labour will be in a weakened position. The suspension of Parliament is a long-term threat to democracy. Johnson is using not just the...

On the streets and in the workplaces is where we must defeat the plans of Boris Johnson and his “special adviser” Dominic Cummings to force through a “no deal” Brexit by overriding Parliament. And that’s the best way to prepare for a likely snap election. Cummings's latest plan (3 August) is to respond to Parliament voting no confidence in Johnson – which it may well do on 4 September – by delaying the subsequent general election to after Brexit has become accomplished fact on 31 October. This is a revised version of Johnson's earlier speculation about "proroguing" (suspending) Parliament to...

The Morning Star and their political masters the Communist Party of Britain (CPB), have a problem with Boris Johnson: when it comes to Brexit, they agree with him. This is obviously embarrassing for people who call themselves socialists. The Morning Star does its best to avoid making it too obvious. But the strain tells. In its editorial of 23 July, the Morning Star suggested that “Where his [Johnson’s] coronation both poses a risk and presents an opportunity to the left is in his greater distance from the Establishment ‘mainstream’ and the already evident breach between him and parts of the...