Labour should accept the deal and direct the outcome by winning power in a general election.

The Labour Party need to stop its procrastination on a GE there are millions who are suffering under this Tory regime right now! Labour are failing the poor and needy by not grasping the opportunity to act.

The deal empowers parliament not the Tory Party to define workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections. Labour should not be opposing this deal. The Labour Party should be working on how to get elected. After which the Labour Party can decide what direction this country takes, how workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections are managed and built into law, only via the ballot box will Labour be able to define what this deal means to the working class, not Johnson. Or do you think we can’t win elections? If we are not prepared to grasp the reins of power and Govern this country, by what right should we determine the laws governing this society?

If Labour feel they need more guarantees on workers rights then it should demand an attachment to the withdraw agreement to guarantee a common rule-book on ‘workers rights’ in exchange for its support. But we should also bear in mind the UK workers rights far exceed the minimum requirements on workers rights the EU legislate.

Labour should be the party that makes the case for change. that should start with a written constitution bringing the UK into line with the modern world.  The UK is one of the only countries in the world without a written constitution. We need a clear constitution with laws that protect citizens, our worker’s rights health, education and welfare. a constitution that establishes a contract between the People and the the Government that cannot be used  like a political football.

This Government is a weak government that does not have the ability to create legislation or law. It has been defeated at every turn. This Zombie government is just going through the motions it is an echo of a once-living animate object that no longer as the ability to function on any cognitive level. It needs to be put out of its miserable existence, this government needs to make way for a socialist Government lead by Jeremy Corbyn that can and will make a real difference to people’s lives.

It is an embarrassment that we are propping up the Tory Party we are in fact being accomplices to the devastation the ongoing Tory policies are causing the working class.

Jeremy Corbyn should stop with the outcries such as quote: “proposals risk triggering a race to the bottom on rights and protections: putting food safety at risk, cutting environmental standards and workers’ rights, and opening up our NHS to a takeover by US private corporations.

The biggest risk to the NHS is the very real trade deal that the EU has negotiated CETA but more so allowing the Tory Party to retain power and negotiate any future trade deal.

Jeremy Corbyn made virtually the same case against the EU.

The Labour Party really need to stop with the Hypocrisy and make its case for social and radical change that will bring about a fairer and more equal society. That change will never happen by backing the status quo.

You cannot make the case to just ditch this deal like Arch remainers within the Party are doing saying ‘it could’ or there is a ‘risk’ we want clear definitive reasons for or against not ‘could maybes and might happen’.

Let’s be absolutely honest minority governments do not change legislation on workers rights, environmental rights or any law. They neither have the mandate or power make any legislative difference. This minority government is being kept afloat by opposition parties that do not have the confidence to take the country forward.

The Labour Party need to stop procrastination on Brexit. There are millions who are suffering under this Tory regime right now Labour are failing the poor and needy by not grasping the opportunity to act. A general election must be and will be called after this deal is passed.

BREAKING MONOPOLY CAPITALISM

21st century socialist do not want to bring the entire system crashing down. But we do want what is public to be under public ownership and that means 100 per cent state-owned not some bodged workaround that keeps us within EU rules.

Labour’s domestic policy would take us into power where we can set the course and direction for the UK with a socialist agenda.

But what is true is that if the EU prides itself on having a pillow holding up its institutions of competition then it’s also true that its very foundation is one of Monopoly capitalism

Public ownership of gas and electricity is a cherished aim of the Labour Party. For years under privatisation, the swindling of the consumer has gone hand-in-hand with outrageous profit-taking by the corporate giants, to the loss of the public purse. Far from helping customers through keen competition, the main effect of energy privatisation has been – like austerity – a redistribution of wealth from the have-nots to the well-to-do.

What a pity, therefore, that Labour cannot renationalise it! Britain is a member of the European Union and as such bound by the EU Treaties. Indeed, every British court is duty-bound to enforce every EU law in preference to any conflicting British statute. Under Article 106, the EU prohibits public monopolies exercising exclusive rights where this violates EU competition rules. The EU’s Court of Justice has interpreted Article 106 as giving private companies the right to argue before the national courts that services should continue to be open to private-sector competition. Nationalised services are prima facie suspect and must be analysed by the judiciary for their “necessity”. Thus the EU has given companies a legal right to run to court to scupper programmes of public ownership.

