The background to the 2023 National Congress is economic crisis, a weak government and, above all, dramatically intensified class struggle...

Internationally, capitalism has entered a new phase of crisis. The IMF predicts that 2023 will be “tougher” for the world economy even than 2022, a year when global stocks and bonds lost more than $30 trillion, the heaviest losses in asset markets since the 2008 worldwide financial crisis...

Against the background of this increasingly fractious and unstable world situation, British capitalism is in a particularly parlous situation compared to other economically developed countries. The 2023 Financial Times annual survey of economists found that more than four fifths of them expect the UK to fare worse than other G7 economies, with GDP shrinking for all or most of 2023...

In Britain, like in other countries, capitalism’s fault lines have been partially obscured by ‘cheap money’. Debt – corporate, government and personal – is at huge levels. As interest rates have gone up, however, that situation is becoming less sustainable...

The problems of British capitalism place real limits on the room to manoeuvre for any capitalist government, but especially the current Tory government, which has lost virtually all authority, and is riven with splits. Sunak and Hunt’s coming to power represented a certain limited stabilisation, at least compared to the Truss debacle...

How strong is that pressure from below at the moment? Already, over six months of struggle, an enormous amount has been learned by a new generation, particularly by the workers who are at the forefront of the strikes. That does not mean, however, that no marks of the previous decades remain...

It is not yet clear when the next general election will be. It is possible that the Sunak government will manage to stagger on until the last possible moment, with the election towards the end of 2024. However, it could fall apart in office well before then, resulting in a general election this year...

For the big majority of the capitalist class, a Labour government would now be a huge relief. There are several reasons why. They include Starmer’s intention to increase alignment with the EU, for example by adopting the same standards for food and agricultural products as the EU, which would have the potential to at least partially ease the problems of the Northern Ireland protocol...

Nonetheless, what we do after a general election and also, vitally, in the run-up to it, can make a considerable difference to the speed of developments afterwards. At this stage we are virtually alone in raising the need for the working class to build a new party to represent its interests. On picket lines this idea usually gets a very enthusiastic response...

The present strikes are only the latest experience that is forging the outlook of the new generation. Growing up in the era of the post-2008 Great Recession, they have only experienced capitalism in crisis. Then came the pandemic. Opinion polls show that voters reaching 40 today are considerably more left wing than when they were 20, a reversal of the ‘tradition’ of moving to the right with age...