Prices up. Mortgages up. Rent up.
- Starmer’s Labour won’t fight for us
- Build a new mass workers’ party
Katie Simpson, Northampton Socialist Party
The cost of inflation is falling on the shoulders of ordinary people. Now, with the latest Bank of England interest rate rises, those with mortgages are paying the price. And workers face a recession to protect the profits of the rich.
On average, each individual with a mortgage is paying £280 a month extra. And young people are paying even more. 1.4 million people face losing 20% of their disposable income.
For many who were already pinching pennies to afford soaring food prices, this is a push too far.
The Tories are refusing to offer any kind of help or support. The most people can hold out hope for is some ‘flexibility’ from the bank.
Before this recent interest hike people were already struggling. Many weren’t able to make mortgage payments even before this.
As a result, people are downsizing, subletting or having to return to the oversaturated and overpriced rental market. Many wealthy landlords are happy to take advantage of this situation by increasing rent, and applying stricter rules for tenants – plunging us into poverty. Other landlords are selling up because they can’t afford the new payments, leaving more tenants out in the cold.
The grand sell-off of public housing by Tory and Labour governments has helped create this crisis. And they have refused to build the council housing we need.
Even people working full-time can now face homelessness. Yet hundreds of thousands of properties in the UK remain empty as property developers and wealthy individuals opportunistically hold on to them as assets.
The government and the biggest banks, representing 75% of the mortgage market, say nobody will be evicted if they can’t pay for one year. This isn’t good enough.
People can’t afford their mortgages, and the rest of the cost of living, now. Mortgages and prices should be frozen. We need to continue and coordinate the strikes for higher pay. Benefits should be increased.
And local Labour councils should step in with emergency measures to help people now, using their reserves and borrowing powers. Then launch a campaign for the funding from central government.
Councils should take over empty properties and provide emergency support for people struggling with mortgages and the cost of living.
They should also use their power to build council homes on a massive scale, cap rents to make them genuinely affordable, and set up a compulsory register of landlords to hold them to account.
The banks, food and energy companies, and big supermarkets shouldn’t be profiting from this crisis.
They should be nationalised, under democratic workers’ control. That should be part of a democratic plan for the economy to meet the needs of ordinary people, not the super-rich.
The Tories need to go. But Starmer’s Labour won’t fight for this programme.
That’s why working-class people need a new mass party of our own that will.
