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From the horse’s mouth
The Socialist Party and our journals have always pointed out the failings of capitalism. However the extremes of the Trump regime have provoked even some of the capitalist class to openly worry about the backlash he will create.
On his inauguration day, on the field outside the White House, a rally took place with a banner saying “Tax the Rich”. Not unusual, but this was organised by so-called ‘Patriotic Millionaires’. The spokesperson was Abigail Disney, the heiress, and another important member is Dale Vince, the British energy boss who gave Starmer’s New Labour £4 million.
Disney said: “Mr Trump’s election was the result of the extreme inequality on show at the inauguration. It’s easy to see the election of a figure like Donald Trump, as an aberration, but that’s not the case. Donald Trump – along with his so-called first buddy Elon Musk – is the final and inevitable conclusion of decades of inaction on the part of world leaders to put a check on extreme inequality. If officials want to do something to ensure stability of our democracies, they need only find the political resolve to tax wealthy people like me.”
This makes the grovelling of Labour’s Chancellor completely unsubstantiated on this issue. The group revealed a survey of 2,900 millionaires, over half agreed that “extreme wealth concentration is a threat to democracy”, and two thirds viewed the influence of the super-rich on the new president as a danger to the world.
If even millionaires are saying this it says a lot! But we need an independent working-class fight back and a campaign for a socialist world which will ultimately prevent this.
Keith Dickinson
Extra appointments farce
I was one of Labour health secretary Wes Streeting’s ‘2 million extra appointments’ when I was called for a regular breast-screening appointment at 9.30am on a Sunday. Not something I especially wanted to do early on a Sunday morning, and I don’t suppose the staff or the other women queuing up at the mobile unit in a hospital car park particularly wanted to be there either.
But then a woman collapsed in the room where the procedure was happening. The staff couldn’t move her and had to wait for an ambulance. They were told it would be at least a two-hour wait! And this was in hospital grounds!
As there was just the one treatment room in the mobile unit, we were all told we could either wait for hours or leave and be given another appointment. The staff were as exasperated as us.
You can have extra appointments at crazy times, but if there’s not enough facilities and not enough ambulances and not enough beds to admit patients in the ambulances, and not enough social care to free up the beds, it’s not even a sticking plaster.
Paula Mitchell
