Fight for a socialist alternative to profit-driven capitalism
Michael Johnson, Leeds Socialist Party
Why do you hate the Tories? Ask ten different people that, and you can easily get ten different answers. Not surprising given that after more than a decade in power the Tories have launched attack after attack. And the last few local and parliamentary by-elections have shown that even previous Tory voters are finding reasons to hate them.
Most people will be very conscious that, regardless of any other views on Tory policy, in their time in power the rich have got richer and the poor poorer. The spiralling costs of food, rent and bills are leaving countless working people and families having to make hard choices that they shouldn’t have to.
The Tories under Rishi Sunak are keen to blame all sorts of things for this but, funnily enough, their reasons all ignore the impact 13 years of their attacks and austerity have had on our communities, stripping services, and freezing pay and benefits. Meanwhile the Tories and their friends have found themselves growing richer and richer. As our pay has fallen, bosses’ pay, profits and dividends have surged.
But don’t worry, the Tories are keen to give even more reasons to hate them; recent weeks have seen communities worry about climate change as we experience record temperatures and other weather extremes. Well, the Tories have a hand in that. Profit-driven and short-sighted, whether dumping sewage into rivers and beaches or just dumping environmental policies, the Tories have been described as “uninterested” in climate change, by their own peers!
And there’s more! From divisive politics pitting workers against each other and attacking migrants, disabled people and others, to the sheer gall of Tories like Suella Braverman who claimed things like driving fines on expenses – we could give this whole paper to listing these reasons and probably still not fit everything in!
But can we seriously expect Labour under the leadership of Keir Starmer to change that? Well, look at his responses to workers fighting for decent wages or scrapping the two-child benefit limit or reversing NHS privatisation to see quite clearly the answer is a hard ‘no’. Working people can’t rely on Labour. We need an alternative based not on the interests of the bosses and super-rich, but the working class fighting for a socialist alternative to the hated policies of profit-driven capitalism.
