Mark Best, west London Socialist Party
Labour leader Keir Starmer, likely to be prime minister by the end of the year, laid out his pitch to the country in a speech on 4 January. Working-class and young people desperate to get rid of the Tories may have been listening with some hope, agreeing with Starmer that they have been driving the country “into the rocks of decline.”
Starmer is trying to tap into the very real anger felt across the country. People are, as Starmer puts it, “crying out for change”. Thanks to over a decade of Tory austerity our lives are worse off – wages are down, vital services destroyed, and infrastructure is literally crumbling around us.
War, poverty, climate destruction, the feeling that there is no decent future available for young people. To tackle these issues you need to confront the profit-driven system of capitalism and put forward an alternative way of running things – a socialist society based on democratic planning and cooperation.
But what is on offer from Starmer is a “politics that treads a little lighter on all our lives.” The consequences of the disastrous Liz Truss mini-budget, elected after winning the votes of just 80,000 Conservative Party members, had a big impact on households across the country. She was punished by ‘the markets’ and ordinary people had to suffer with higher borrowing costs and more austerity.
Pro-capitalist politicians making decisions in parliament that put profit ahead of the lives and livelihoods of working-class people is an issue that would continue under a Starmer-led government. There is no party in Westminster which represents the interests of the majority of the country – the working class.
‘National Unity’?
Starmer talks about an end to “politics fuelled by division”, to “moderate your political wishes” and to follow a “politics that aspires to national unity”. After a year in which workers have had to struggle together against the cost-of-living crisis while those at the top have continued to make massive profits, this amounts to putting aside our interests to keep the capitalist show on the road.
Because despite what Keir Starmer says, working-class people do have a “common enemy” – the bosses that make massive profits out of us working for them each day.
The Socialist Party is fighting for workers’ action in the workplaces and trade unions – to fight for the kind of collective action needed to get the pay rises we deserve. We are organising with others the steps necessary for a mass party that represents our class interests.
And all of this comes back to the need to change society, for workers ourselves to run society on a democratic socialist basis. This capitalist system is rotten to the core and we desperately need an alternative.
If you want to be part of the fight for socialism then you should join.
