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The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain

Boris should go!

by New Worker correspondent

BORIS JOHNSON returned to London this week amidst renewed calls for his resignation following the Supreme Court’s decision to rule the suspension of Parliament unlawful. The unanimous Supreme Court ruling was that the Prime Minister had acted wrongly when he asked the Queen to suspend, or prorogue, Parliament and that his order was “void and of no effect”.

Johnson cut short his visit to the United Nations in New York on Tuesday to face the flak from opposition MPs in the House of Commons, which resumed sitting following the Supreme Court’s decision.

At Labour Party Conference in Brighton, Jeremy Corbyn called on Johnson to resign. The Labour leader said Johnson had shown “contempt” for democracy. Johnson should resign and “become the shortest-serving prime minister there’s ever been”. Meanwhile Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, is calling on the Tory leader to sack Dominic Cummings, the back-room schemer whom Tory rebels say was responsible for the whole prorogation fiasco.

Johnson vowed to take Britain out of the European Union, with or without a withdrawal agreement, by the end of October. But this has been rejected in Parliament.

Johnson wants to call a snap election to end the Brexit crisis but this needs Labour support under the ludicrous fixed-term parliament rules that the Tories agreed to appease their Liberal-Democrat allies in David Cameron’s Coalition government. Jeremy Corbyn says he also wants an early election but only after the “threat of a disastrous ‘No Deal’ is taken off the table”. That, the Labour leader says, is the will of Parliament, which ruled out a ‘no-deal’ Brexit before the House was unlawfully closed by Johnson earlier in the month.

In Brighton Jeremy Corbyn fended off a Remainer challenge following an abortive attempt to undermine deputy leader Tom Watson by Jon Lansman, the head of the Momentum faction that once had considerable influence in Corbyn’s kitchen cabinet. A last-minute proposal to abolish the deputy leadership altogether failed to win National Executive Committee (NEC) support and it was personally opposed by Corbyn. Some believe Corbyn reached an accommodation with Watson to avoid an open split, though most believe that to be highly unlikely.

Although a motion to campaign for Remain in a new Brexit referendum was rejected by a show of hands at Conference, Labour has ended up with a fudge that rules out a ‘no-deal’ Brexit and accepts the Remainer argument in all but name.

Corbyn told Conference that: “The battle over ‘No Deal’ isn’t a struggle between those who want to leave the EU and those who want to remain. It’s about a small right-wing group who are trying to hijack the referendum result to rip up our rights and protections to shift even more power and wealth to those at the top…”

The hidden agenda behind a ‘No Deal’ Brexit was that it would create a “race to the bottom in standards and workers’ rights to create an offshore tax haven for the super-rich…”.

Johnson wanted to lock Britain in “with a one-sided free trade deal (with the USA) that would put our country at the mercy of Donald Trump,” Corbyn said.

And the Labour leader vowed that: “Within three months of coming to power a Labour government will secure a sensible deal based on the terms we have long advocated and discussed with the EU trade unions and businesses: a new customs union, a close single market relationship, and guarantees of rights and protections. And within six months of being elected we will put that deal to a public vote alongside Remain. And as a Labour prime minister I pledge to carry out whatever the people decide.”