THREE dramatic acts of hara-kiri shook up British politics over the weekend. There should have been four.

First, Ukip leader Nigel Farage stood down as party leader after failing to win Thanet South. But rather than disembowel himself with a sharp sword, he tickled his belly with a soft feather. Having sacked himself, he will now take time to consider whether to apply for the vacant position in September.

This charade typifies his party's cavalier approach to policies and political representation. In the election campaign just gone, Ukip candidates presented themselves as all things to all people in order to mask their fundamentally neoliberal agenda. 

But while they failed to win more than one seat at Westminster, Ukip members will relish the prospect of an 'in-or-out' referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union.

Although Farage and his followers reflect minor sections of British big and small business in their opposition to the EU and its largely mythical "social Europe," most City of London and other monopoly corporations will be campaigning to remain inside. They want Prime Minister David Cameron to negotiate various dispensations from EU regulation, preferring little or no regulation of business activities at all. However, they also know that EU treaties and institutions are designed fundamentally to protect capitalist power from democracy.

Which means, tragically, that unless the labour movement and the left deepen their understanding of the pro-big business and anti-democratic EU, Ukip and the Tory right wing will be the main forces campaigning for Britain's withdrawal in the 2017 referendum campaign. 

As the French experience shows, once the left abandons a class-based and popular opposition to the EU, the vacant ground is taken over by very a grateful far right and its xenophobic politics.

The second resignation came courtesy of Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, brightening the gloom for everyone who believes in honesty and social justice. Having hijacked his party for neoliberal policies and then posed as the real opposition to the Tories before jumping into the sack with them in 2010, he and his "Orange Book" neoliberals have driven their party to the edge of the abyss.

Surely the Tories will reward Clegg with a generous divorce settlement, perhaps a lucrative post in his beloved EU or Nato?

Third onto his sword was Ed Miliband. Even as his entrails still quivered in the sunlight, New Labour relics Mandelson, Reid, Clarke and then Blair himself were preparing the ground with media help for a more pro-big business, pro-rich successor.

Whatever the reasons for Labour's defeat, it did not happen because millions of voters were worried by the prospect of a mansion tax, lower gas and electricity bills or the loss of "non-dom" tax status.

Now that the Labour leadership contest in already underway, it should focus on the need for policies and activism which take the fight to the Tories. 

Whoever replaces Miliband and the late unlamented Ed Balls will be flayed by Britain's right-wing media for departing even one inch from ruling class orthodoxy. So they might as well challenge the myths behind austerity, privatisation, the EU and nuclear weapons instead of capitulating to them with quibbling reservations. 

And the hara-kiri that should have been? Please step forward that champion of austerity, privatisation, the EU and nuclear weapons, Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy. Step forward. Please.