Take the wealth off the super-rich
Ryan Aldred, Socialist Party National Committee
At the time of writing, we don’t know exactly what will be in Labour’s Budget. But Keir Starmer has told us it will be full of ‘tough decisions’.
The Labour government has already declared war on pensioners and parents alike, with winter fuel payments facing the chopping block and the two-child benefit cap being maintained, which plunges 1.1 million children into even deeper poverty.
There’s money enough when it comes to supplying ‘military aid’ to escalating conflicts around the world, and yet when it comes to keeping pensioners warm and children from going hungry we are faced with the “harsh light of fiscal responsibility”.
Despite Labour’s promise of “change”, working-class people will still struggle to keep their heads above water with rising rents, skyrocketing energy bills and an ongoing cost-of-living crisis.
A government that really wanted to ‘support working people’ could immediately repeal Tory strike vote thresholds rather than kicking the can down the road, and scrap the rest of the anti-union laws too. A government serious about ‘change’ could bring all of rail, mail, water and our energy companies back into public ownership rather than leaving them in the hands of multimillionaire shareholders. A government keen to ‘get Britain building’ could choose to construct council homes to meet need.
Britain is the sixth-richest economy in the world. There’s plenty of money sloshing around at the top, even though it doesn’t feel like it for the rest of us. For example, Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, has already announced profits of £1.1 billion in the first half of 2024, after record profits last year.
If the obscene wealth in the hands of the elite were in public hands we could properly fund our ailing NHS, inject life-saving cash into our decimated local services and turn around the growing deficit developing in higher education. Starmer can stuff his ‘tough decisions’, we say: Make the super-rich pay!
The workers’ and trade union movement has to fight against every attempt by this Labour government to make working-class people pay. By taking strike action, like London Underground workers fighting back against bosses’ attacks, overseen by London Labour mayor Sadiq Khan. By organising protests, like the students fighting for ‘Funding not Fees’ for universities. And by taking steps towards building a party of our own – a new mass workers’ party that fights for socialist change.
