We won’t pay for Trump’s wars
Joe Waters, Devon Socialist Party
The average household will be £480 worse off over the next financial year due to inflation caused by Trump’s war on Iran, according to the Resolution Foundation think tank. That estimate would put millions of households under significant financial pressure, and was made before talks between US and Iran broke down and the US imposed a new naval blockade on Iran.
Energy companies made massive profits during the cost-of-living crisis which started a few years ago, and continue to do so. Their levels of profit have been so obscene that even the Tories subjected them to a ‘windfall tax’ from 2022, but this has only raised £12 billion so far – a fraction of the profits generated in that time.
Labour Chancellor Rachel Reeves is insistent that any government support on energy bills will be limited and targeted at the poorest households, so most will get nothing. The Labour line is that any increases in government spending or interventions in private industry would be ‘fiscally irresponsible’. What could be more irresponsible than leaving the entire population at the mercy of predatory, profit-seeking capitalists?
When the price of energy goes up it raises prices for everything. We need to end private ownership of essential infrastructure and nationalise the energy industry under the democratic control and oversight of workers and service users to allow decision making in the interests of the majority. On this basis, the massive amounts of money which currently get paid out to shareholders, could instead be used to lower prices for consumers and be invested in improvements to infrastructure.
The alternative is to continue to allow the tiny number of very rich people who control the energy companies to effectively decide what living standards we are allowed to have. The brutal logic of maximising profits gave us the ongoing cost-of-living crisis – and the capitalists will not blink at going further and taking more if they think they can get away with it.
So we’ve got to get organised to fight for a socialist alternative, including as part of that process a party that represents the working class. Socialist Party members are standing as part of the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition in May’s elections to say ‘the working class won’t be made to pay for Trump’s wars!’
