Alex Sampson, Plymouth Socialist Party
£13.4 million more cuts. People in Plymouth are bracing themselves for more attacks from the Labour-run council. We already know social inclusion provision for elderly care home residents faces the axe.
Meanwhile in Bristol, the Green-led majority council is showing its true colours by getting ready to vote for £51 million of cuts over five years, leading to the closing of museums and slashing budgets for council house repairs, library services and council tax support, as well as selling off council housing.
Instead of standing up for residents and setting budgets to meet the needs of our communities, councils everywhere are slashing services while increasing council taxes and charges.
Following the Tory playbook, the Labour government tells us it ‘has’ to cut government spending to stick to its ‘fiscal rules’, as capitalist speculators’ confidence in the British economy falters.
Just like through the last 14 years of Tory austerity, this Labour government is looking to make working-class people pay for the chaos of the capitalist system.
Britain’s billionaires continue to get £35 million richer every day, and at the same time the Labour government considers reforms to work incapacity benefits in an attempt to squeeze every last penny out of disabled and sick people.
Too many people continue to have to decide whether to heat or eat while energy companies and supermarkets make record profits. Water bills keep rising while bosses’ profits boom and sewage flows into our rivers. The NHS is on its knees while health secretary Wes Streeting continues to hand out billions of pounds in contracts to private healthcare companies.
15 years of austerity have brought untold suffering. We need to bring it to an end.
That means getting organised to fight every attack on our services, and every attempt to make the working class pay more. We need a new workers’ party that fights on our side, and that is prepared to take the wealth off the ultra-rich to fully fund our services and fight for socialist change.
