Johnson loyalists are dismissing the latest episode of “Partygate”, with police imposing 20 fixed penalty notices.  For the Johnsonites, it’s irrelevant: Covid is “over” and if government officials broke lockdown rules despite having made them, this is now completely overshadowed by the Ukraine war.

    As far as they’re concerned, Johnson has rebuilt his leadership: didn’t President Zelensky just say that he is “helping more” than other leaders in the “resistance against Russia”?

    Sure, Johnson was one of the first to raise his fist, proclaiming “Glory to Ukraine” - as if there is “glory” in this bloody war!  But it’s obvious he was looking ahead, precisely, to today.

    But in reality, he’s no different from all the other NATO “leaders”.  They’re all delighted to fuel this slaughter, with shipments of light arms and anti-tank weapons, claiming, like the desperate Ukrainian victims of Putin’s brutal invasion, that “Ukraine can win”.  And never mind the cost - if indeed a Ukrainian “victory” was possible in the first place.

    No, the only winners in this war are the West’s weapons merchants; overlords of a military-industrial complex, who now have billions more in profits from state purchases - at their taxpayers’ expense, of course...  And let’s not forget the wild West’s oil and gas billionaire ”oligarchs”...  BP, Shell, Total, Elf, Exxon Mobil, Aramco...  They were already cashing in on post-Covid demand.  Now they’ll have billions more.  And so far nobody, not least the working classes are taking this money off them...

    Yet at the same time a new “pandemic” - of poverty - is hitting.  It’s already locked down millions in the poor countries.  In Somalia and Afghanistan, babies have malnutrition.  And this isn’t due to the Ukraine war, but long-standing imperialist policy, led by the US of A!

    That said, the Ukraine-Russia war is causing the cost of wheat (and fertilizers) to soar, threatening further the already-crisis-ridden Middle East and North Africa.

    And it’s not as if the cost of feeding the starving couldn’t be borne fully by the rich imperialist countries and their multi-billionaire oil, gas, weapons, etc., industrial giants. Just as the rise in the cost of living in all the rich countries could be reversed right now!

    The reason it’s not done, is down to the “choice” of governments, of politicians, a choice based entirely on what they are really there to represent under this system: the interests, not of the poor and working class, but of the capitalist class.

    Yes, this is the “Big Lie” of western “democracy”, which today is again being counterposed to the very obviously undemocratic “autocracy” in Russia.  It’s a lie which the working class can no longer afford.  Not in Russia, not in Ukraine and not in Britain, either.  It’s only by taking over power itself that the working class can begin to change the world - in the interests of all.

The myth of “democracy for all” - in this best of all possible worlds for the class of rich only - has been clearly exposed by the fate of the 800 P&O workers who were sacked without notice on the 17th March.

    Because despite all the hot air spouted in parliament on the Monday following, when a special session was entirely devoted to talking about this, they are still sacked!

    Tory government ministers, including the Transport Secretary himself, expressed their shock and “absolute fury” at P&O’s behaviour...  They demanded that the workers be reinstated in their jobs.  They called in P&O boss Peter Hebblethwaite (who admitted breaking the law) for cross-questioning at a Commons’ Transport Committee hearing...  and, concluded that, never mind the parent company, DP World’s big profits (or contract to run a Freeport), nothing can be done, because P&O faces “losses”?!!  This says it all, really about who is the real “boss” over the government!

    But Transport Secretary, Grant Shapps, keeps the illusion of “government power” and all-class democracy alive...  This Monday, he said the company's boss had been given "one final opportunity" to re-employ sacked staff on their previous salaries.  He wrote a letter to Peter Hebblethwaite, again “urging him to reverse his decision to sack 800 seafarers”.  And if “Peter” didn’t do it, he threatened that the government’s law, making it illegal for ferry firms to pay less than the minimum wage, would be “likely to force him to do so”..!

    Well, the law isn’t yet passed.  But if it was, all it would do is to make P&O (and other shipping companies) pay crews more than the £1.80 we were told replacement Indian crews were getting!  Which won’t help the 800 seafarers who were summarily dismissed two weeks ago to get “their” wages and conditions back!  Nor indeed their pensions, which are also threatened.

    In the meantime workers and activists from the RMT union are trying to mount protests and pickets at the ports concerned.  But all that the RMT leaders, who have the means to organise a general transport strike (they’re meant to be balloting all railway workers for a national wage strike!) can think of doing is to demand that the government intervenes!  Yes, never mind that it just proved who its real master is, behind the mask of “democracy”...