How can you tell when a Blairite is lying? Their lips are moving… It’s an oldie, but Rachel Reeves has shown why it’s still a goodie. In the days before the Budget on 26 November, she pledged not to “return Britain back to austerity”.
But austerity is very much alive. It stalks our public services, in the NHS embodied in stressed-out, underpaid staff treating patients in corridors, with draughty windows, crumbling ceilings, and queuing ambulances.
Labour’s Budget changed none of this. Far from killing austerity, it contains cuts “equivalent to 88% of the average annual cuts made during the peak austerity years”, according to the Resolution Foundation.
By 2030-31, the £6 billion in cuts to non-protected government departments set out in the Budget will leave real per-person spending 22% below where it was in 2009-10.
Starmer and Reeves are forced to deny their austerity plans because of the huge anger among workers and young people. How can we turn that anger into action that can stop the austerity juggernaut destroying more lives?
Collective action is needed. In 2022-23 we saw how strike action pushed the Tory austerity plans back.
Trade union members should again demand action from their leaders. They need to demand that the vote at the Trades Union Congress in September for a national trade union-led demo against austerity is not left on a piece of paper. Set the date and launch the campaign to mobilise the over six million trade unionists and their families.
Members can move motions in their branches for discussion on how their unions can develop a political alternative to Labour that actually reflects the union’s interests. (See https://tinyurl.com/TUMotions for model motions in ten different unions.)
Students must also get organised on campus to fight the fee hike promised by Reeves.
And if you want to fight for this strategy, join the Socialist Party.