Alex Gordon, former president of Britain's National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, told Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear Monday that the resignation of two key players in the British government may bring on an early general election.
"We have had the resignation of the secretary of state responsible for Britain leaving the European Union, David Davis, and in the last few hours, we've had the resignation of the British Foreign Secretary, a man whose trademark is his political ambition. This is somebody who has waited and waited until he felt the moment was right to stick a dagger in the Prime Minister [Theresa May]. The Tories' party is very good at internal coup," Gordon noted. Tories are an old nickname for the Conservative Party, a right-wing party in the UK whose leader is May.
"What's going to play out now is a Shakespearean tragedy where we will see who turns up eventually as leader of the Conservative Party. For us, people in this country struggling with austerity and policies of cutting public spending, which this government has made its trademark, this brings about a real possibility of an early election and the election of a Labour government with a socialist leadership. There's going to be a lot of slips and pitfalls between now and that potential outcome, but it's a moment of potential great opportunity that we are looking at," Gordon explained.
Britain's opposition leader, Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn, tweeted Sunday that May would be unable to stick to her obligations pertaining to Brexit.
In the tweet, the head of the Labour Party accused May of being more interested in holding on to power than trying to meet the interests of ordinary Britons amid the ongoing government standoff.
On Monday, Johnson slammed the current approach to Brexit negotiations with the EU, underlining that "we have postponed crucial decisions, including the preparations for no-deal Brexit," Sputnik reported Monday.
"Brexit should be about opportunity and hope. It should be a chance to do things differently, to be more nimble and dynamic, and to maximize the particular advantages of the UK as an open, outward-looking global economy," Johnson's resignation letter, which was made public, states. "That dream is dying, suffocated by needless self-doubt… It now seems that the opening bid of our negotiations involves accepting that we are not actually going to be able to make our own laws."
Similarly, Davis cited May's policy on Brexit as his reason for resigning. "In my view, the inevitable consequence of the proposed policies will be to make the supposed control by Parliament illusory rather than real," Davis wrote in his resignation letter.
On Monday, Health Minister Jeremy Hunt was appointed as the UK's new foreign secretary, replacing the resigned Johnson.
However, Gordon didn't think Johnson was ready to quit politics just yet. He warned that the former London mayor might become May's next challenger.
"There is the possibility of Johnson becoming the next Tories leader," Gordon told Radio Sputnik.
"He has certainly invested a lot of time cultivating supporters in the back benches of the Tories party where he is undeniably promising [those supporters] jobs under his potential future administration. However, I don't think there is very much a chance of Johnson becoming prime minister. He would not be able to command support of the country in the general election," Gordon said.
"He is highly intelligent and witty, but he is extremely right-wing and would rip the mask off the Conservative Party, which has been so carefully constructed in the last 10 to 15 years by previous Conservative leaders who sought to position the party as a socially liberal, center-ground party in order to triangulate and win the votes of the central ground," he continued.
"Johnson is someone who is extremely divisive. The crisis going on in the Tories' party is polarizing politics in Britain. It's creating a dynamic that is going to lead to an early general election. If there is a general election, there is going to be overwhelming demand, I believe, from British voters for changing the government to sweep out the Conservatives and bring in the Labour government, which is led by the most left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn," Gordon explained.
