Editorial of the Socialist issue 1203
As if things weren’t already bleak enough, Tory chancellor Jeremy Hunt will stand up at the dispatch box on 17 November, after the Socialist is published, and announce more misery for working-class people. The same man who oversaw cuts in the NHS during much of the last 12 years of austerity will take his knife to public services again.
However it is dressed up, schools, hospitals, local councils and other services will be worse off. With prices rising, £43 billion a year is needed to keep our crumbling, already underfunded public services standing still, according to a report from the Trades Union Congress and New Economics Foundation.
The vast majority of Hunt’s billions will come from hitting working-class people’s pockets, and the services we rely on. But even modest taxes on the very wealthy could raise £37 billion, according to Tax Justice UK. A 1% wealth tax on assets over £10 million could raise £10 billion, applying national insurance to income from investments, £8.6 billion and bringing capital gains tax into line with income tax could raise £14 billion, among others. The UK lost £27 billion to multinational corporations dodging taxes last year.
The Conservative Party defends the interests of the capitalist class, it will not take serious measures to curtail its wealth or ability to make profits. The Tories’ pitiful windfall tax is a case in point – Shell reported £8.2 billion profits between July and September but has paid nothing into the ‘Energy Profit Levy’.
Energy firms will make £170 billion more profit than expected by the end of 2023. That’s a big stack of cash that could be used to fund public services if the energy companies were nationalised, to be run under democratic workers’ control, and with no compensation to the fat-cat bosses.
We need a party to represent the interests of working-class people, one that is prepared to nationalise the energy companies and fund public services, including funding a pay rise for public sector workers.
Labour austerity
Asked whether a Labour government would give public sector workers an inflation-matching pay rise, deputy leader Angela Rayner told the Financial Times: “Brutally, no.” Could a Starmer-led Labour government be trusted to offer anything other than more spending cuts and workers’ tax rises? Categorically, no.
Workers striking back in increasing numbers, and all those facing further service cuts and hardship, do not have a party to represent us. By leading strikes and winning pay rises, like the Liverpool dockers winning a 14-18% rise and Stagecoach bus drivers in Hull winning 20%, trade unions are at the forefront of the fightback. And if those same trade unions were to prepare to stand candidates in a general election, independently of Labour, that would get a huge response. But if the trade union leaders don’t take the initiative, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition offers a banner for trade unionists and others prepared to fight austerity to use to put up a real alternative to yet more austerity.
- Nurses strike for pay and for the future of our NHS
- Education unions unite to fight the schools funding crisis
- Reject council cuts and tax rises, make the 1% pay
