Crunch time for them - and crunch-them time for us!

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
18 November 2020

So those unelected bureaucrats and architects of the “Leave” campaign - Cummings and Cain - who assumed sovereignty over Johnson’s government - left by Number 10's front door last week.

    Is it just a coincidence that their departure coincides with crunch time for the thorny post-Brexit EU trade deal? It leaves Johnson isolated, for sure. All the more so, since he now must remain holed-up in his flat above Number 11, on the instructions of “Test&Trace”, for the next 10 days!

    But never mind, as with most of the niceties of governing the country, he can leave the real business to someone else, while he blusters on about being “fit as a butcher’s dog” and makes foot-in-mouth statements on the “disaster” of Scottish devolution!

    In the case of the final leg of the Brexit negotiations, it’s left to chief Brexiteer, “Lord” Frost to make the deal - or not - with the EU. It’s a choice of shrinking the British economy by another 5%, or by another 8%, on top of the 20% it already shrank, because of the ongoing world crisis plus covid.

    Frost has a long history of disagreement with the EU - implacably opposing one of the gains of EU membership (besides free movement) for the working class, i.e., the 1998 Working Time Regulations. Which, thanks to Britain’s sovereignty and independence from the EU, were soon watered down by Westminster, allowing opt-outs - so the working class here still does not have a legally enforceable, non-negotiable, maximum 8-hour working day!

    The arguments which continue to be made about “taking back control of British waters” (actually not the waters, but the free fish) and the EU refusing to respect Britain’s “independence” and “sovereignty”, work both ways. But unsurprisingly, it’s the EU which gets the blame from this side of the Channel - a Channel which will soon be a costly barrier to all.

    As for the “union” and devolution, which is on Johnson’s mind, perhaps he can explain how a non-independent, non-sovereign British government offered (without Brussels’ say-so) to grant Scotland its sovereignty in 2014?

    Yes their rhetoric over British “sovereignty” is absurd. But it’s also dangerous in the context of their policies, including Brexit, which aggravate the ongoing capitalist crisis, made worse by covid. Everyone knows what happened in the 1930s, when the economy last suffered such a deep depression.

    It is only the resurgence of a united working class ready to fight for a world without any borders, that can counteract such danger. That is what we have to aim for.