Take the wealth off the super-rich

Alex Sampson, Plymouth Socialist Party

This Labour government has shown its true colours – slashing support for disabled people while pledging billions more to bomb the poor overseas, further enriching billionaire warmongers.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced £5 billion in welfare cuts, the bulk of which will fall on disabled people via Universal Credit health element cuts and stricter criteria for Personal Independence Payment (PIP) packages.

Disabled people and their families already make up over 50% of the poorest in society and these brutal cuts will sink more than 400,000 more people, including 50,000 children, further into poverty. And this at a time, ‘Awful April’, when everybody’s bills are going up.

We are told that there isn’t the money to continue the current levels of government spending. We’ve already had 15 years of austerity supposed to ‘balance the books’ and now they want yet more? Austerity 1.0 resulted in deeper poverty for millions while a small minority got even richer. Austerity 2.0 is set to make it worse.

But austerity is not a necessity, it is a political choice to accept the diktat of the capitalist markets and billionaire profiteers.

Similarly, the decision to plough £2.2 billion into military spending is a political choice, in part to pander to Donald Trump’s demands and bloating the already enormous arms manufacturers’ profits. But more military spending won’t keep us safe.

Keir Starmer’s Labour government has shown its true colours, and it’s blood red.

The best way to keep us safe from war and austerity is to get rid of all of the capitalist warmongers. We need a new mass party of the working class, one that fights for a socialist programme to prioritise the welfare of all over warfare.