Labour’s austerity budget: Make the super-rich pay

Build the socialist opposition

The NHS is on its knees from 14 years of Tory starvation rations. Local government services like adult social care and special needs education are reeling from relentless cutbacks, in many cases carried out by Labour councillors talking of ‘tough decisions’.

We don’t know exactly what will be in this Labour government’s first budget on 30 October. But we do know that it won’t go anywhere near giving the funding needed for public services, devastated by Tory austerity.

It won’t stop the rich getting richer at our expense.

Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves might change the rules to spend a bit more on future investment – itself proof that rules are there to be broken. But what about the urgent need for funding now? For NHS services facing another bleak winter? For social care services facing closure in the next few months?

Hundreds of community and trade union campaigns are already under way to save services from cuts and privatisation under Starmer’s Labour government. Workers are already being forced to strike, like the London Underground workers facing down attacks overseen by Labour London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

MPs, including Jeremy Corbyn, as well as Green MPs and others, have signed a letter to Labour chancellor Rachel Reeves asking her to introduce even just a 2% tax on wealth over £10 million, pointing out that this could raise £24 billion a year.

Hundreds of billions could be raised by even modest taxes on Britain’s biggest companies, filling Reeves’s ‘black hole’ many times over. But by nationalising the top companies and banks that dominate the economy, a plan could be drawn up democratically by the working class to meet our needs, not those of the bosses.

There is already growing working-class opposition to Starmer’s Labour. It is vital that the trade unions take the lead in organising it, by being prepared to fight industrially, by campaigning for policies in the interests of workers, and by taking steps towards building a new mass party of the working class to fight for them.

That is the best way to undermine attempts by far-right and right populist forces to spread their divisive hateful ideas. It’s the capitalist bosses, not migrants, who are getting richer at our expense.

We need to build the socialist opposition. If you agree, join the Socialist Party