Rising cost of living and bumper bank profits

Lindsey Morgan, Bristol South Socialist Party

If you bank with Barclays, NatWest, Lloyds or HSBC, you’ll be glad to know they’re continuing to rake in huge profits.

For us – low-paid work, cuts to services, extortionate rents and rising bills all combine to make the cost of living a daily battle.

For them – the lucky fat cats have been making nearly a billion pounds a week. After the Tories slashed the bank ‘surcharge’ – a tax on banks’ profits – from 8% to 3%, bank profits are now higher than they were before the 2007-08 financial crash.

They buy yachts and we worry about how we’re going to afford Christmas.

Even big business newspaper the Financial Times is warning that corporate greed is unsustainable!

Despite Keir Starmer’s Labour government being elected over a year ago, hard-up working-class people have yet to notice any of that profit trickling down to us – no wonder, with a government that defends capitalism at our expense.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves says that “those with the broadest shoulders should pay their fair share”. We’d agree with that. But how does she plan to do that in the Budget?

A few tweaks to National Insurance and income tax and possibly going after the gambling companies won’t hack it. It was Tony Blair’s Labour government that relaxed the rules on advertising gambling ‘products’ after being lobbied by the industry. Are they really willing to go against the free market wishes of big business? Once again, in the Budget, it’ll be the working class that pays the price.

The TUC (Trades Union Congress) says that Labour should increase the bank surcharge and so raise between £20 billion and £50 billion over the next four years.

But the TUC represents more than 6 million workers. We can’t keep waiting for backroom discussions and private lobbying to produce the transfer of wealth to us we need. They should use the power of the workers they represent to place real pressure on Labour.

It is TUC policy to organise a national weekend demonstration against Labour’s austerity. We have to keep demanding that they name the date.

The initial huge enthusiasm for ‘Your Party’ shows that masses of people know Labour is not on their side. It is the betrayals of Labour and the capitalist system it defends that leads big numbers of people to consider voting for millionaire-led Reform UK.

We say nationalise the banks under democratic workers’ control and management. And not just the banks – socialist nationalisation of the big companies would let us plan production and decide how the wealth created is spent. Fund decent jobs, homes, services, pay and benefits for the real wealth-creators in society – the working class.

We can sweep the floor out from under Reform’s feet and start fighting for the socialist future we deserve.