Fight for socialist change

Young people across Europe are taking to the streets. Education, housing, war, corruption… the specific ignition varies. But all are fuelled by resentment that we are constantly asked to pay for crisis with public service cuts and rising prices. Meanwhile the super-rich capitalist bosses get richer.

Andy Burnham says he wants to give us ‘breathing room’ in the Autumn Budget, but this parliament is set to see the worst fall in living standards for more than 60 years.

Cuts to pensions, planned attacks on benefits, continued underfunding of public services – it might be delivered with different vibes, but Burnham’s government isn’t proving itself to be much different in substance to the wretched status quo.

The rich continue to get rich at our expense. HSBC has made $29.2 billion in profits so far this year, up 26% on last year. The eight biggest oil companies made £67 billion in the three months after the start of the war in Iran, while our prices climb and the planet burns.

Events in Europe prove that workers and young people won’t accept more of the same. In Britain, the Socialist Party is fighting for the biggest-possible youth strikes on 20 November – and demanding the trade unions bring their force behind an anti-austerity fightback, starting by naming the date for a mass union-led demo.

Chancellor John Healey says he wants to give us ‘cost of living breathing space’, but he also admits of his Budget: “None of this is going to change the world. But if it helps around the margins…” We need more than ‘marginal’ tweaks around the edges. We need to turn the tables so the starting point is not profit, but what is needed to give young people a future and everyone a decent standard of life.

To achieve that, wealth and power needs to be taken out of the hands of the capitalist elite. Water, energy, the banks and big business should be nationalised to develop a democratic plan of investment to meet the needs of all.

Join the fight for socialist change, join the Socialist Party!