■ All out on Budget Day 15 March
■ Build a new mass workers’ party
When will it end? Every trip to the supermarket, prices rise. Every month the direct debits grow and the fear of another rent rise continues.
Every week another story of bosses’ politicians, detached from the lives of working-class people, making decisions to inflict further misery.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has informed us that his 15 March budget will see typical energy bills rise to £3,000 a year and an end to the universal £400 discount. All very well for ministers, like billionaire prime minister Rishi Sunak and others in government, who get access to credit cards to throw parties and eat lavish meals.
Meanwhile, those in need of medication in England are going without their prescriptions – unable to afford the £9.35 charge per item.
It’s hard to find those who are not sick and tired of the Tories. The historic party of the bosses’ establishment is weak, unpopular, and staggering on in government through splits and scandal.
Contrast that to the 1 February day of coordinated action with half a million on strike in a tremendous show of workers’ united strength.
Further days of mass coordinated strike action, punctuating the ongoing wave of strikes, would swell the numbers and be a step towards a 24-hour general strike. This strike wave could topple the Tories.
That’s why Socialist Party members are fighting in the trade unions for Budget Day, 15 March, to bring all those with an existing strike mandate out on strike.
Labour is in waiting. But how is Sir Keir Starmer preparing for government? Flying to Davos, and dining with bankers in the city, to schmooze with the capitalist elite.
The need to fight for fair pay, including by taking strike action, won’t end with a Labour government. Starmer has made it clear he will not support public sector worker pay rises and repeatedly reassures ‘the markets’ that he won’t spend on the public services we need.
The strike movement needs its own political voice – a new mass workers’ party. And working-class people need an alternative to a system run solely for bosses’ profits. We need to fight for socialist change.
