Defeat Johnson’s Trumpery!

Submitted by AWL on 9 October, 2019 - 10:41 Author: Editorial
johnson

Force Boris Johnson to send the “delay Brexit” letter to the EU. Bring down his government and get a general election.

Make Labour fight hard in that election for its policy of “new public vote with option to Remain”.

Push for a manifesto which integrates that with the left-wing policies adopted at Labour’s Brighton conference, and for a combative left-wing Labour campaign to convince voters, not the limp complaints about “not enough money for the police” to which the Leader’s Office has reduced Labour’s message in recent times.

We have a battle on our hands, and that is how the battle-lines are set.

Labour for a Socialist Europe met on 3 October, and set plans for an autonomous campaign with leaflets and other materials to back Labour and simultaneously push for Remain and for the free-movement policy adopted by Labour’s Brighton conference but so far shelved by the Labour leadership.

The quicker that campaign can start, and the more time we get to do stalls and doorstep work free from the probably strict central control which Labour HQ will impose during the official election period, the better.

Even during the election period, though, left activists can and will use L4SE leaflets and run L4SE stalls on their individual initiative.

Nothing less than adequate pressure for a strong campaign by Labour, coupled with autonomous socialist initiative, will be enough to beat Boris Johnson.

He is on the back foot. But he is fighting hard to establish himself as a “British Trump”, or rather a British version of what Trump would be if the US political system did not hem in presidential power so much.

Johnson wants to establish himself as the “saviour”, the “arbiter”, with authority (supposed to come from the anonymous “people”) to override parliament and the courts.

Paradoxically, it looks like his tactic for that now may go via a general election in which, by scooping up the Brexit party vote, he can win a parliamentary majority for a crash “no deal” Brexit with only a modest score. If the Lib Dems and Greens take enough of the Labour vote, then the first-past-the-post system can give Johnson a majority even with a much smaller vote than Theresa May got in June 2017.

On 8 October 2019 the right-wing magazine The Spectator published this story from a Johnson insider.

“Our legal advice is clear that we can do all sorts of things to scupper [Brexit] delay [as mandated by the Benn Act if Johnson can’t get a Brexit deal] which for obvious reasons we aren’t going into details about.

“We will also make clear that this government will not negotiate further so any delay would be totally pointless…

“We will say [to the EU]: ‘This is not our delay, the government is not asking for a delay — Parliament is sending you a letter and Parliament is asking for a delay... Any delay will in effect be negotiated between you, Parliament, and the courts — we will wash our hands of it…

“We will focus on winning the election on a manifesto of immediately revoking the entire EU legal order without further talks, and then we will leave”.

Then the “hard border” in Ireland. Then the economic chaos in Britain which Johnson hopes will give him cover to ram through “disaster-capitalist” measures.

The stakes are high.

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