UK
We must resist a ‘permanent austerity’ consensus
By Matt Willgress, Labour Assembly Against Austerity
The upcoming general election takes place in the middle of the deepest cost-of-living crisis in generations, which has become a permanent cost-of-living emergency for millions.
Councils are going bust. Poverty and inequality are spiralling. Homelessness is out of control. There are regular warnings that unemployment could be set to jump dramatically. And people’s living costs just keep going up and up while wages and benefits fail to follow.
Yet there seems to be a collective denial of the depth of this social and humanitarian crisis across the front benches in Westminster.
This is extended to much of the so-called “mainstream media” which is more interested in stirring up division and hatred than shining a light on the misery suffered by the 18 per cent of our population in absolute poverty, for example.
In this increasingly desperate social context, it has been widely noted and realised by millions in recent years that the Tories are more interested in doing the bidding of their rich backers than our jobs and livelihoods — but what is becoming clearer by the week is also that the whole political Establishment seems intent on never-ending austerity.
On the Labour side of Parliament, this is reflected by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s increasingly conservative “fiscal framework,” which is working through to the abandonment or watering-down of policy after policy that could start tackling the cost-of-living crisis, from public ownership of energy and water to the ditching of popular green investment policies, and much more besides.
In a recent BBC interview Reeves committed to an injection of cash into public services that would see an extra 40,000 NHS appointments a week, and an additional 6,500 teachers in state schools and 13,000 police and community support officers.
This will be welcomed by teachers, health workers and others, especially after 14 years of Tory misrule.
In the same interview she said: “There is not going to be a return to austerity under a Labour government.”
But an objective assessment of how deep the crises we face are shows that the approach she spoke of is not even a sticking plaster to what damage austerity has done to public services across the board.
We need to look at, for example, how both Labour and the Tories have absolutely no plans to even start in any serious way to reverse the vicious starving of local government funding since 2010.
And when discussing whether austerity and the cuts this means will in reality continue under Labour’s current agenda, context — and what is not being mentioned or committed to — also matters.
Just days into the campaign, Keir Starmer talked of how abolishing the two-child benefit cap “is not our policy for a reason [as] we are not going to be able to afford to scrap it because of the damage the Tories have done.”
In other words, Labour will maintain a flagship Tory austerity policy that condemns millions to the poverty.
And the day before Reeves’s aforementioned interview, Unite felt compelled to issue a press release warning people of the latest watering-down of the new deal for workers.
In it, general secretary Sharon Graham said that “the again revised New Deal for Working People has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. The number of caveats and get-outs means it is in danger of becoming a bad bosses’ charter.”
She added: “Working people expect Labour to be their voice. They need to know that Labour will not back down to corporate profiteers determined to maintain the status quo of colossal profits at the expense of everyone else. The country desperately needs a Labour government, but the party must show it will stick to its guns on improving workers’ rights.”
The reason that this key policy area is a continual point of contention between the unions and party leadership was summed up recently by John McDonnell when he wrote that “still standing at the moment, one policy that is genuinely transformative is the New Deal for Workers, in that it does shift an element of power away from the powerful.”
It is because of this that “there continues an intense lobbying campaign from elements inside and outside the party to water it down.”
On all other key issues so far, Labour’s leadership has moved to the position of the bosses and away from that of the unions.
It’s good then — and significant — to see unions resisting these efforts from the ruling class, and what is needed is further resistance on other issues where Labour’s conservative approach will mean continued misery for millions, including on the need to scrap the two-child benefit cap and introduce free school meals, to give just two examples.
On the left, we can’t let a new consensus for “permanent austerity” be formed by the ruling class. It is the route to economic and social catastrophe, and a further rise of far-right politics in the years to come.
We therefore need to urgently put forward — and mobilise now for — policies that could both actually address the depth of the crises we face, and provide the basis for action in our workplaces and communities in the months and years ahead.
As part of this effort, and as a contribution to discussion across the left, labour and social movements on the programme we need — we are renewing efforts to get further support for the Workers Can’t Wait demands online, including these 10 measures:
• Britain needs a pay rise — National Minimum Wage raised to at least £15 an hour for all; the pay rise public-sector workers are asking for; increase statutory sick pay to a real living wage for all from day one.
• A social security system to end poverty — scrap the two-child benefit cap, reverse the universal credit cut and extend the uplift to legacy benefits; boost and inflation-proof benefits; for a minimum income guarantee.
• Control costs — energy price freezes now at April 2022 rates, cap rents and basic food costs.
• Stop the corporate rip-off — public ownership of energy, water, transport, broadband and mail to bring bills down and end fuel poverty. Lower public transport costs. Higher taxes on profits and the super-rich. Open the books — back the workers’ commission on profiteering.
• Extra resources to create universal, comprehensive public services — stop cuts and privatisation; save our NHS — for a national care service; properly fund local government. Tax wealth to fund our public services.
• Homes for all — no evictions or repossessions; tackle the homelessness emergency; fix the housing crisis with a mass council housebuilding programme.
• For the right to food — enshrine the right to food in law; universal free school meals all year; for a national food service.
• Decent jobs for all — for full employment; end insecure working and ban zero-hours contracts; for the right to flexible work on workers’ not bosses’ terms.
• Defend and extend our right to organise — reverse anti-trade union laws and repeal the draconian anti-protest laws; ban fire and rehire; for full union rights to bargain for better pay and conditions.
• End austerity for good — invest in our future with a Green New Deal; end the dependency on fossil fuels and soaring oil and gas prices; for a massive investment in renewables, green infrastructure and jobs; insulate buildings to bring bills down.
As a whole, these provide a clear, popular and radical framework that genuinely could tackle the depth of the crises we face and would shift power from the few to the many.
Alongside building support for these demands, moving forward, we also need a an urgent discussion on how to co-ordinate, renew and strengthen all those initiatives that seek to address the cost-of-living emergency and support struggles for an end to austerity for good. This will become all the more important under the likely Starmer-led government from July.
Please add your name in support of Workers Can’t Wait, take the policies to labour movements and community groups for endorsement and discussion, and keep mobilising against austerity — and for investment, not cuts.
- Matt Willgress is the national organiser for the Labour Assembly Against Austerity.
- Join over 20,000 others and add your name in support of the Workers Can’t Wait demands.
- You can follow the Labour Assembly Against Austerity on Facebook and Twitter/X.
- This article was originally published by The Morning Star on 7 June, 2024.
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