Tory Chancellor George Osbourne is coming to get you

It’s started: finally secure in their position of power, the Tories, with the support of the sell out Lib Dems, have declared war on the working class.

Today, the government announced it will hold an emergency budget on June 22nd. But, in an attempt to pre-empt the fightback, the ConDems are to announce £6 billion of public spending cuts next Monday.

We’re about to face cuts unlike anything  Britain has seen in modern history. Services that working class people depend on are going to be decimated.

-As a conservative estimate, 750, 000 public sector workers are likely to lose their jobs. Those still in work will face wage freezes and cuts.

-The government wants to make us all work longer, with the retirement age increased to 66 by 2016 for men and 2020 for women. This will hit poorer people far harder than the more well off, because studies have shown again and again that the working class have shorter life expectancies due to their living conditions under capitalism. Pensions for people who work in the public sector are also going to be shifted from a guaranteed amount to instead being gambled on the stock market, and what you get depends on how the bet goes.

-The most regressive taxes, which hit the working class hardest and leave the rich unscathed, are also to go up. Many predict that VAT will go up to 20%, making the essentials of life much more expensive in the shops. If you remember the Tories harping on about the “jobs tax” in the election, here’s what they’ve actually done in power: your boss won’t have to pay any extra contribution to your National Insurance, but you still will have it taken out of your pay!

They’ve also announced the establishment of an ‘Office of Budget Responsibility.’ In the past, the government has made forecasts of how much the economy will grow, and written the budget on that basis. Now, this new unelected committee of businessmen and “experts” will make the forecasts. The Chancellor will then have to write the budget based on their recommendations or account for why they haven’t done.

One of the first acts of Gordon Brown when he became Chancellor under Tony Blair in 1997 was to give the Bank of England the power to set interest rates, removing economic control from the elected government and putting it in the hands of unelected bankers. Thirteen years later, one of the first acts of the ConDem government has been to give another undemocratic committee huge power over the economic policy of the UK, and if we don’t like what we say we can’t vote them out. There’s also no guarantee that these “experts” will get their forecasts right: few capitalists saw that an economy based on debt and fictional accounting was about to collapse (unlike quite a few socialist economists.)

On June 22nd this battered old case will contain an economic SNUKE aimed at you

This is nothing short of a declaration of war by the ConDems. We always expected it of the Tories, but sadly the Lib Dems are also the ones making it possible. If you voted Lib Dem in the last election in the hope of getting a leftish alternative, then we’re sorry, but you got conned. They’ve abandoned the policies that made them popular in the campaign to get a slice of power.

The real question as we come under attack is this: what are we going to do about it? Do we sit back and take it, or do we stand up and fight? Many people aren’t happy about the cuts, but think there isn’t any choice but to make them to save the economy. This is a lie that has been peddled to us by the capitalists who want to take our money.

Immediate measures the government could take as an alternative to cuts include cancelling the illegal Trident nuclear weapons programme, which alone would save an amazing £130 billion. We should also immediately pull all British troops out of Afghanistan, saving both billions of pounds and thousands of lives.

Beyond this, we could stop the rich from being able to avoid paying their fair share of tax by increasing fairer taxes like corporation tax and cracking down on the loopholes that let them move their cash abroad. But more importantly, we’ve all given our money through taxes towards the billions that were used to bail out the banks. It’s time we had a government that took control of the hugely wealthy banks and financial institutions. Instead of that money sitting in accounts of the super rich, it could be used to transform our economy, moving us away from a carbon based economy that destroys the climate, building homes for the thousands that need them, and providing world class public services, for starters.

What should we do to put this people’s agenda on the table? We need anti-cuts committees in every city in Scotland. We need to have mass actions against the emergency budget on June 22nd, and next Monday as well if possible. And, crucially, we need to be spreading the message to everyone that there is an alternative to the ConDem war on the working class.

Tomorrow night if you’re in Glasgow the Scottish Socialist Party is holding a meeting to discuss how we begin our counter attack. Come along and help by giving your views. It’s at 7.30, in the Piper Bar on the corner of George Square.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 17th, 2010 at 2:12 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.