Britain

Yesterday, 23rd of June 2016, the people of Britain made a momentous decision. After 40 years as part of the European Union they voted to turn their backs on it. This decision has immense consequences for the future of Britain, Europe and the world.

After the Brexit result, right-wing Labour MPs have mobilised once again to try to remove Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party. They have called a vote of no confidence to be taken early next week. They are using the Brexit vote, to which Labour was officially opposed, as a stick with which to beat Corbyn, saying that it was his fault the Remain campaign was not successful. 

Britain goes to the polls today to decide on whether to Leave the European Union or Remain. The closing speeches in last night’s BBC “Great Debate” by Boris Johnson, the Conservative former London Mayor, and Ruth Davidson, leader of the Scottish Tories, summed up what this referendum has been from the outset: a fight between two wings of the Tory Party; a fight in which neither side has anything positive to offer workers and youth.

As the hour of judgement draws nearer, the campaigns on both sides of the EU referendum have become increasingly dominated by one issue: immigration. On the Leave side, the months leading up to this referendum have seen a ratcheting up of xenophobic and racist rhetoric, with the sole aim of scapegoating migrants and the EU’s free movement of labour for all the ills in society.

At lunchtime yesterday Jo Cox, a young Labour MP, was standing outside a local library, as she did every week, meeting residents in her constituency. It was just an ordinary day in the small town of Birstall near Leeds in Yorkshire. There was nothing to indicate the horrific events that were about to happen.

With a week to go before the referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU, Leave has leapt to a 7-point lead in a poll published by The Times on Monday. The sudden swing of support away from Remain, which held a slender 1-point lead last week, has caused outright panic in Westminster and stock markets around the world.

Two sides of the same capitalist coin. That is the choice on offer to workers and youth in this Tory farce of a referendum. On the one side is David Cameron and George Osborne, backed up by the majority of the Establishment, big business, and the bankers. Their vision for Europe is the complete antithesis of that advocated by the leaders of the labour movement who find themselves in the same camp as Cameron, campaigning to Remain.

Despite facing a barrage of attacks since his election as Labour leader last September, Jeremy Corbyn’s support amongst Labour members has not been dented. Indeed, according to the latest figures from YouGov opinion polls, Corbyn is even more popular with the rank-and-file of the Labour Party now than at the time of his election.

Anyone who in general believed the news before the recent elections would have been in for a shock on the 6th May. Rather than the catastrophic defeat predicted for Labour, the reality was that the Labour Party received by far the most votes cast (38.5%), as against 27.1% for the Tories.

Beginning at one minute to midnight on the 3rd May, the 1926 General Strike shook the ruling class of Britain to its foundations. Lasting for nine days, the strike showed the enormous power and solidarity of the working class. 4 million trade unionists - out of a total of 5.5 million - responded to the TUC’s call to halt work. Despite no real preparation by the TUC leadership, workers organised - through their own initiative - strike committees up and down the country. Nothing moved without the workers’ permission.

Just a few days before the May elections, the Blairites in the Labour Party have stepped up their war against Jeremy Corbyn, using the slur of “anti-Semitism” to further their aims. By doing so, they are hell-bent on creating a “crisis” within the Party.

On Tuesday and Wednesday of this week, junior doctors in England came out on strike once again in defence of their terms and conditions, and in a struggle to save the wider NHS from Tory cuts, attacks, and threats of privatisation.

Amidst a chorus of frenzied calls to “get off the fence on Europe”, and under immense pressure from the Labour right-wing to make a positive case for the EU, Jeremy Corbyn made a highly publicised speech on Thursday 15th April in which he set out his case for remaining.

The past couple of weeks have seen an intensification of the civil war inside the Tory Party, as rabid reactionary Eurosceptic MPs savage their pro-EU colleagues. Daniel Morley looks at the nationalist delusions of the Brexit camp in the Tories and UKIP, and highlights the limitations of the arguments of left-wing Leave campaigners.