The fact that EU law has this effect may seem astonishing. Many on the Left seem unaware of it. Those fond of the EU tends to go into denial over it. Despite Greece, there is a tendency to displace the EU’s neoliberalism onto the nascent CETA deal. CETA that really does open the doors to the US and foreign companies who will be able to sue our government if they do not get contracts with the NHS. Built-in ISDS ultimately will see This is a reality, not some hypothetical trade deal that could be stopped if only the Labour Party would take us into a general election and remove the Tories.

First of all, CETA is not ‘just’ a trade deal. In fact, getting rid of tariffs and quotas is not the main point of CETA at all.

Indeed, if this deal were really about really just about swapping tariff-free maple syrup for Cheddar cheese, there would be little controversy. But it is not. It is about empowering corporations, undermining sensible regulations and locking in privatisation.

Perhaps most dangerous of all are the so-called ‘standstill’ and ‘ratchet’ clauses in the agreement. Put simply, these clauses bind both sides to keep levels of market liberalisation at least where they were at the time of agreement and lock in future privatisation in any given sector.

For public services like the NHS, the consequences of this are not difficult to imagine. Future governments will be prevented from reversing privatisation in the NHS. Similarly, any move to remunicipalize energy or renationalize the railways could be kiboshed by CETA.

So whether it’s Jeremy Corbyn, Jeremy Hunt or even Jeremy Kyle in Downing Street, the UK government will have its hands tied on the levels of privatisation of public services.

And then there are the ‘corporate courts’. This is what gives CETA its teeth. These courts allow corporations to sue governments for any government action that violates their ‘legitimate expectations’. This has led to cases like the one in which Veolia tried to sue Egypt over raising the minimum wage for workers in Alexandria, and Vattenfall forcing Germany to back down over demands that its coal-fired power station comply with stricter pollution standards.

Yet the consensus that EU law really does preclude renationalisation is pretty overwhelming. Legal scholars regard the jurisprudence surrounding Article 106 as “revolutionary”, since it reverses “the decades-old presumption…that Member States are free in principle to determine their preferred system of property ownership”. Even Polly Toynbee endlessly reiterated that EU competition law would make NHS privatisation irreversible, though curiously this didn’t dampen her pro-EU ardour in the long term.

Furthermore, there is scant prospect of Article 106 ever being repealed. To do so would require the common accord of all the governments of the EU Member States. You’d only need a single neoliberal government to veto such a Treaty change.

For good measure, from the 1990s onwards there was a surge of EU liberalisation directives opening up gas, electricity, transport, telecommunications etc to private sector involvement. Fat chance of a Labour Britain getting these repealed either: to do so would require a “qualified majority” of Member States.

Labour therefore faces a choice: dump the EU or dump renationalisation. Whatever choice it makes, the fact that EU membership outlaws renationalisation needs to be fully understood throughout the Party and the labour movement.

To break the monopoly capitalism that inhibits a socialist agenda can only be done outside the EU. The EU whose very foundations are built on profit and capitalism and work’s against public ownership, imposing competition rules making Mail, Rail and utilities impossible to fully nationalise.

Labour must give more than an excuse of this deal could... or there is a risk that…

The Labour party need to demand a general election, with our positively winning domestic policies and a clear vision to define workers’ rights, environmental standards and consumer protections and the workable nationalisation of rail, mail and utilities the Party will be in a position either to control the outcome of this new trade deal and be the government in power that negotiates our future trade deals, be it with the EU or US

This deal is not perfect, how could it be? It comes from two imperfect institutes that of the EU and UK government. But what this deal offers is a way forward that can bring with it a chance to heal for a broken nation.

Labour should not dismiss this deal out of hand but grasp the opportunity to bring about the radical change we all demand.