A Perfect Opportunity

Dave Nellist, who will be on Any Questions? this week, shows us why TUSC ought to have been the officially recognised Leave campaign, instead of anything involving Boris the Bananaman, who was pro-EU well into the present calendar year, and who gives every impression of being a spoiler in that cause:

Paul Mason outlines several of the powerful socialist arguments for a leave vote in the EU referendum. 

To Paul’s list could be added the EU drive for market liberalisation, or outright privatisation, of services such as rail, post, energy and water, as well as the threat to a publicly owned NHS that the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) poses. 

But having explained how undemocratic and big-business-oriented the EU is – in effect, Thatcherism on a continental scale – Paul backs down and asks us to accept all that, because exit threatens a change of Tory leader. 

As if the marginal difference between David Cameron and Boris Johnson, in the context of all Paul has identified, is in any way fundamental. 

Cameron’s government was elected with only 24% support.

It’s a government that is, in reality, weak and divided – maintained in office not by its own strength, but the weakness of the opposition, particularly at the top of the trade unions.

A leave vote would topple Cameron and further exacerbate the divisions inside the Tory party, not heal them.

It could provide a perfect opportunity for Labour to demand not a mere change in Tory leader, but an immediate general election to choose a new government.

I campaigned in the past against the EU alongside labour movement giants like Tony Benn and Bob Crow, and I’m proud that TUSC is carrying on that struggle today, while faint hearts fall by the wayside.

Dave Nellist

National chair, Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition