IN any political battle victory is gained by the side that can most effectively focus the greatest force at the most critical point.

The Boris-Cummings government understand this perfectly.

They understand that it is critical for them to disguise their elite, autocratic purposes.

To do so they must present themselves as democrats implementing the popular will and portray their Labour opponents as undemocratic, metropolitan defenders of the Establishment.

Unfortunately, in recent weeks the Labour leadership has done quite a bit to reinforce this picture by walking away from any concern with the justified anger expressed in the Leave vote.

But then the government over-reached itself.

Without a Commons majority and with the support of its own MPs uncertain, the Johnson cabal decided that even risking the normally ineffectual oversight of Parliament was too risky. Hence the prorogation.

With that single ill-considered act of executive overreach the democratic argument swung from the Johnson junta to the opposition.

Suddenly it became dramatically clear that the opposition were the ones defending parliamentary oversight from a simultaneously fearful and arrogant executive.

We don’t need to endorse overblown claims about the democratic effectiveness of Parliament to prefer limited executive accountability to the destruction of such accountability.

The opposition now has its moment. Can it unite the maximum force and strike at the government’s weakest spot?

To answer that question we have to decide what that weak spot is. And it’s certainly not the Leave/Remain divide.

That division lies almost exactly where it was at the time of the referendum with the country divided in two roughly equal parts.

Fighting this battle as a Leave v Remain contest simply pushes Leavers back into the Tory camp, giving them the best possible ground on which to fight any forthcoming election.

The best possible ground to fight on is to argue that Leavers and Remainers have every interest in stopping a Johnson-led government and forcing it to go to the polls in a general election.

If the Tories remain in power austerity will continue to blight the lives of millions, whether we stay in or leave the EU.

Austerity is the larger determinant of the life chances of working people and always has been.

This simple fact was well-understood by thousands who took to the streets around the country this last weekend.

“Leave and Remain, unite and fight” seems to have been the popular slogan. And it was effectively argued by MP Ian Lavery at the terrific Newcastle protest organised by the People’s Assembly.

One thing is for sure though: the opposite approach of dividing the movement against the Tories and for a general election along Leave and Remain lines is sectarian and self-defeating.

Some of the leaders of Another Europe Is Possible, the organisers of some of the protests, have said that Leave voters are welcome on their demos.

But this is hardly convincing.

Of course, unity is always acceptable if those who disagree with you are willing to march under your banner and stand in a crowd only addressed by speakers with whom they disagree.

Real and effective unity is harder to achieve. First, we have to agree that the order of the day is simply to remove the Tory government by any means necessary. Logically this implies a general election. The vast majority of Leavers and Remainers can agree on that.

Such developments would end at once the power grab by the executive. And they would open up a wide-ranging debate about how to democratise our society and end austerity.

It might even give us the space to debate the future of Europe outside the stifling confines of a framework solely and only decided by the two sides of the Tory Party.

But that’s for the future. Today the overwhelming priority is unite and to drive the Tories from power.

Tonight’s rally in Parliament Square, just as MPs make their crucial vote, has a labour movement platform which reflects both sides of the EU debate.

Leavers like Tariq Ali will stand side by side with Remainers like TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady.

But they won’t be there for a debate. They will unite to face the enemy and with one voice demand that the Tories are driven from power in an election which gives us the chance to elect a government headed by Jeremy Corbyn.