BORIS JOHNSON is now confronted with the reality that his parliamentary party, in what we may call a decisive minority, has no confidence in his leadership. In this, at least, it is in tune with the country.
It is worth remembering that the present parliamentary Tory Party, although reinforced by people who won formerly fairly safe Labour seats, is also is purged of Boris Johnson’s opponents, expelled in the bruising Brexit battles before the 2019 general election.
It is not a very typical, or traditional, parliamentary Tory Party.
How well it represents the decisive forces in the parasitic class of bankers, bosses and bureaucrats who exercise decisive power in this land of ours is moot.
The Tory Party is the preferred party of the bourgeoisie but it is not the only one that can be bent to the will of our ruling class.
Johnson is safe from another confidence challenge from Tory MPs for a year. But the clock is ticking. Twelve months’ protection from the people who sit behind him in the Commons is no protection when the people who stand behind them conclude that the continuity of capitalist stability compels a change.
This is a political crisis for the Tory Party but the challenge is how it can be turned into an opportunity for working people to advance our class interests.
Who has any confidence that this present government, or any likely successor from the same political stable, is capable of tackling the scale of the problems which face our nation and our planet?
Watch out for Jeremy Hunt, whose long stewardship of the NHS saw it privatised into terminal decline, now repurposed for a second leadership challenge.
We face a climate crisis that is becoming unmanageable and unless enough is done in short order it will become a runaway disaster beyond decisive human intervention.
Who has any confidence that the contradictions tearing the global capitalist economy apart can be resolved by any of the governments in the big imperial powers?
Angela Rayner was right to remind us that millions will not let go of their anger at the prime minister over the Number 10 party season. But Labour needs to break out of its SW1 straitjacket and shift the focus of its activity to where working people are willing to fight.
The government has faced routine challenges with Johnson appearing before the Commons public accounts committee while Labour fixed its opposition debate on ministerial standards.
These are routine parliamentary rituals that excite little interest beyond Westminster unless they can be infused with the spirit of revolt that is reflected in a rising tide of action outside of Parliament.
The cost-of-living crisis is the expression – in the daily lives of millions of working people – of the deep structural problems of 21st-century capitalism.
The survival of the government and the credibility of Labour as an alternative party of government will turn in the coming months on how compelling are their answers to the questions which spiralling energy prices and runaway food prices raise in the minds of people for whom Westminster is a foreign land.
As the consequences of imperialism’s proxy war over Ukraine’s scorched earth feed through the interstices of our globalised capitalist economy Vladimir Putin’s criminal blunder will be blamed for a world wide food shortage.
Blame enough there is for him to take his fair share — but Boris Johnson’s government must be held to account over its bellicose behaviour in feeding the war frenzy with arms exports that benefit no-one but the arms manufacturers whose profits are fed by public money.
That is a question that an active opposition might have introduced to the public accounts committee.
