Labour: no real alternative


Steve Score

Millions of people are furious with this government. Their living standards have been crushed and their services eroded. This year’s pre-election Labour Party conference was an opportunity to enthuse those people to vote Labour. They failed to do so because they provide no real alternative.

Miliband in his speech raised a number of ‘goals’, including halving the number of people on low pay, “restoring the dream of home ownership” by doubling the number of first time buyers, increasing the number of apprenticeships and creating a million high tech jobs including in ‘green’ industries. In particular he focussed on the NHS, which he knows has massive support and is currently being dismantled.

But even these insufficient promises are not going to be met unless, as with any capitalist government, they are forced to by a mass movement. They have repeatedly pledged to stick to the Tories’ overall spending plans. So any undertakings are just window dressing for a government that will continue with austerity.

Much of the press coverage was about Miliband’s mistake of forgetting to mention the government spending deficit and what he would do about it. The Tories and Lib Dems made a lot of this to prove Labour would ‘spend too much’. But the text, released to the press in advance, shows he clearly would make cuts and plans to “balance the books”, hoping to eliminate the current £75 billion deficit.

Tough decisions?

Ed Balls in his shadow chancellor’s speech also talked about not ‘flinching’ from tough decisions and “not making promises we cannot afford”. He did promise to raise the top rate of income tax by a meagre 5%, but at the same time said he would cut corporation tax. On top of this he announced that child benefit, already cut in value over a number of years, will be held down for a year longer than even the Tories had planned, hitting working class families.

Even Miliband’s assurance on the NHS, which sounds good at first, with promises of more staff to give them “time to care”, is a meagre £2.5 billion more. This is just over 2% of the annual budget for the NHS, and given the increasing needs of the health system is totally inadequate. In the first four months of this year the NHS was already half a billion in deficit on its current budget, including 86 out of 147 foundation trusts in the red.

Funding for this is meant to come from a “mansion tax” on houses valued at over £2 million, a small amount from tobacco companies and £1.1 billion from reducing certain types of tax avoidance. This is paltry compared to the £160 billion a year the PCS union points out it is either ‘evaded’ or ‘avoided’ by big business and the rich.

Another headline pledge was an £8 an hour minimum wage, but delayed until 2020. Taking into account inflation it doesn’t amount to much. If the current minimum wage increases at the rate of 2.5% per year, roughly what it has on average for the last few years, it would be £7.54 anyway. It is far short of the immediate £10 an hour campaigned for by the Socialist Party, bakers union and others and now adopted, at least on paper, by the TUC.

Trying to catch the mood of anger against the super-rich, Miliband and other leading Labour figures use phrases attacking them from time to time: “People before profit” is one that crops up again and again. But there isn’t an atom of real socialism in their programme. In the railways, in the NHS and elsewhere their attack on Tory privatisation does not amount to a promise that it wouldn’t continue under Labour.

They will not renationalise the railways, they will just allow the public sector to compete for contracts with private firms. They do not plan to massively expand council housing. They will not reverse the cuts that the Tories have made in public services. The list goes on. They are rooted in capitalism, and cannot provide the socialist solutions that are necessary for working class people.

NHS

Appealing to voters by saying ‘only they will defend the NHS and stop privatisation’ for example is rich considering the record of the last Labour government. The process of dismantling the NHS was accelerated under the Blair and Brown governments. The ‘internal market’, Private Finance Initiative (PFI), Foundation Trusts, private companies moving into take over parts of the NHS, all of these were part of it.

Labour health minister, Patricia Hewitt, farmed out NHS work to Bupa and other companies on the grounds that it would reduce waiting times. After leaving the post she became a “special advisor” to Cinven, the private equity company that bought Bupa’s UK hospitals, and in 2013 became a board member of Bupa!

The same process happened elsewhere in the public sector: PFI under different names, Academy schools etc. They introduced university tuition fees at the initial “nominal” level of £1,000 a year, later increasing them to £3,000 and opening the way to £9,000 under the Tories now. It is no accident that Miliband didn’t mention tuition fees in his speech, as Labour has refused to reverse this policy.

All of this leaves aside issues such as taking us into wars like Afghanistan and Iraq. There is no evidence that a future Labour government would act in any way differently. The only difference being that it would face a far greater capitalist economic crisis than the last one.

Miliband, in his conference speech, referred to the disillusionment that millions have with the main political parties: “People in England who think all politics is rubbish. People in Scotland who wanted to leave our country because they felt they had nothing to lose.”

No answers

But Labour does not have the answer to that. The massive working class revolt that was the Scottish referendum Yes vote of 45% reflected a politicisation: Not ‘politics is rubbish’ but the ‘main political parties’ are rubbish! Where voters, previously accused of apathy saw that a vote could actually change something, they broke the record turnout in the referendum.

The same anger exists everywhere, but not expressed in the same way. In England, some of the anger of working class people, because of the lack of a mass alternative, has even flowed to the right wing pro-big business Ukip. What is desperately needed is a party that fights for the interests of working class people, one that puts a real alternative to capitalist austerity. As a step towards building this new mass workers’ party, the Socialist Party takes part in the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) which challenges in elections.

Given how much this government is hated, Labour ought to easily win the next election. But that is far from guaranteed, because for many their record and their policies are not seen as significantly different.

They may still win, not because of, but despite their policies. Many will vote for them as the ‘lesser evil’. This is understandable, but unless we create a new mass working class force then it will be ‘business as usual’ after the next election. We are confident that on the basis of experience of the next government more and more people we draw the conclusion that a new party is needed.

TUSC: a voice for working class people

This letter from Dave Nellist, chair of TUSC, was published in The Guardian.

Ian Martin (I can’t remember a more spineless opposition, 24 September) sums up the feeling of millions of working-class people. Millions are desperate to get rid of the current government, yet at the same time depressed because they don’t believe a Labour government would mark a real change. As Ian says: “Labour’s message to the electorate is clear – austerity is the new reality.”

To get rid of the Tories many, like Ian is clearly considering doing, will vote Labour in the general election next year. Others will abstain from the elections in disgust, or even vote for the right wing stockbrokers of Ukip to express their anger. But trade unionists and socialists cannot continue to accept a choice between parties whose policies are so similar you can barely get a fag-paper between them. That only leaves the road open to Ukip and its ilk.

That is why the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC – to which Ian refers) was co-founded by the late Bob Crow to begin to build an electoral voice for working-class people. In May 2014, TUSC fielded 560 local election candidates in nearly 90 towns and cities, in the widest socialist challenge to Labour for 60 years.

In May 2015 – for both the general and the local elections – we are going to up our game, aiming to stand even more widely, to ensure austerity is not unchallenged at the ballot box.

TUSC

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is an electoral alliance that stands candidates against all cuts and privatisation. It involves the RMT transport workers’ union, leading members of other trade unions including the PCS, NUT and POA, as well as the Socialist Party and other left and anti-cuts groups and individuals.

www.tusc.org.uk

  • “What will a Labour victory in 2015 mean for the 99%?” will be one of many discussions taking place at Socialism2014, 8 & 9 November in London.