THE NEW WORKER

The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 14th December 2018

Lead story

General election now !

by New Worker correspondent

MRS MAY is fighting for her political survival this week. She postponed the Brexit vote in parliament because she knew it would fall, only to face a Eurosceptic back-bench challenge to her leadership of the Tory party a few days later.

On Monday the Prime Minister confirmed the delay of the “meaningful vote” on the Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU) after it was clear that the deal would be rejected by a significant margin in the House of Commons. She then dashed to Europe for emergency talks to try to wring further concessions from Brussels. But Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called her the “runaway prime minister” and said that her trip was a “waste of time and public money”. And any hopes of a new face-saving formula were dashed when EU leaders refused to budge over the backstop plan for the Irish border during talks in Brussels the following day.

Read the full story here >> General election now !

UKIP demo flop in London

by New Worker correspondent

ANTI-FASCISTS easily outnumbered the rabble that had turned up in central London on Sunday to march behind ‘Tommy Robinson’ to ‘Stop Brexit Betrayal’. Robinson, a well-known racist bigot whose real name in Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, was making his debut for UKIP, which recently appointed him as some sort of adviser in a last-ditch effort to halt the decline that followed the departure of their old leader, Nigel Farage

Read the full story here >> UKIP demo flop in London

Lower retirement age for ambulance staff!

by New Worker correspondent

HEALTH SERVICE union Unison has demanded that the government should lower the retirement age for ambulance staff to make it the same as for the other emergency services.

Paramedics have delivered a petition to the social care secretary Matt Hancock that has been signed by more than 250,000 people and is calling for their retirement age to be reduced from 67 to 60.

Read the full story here >> Lower retirement age for ambulance staff

Editorial

Macron on the run

FRENCH president Emmanuel Macron has scrapped the hated energy taxes that sparked off the ‘Yellow Vest’ revolt in November. But this belated climb-down has done nothing to quell the anger on the streets of Paris and across the country. The masses are sick of this willing tool of the bourgeoisie and the movement he’s built around his own personality and around the meaningless slogan of “The Republic on the Move”. They’re sick of this ‘president of the rich’, whose cronies include a Cabinet minister who complains that Paris dinners now cost “€200 without wine” and an MP who could not recall on TV the rate of the minimum wage.

Read the full story here >> Macron on the run

Bring the government down

Whether the Prime Minister survives a confidence vote amongst her own MPs or not this week, Theresa May’s days are numbered. Win or lose, the May government has lost all credibility in the House of Commons. May’s supporters can’t deliver the shoddy deal with Brussels that would leave Britain, in all but name, still in the European Union (EU) whilst her Eurosceptic foes are led by the likes of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg — ambitious, loathsome and incompetent MPs who cannot command a majority in the Tory ranks in parliament, let alone in the country as a whole.

The only way out of the crisis is another general election. Some of the minor parties in parliament, including the Scottish nationalists and the Liberal Democrats, are ready to move the no-confidence votes needed to bring down the government under the rules of the fixed-termed parliaments. The Democratic Unionists and other Tory rebels would join in if Labour throw its weight behind them to make sure it works. That’s exactly what Labour must do.

Read the full story here >> Bring the government down