Austerity is Labour’s choice
JVL Introduction
Labour has made a political choice and is choosing austerity as Grace Blakeley, writing in Tribune, makes clear.
Corporate greed, not workers’ demands, has been the cause of the rampant inflation we have experienced.
Just look at big oils’ record profits in 2022 when Chevron, Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP and Total raked in £195 billion in profits. And UK’s energy suppliers are set to extract £1.74 billion worth of excess profit in the next twelve months.
Yet Reeves and Starmer’s response is to rule out any increase in the top rate of income tax, in capital gains tax and any wealth tax!
No wonder Labour is seeing a flood of unsolicited donations from the City.
Back in February the Independent headlined a story: “Hammer blow for Tories as ex-Cameron skills tsar declares: Labour is now the party of business”
On the nail then and even more so now.
This article was originally published by Tribune on Tue 29 Aug 2023. Read the original here.
Austerity is Labour’s choice
It’s simple: Starmer in 10 Downing Street can end child hunger, fix public services and give workers a pay rise. Ruling out these ambitions by refusing to tax wealth is a conscious political choice.
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The Tribune article is very informative but in my opinion it misses the essential point. If it were possible for Labour to make a “political choice” in one direction, then it should be feasible for it to make any political choice. That is not the case. Choices are constrained both by circumstances and by political outlook. Labour is wedded to capitalism and will do all in its power to ensure that capitalism overcomes any problems it has. To resolve the present impasse of inflation from a capitalist point of view requires a frontal assault on the living standards of working class people while the rich get even richer. Labour under Starmer is happy for that to happen as it is the second eleven of capitalism brought into office when the first eleven, the Tories, are discredited.
seems that Reeves and Starmer are the new Tory party Sad
Call me cycnical, but the Labour Party has ever been nothing more than the iron fist of capitalism in a velvet glove. Even during the years following 1945, with nationalisation and the introduction of a National Health Service, Attlee was pursuing the policy of developing the atomic bomb with the USA. The British Intelligence services were actively engaged in undermining regimes in the new “independence” movements across the former colonies of the British Empire. All Labour governments have actively engaged in establishing US military bases across the UK, making the country a prime target in any nuclear war. Economically, Labour has become the asset manager for dirty money through London and a broker for all the big multi-nationals. More now than ever, we see the true face of Labour dedicated to preserve a system designed to perpetuate inequality and the power of the 1%. It should be no surprise to any of us that the figure head of the iron fist has laid bare the true raison detre` of the party. We need to fight back and support comrades being victimised, discriminated against and expelled for challenging the leaderships support for apartheid and imperialist foreign policies. The current leadership has the rubber stamp of Capital and will continue to bulldoze opposition and ride roughshod over human rights to achieve what it wants. It has one objective – to protect the status-quo. Why are we shocked? I`m not proposing we lay down ready for the ideological bulldozer, but consider how we organise and move forward?
A lot of Ng’s criticism of post-war Labour is relevant – though negative in terms of also ignoring the social progress made, the ongoing links – since the Ghandi era resistance – to further anti-colonial movements and keeping Britain out of Vietnam.
Our era’s problems go beyond the problems of simple left-right internal Labour politics. Across the globe, starting with the US, there has been a major problem with corporate bribery inverting the economic policies of ‘people’s parties’. The Democrats’ policies from Roosevelt to Carter were welfarist and public spending interventionist. This was inverted by the Clinton insurgency who cut provision – effectively finally ending Lyndon-Johnson’s Big Society program – to preside over a Reaganite economy with all the problems of poverty and escalating prison populations this involved.
Investment banker Emmanuel Macron and cronies attempts to do the same in the French Socialist Party – during Hollande’s time – had less success but caused the Socialist Party long term electoral harm. Macron then jumped ship.
In Britain New Labour slavishly followed the model of the Clinton insurgency, again inverting the economic program of the Party, with negative social consequences redistributing to the rich – inverting the public service provision of Attlee and Wilson – and as in other countries doing massive damage to the Party voter base.
Having seen money enter these Parties, more carpet-baggers arrived in pursuit of free money and free directorships. These figures would then pretend with corporate media help, to be the real identity of their Parties and further entrench the betrayals.
The main function of the SNP has been the drive towards Independence. Similarly to other Parties across the globe this function has become bogged down as carpet-baggers have entered the Party, and served big money interests that desire Independence be blocked.
These are not simple internal divisions but money inverting the fundamental function of democratic parties.