Saad H, Hackney and Islington Socialist Party
Andy Burnham has described the past 40 years of neoliberalism as a failure for working-class communities. Yet his Budget offered no evidence of a break with that settlement. For young people, the message remained familiar: shoulder the costs and blame yourself when the system fails you.
Chancellor John Healey’s promise of a “tough approach” towards young people exposes this. Rather than confronting an economy that fails to provide opportunities, Healey treats us as the problem.
The reality is stark. Youth unemployment remains above 15%, and graduate vacancies attract an average of 140 applications each. Those who do get a degree face average student debt of almost £48,000, and the aspiration of building a stable life is just an unfulfilled dream, hampered by unaffordable rents and stagnating wages.
A party looking to address these issues would commit to rent controls, funding public services, abolishing tuition fees, and investing in publicly funded job creation. However, Labour has already broken its manifesto pledge to equalise the minimum wage for young people, backtracked on a plan to introduce rent controls, and Healey’s speech mentioned schools less than ten times, but defence was mentioned over 120 times. Priorities laid out clearly!
The Labour Party is forcing young people to pay for capitalism’s crises. We need a mass party that represents us, which does not bow down before the bosses. We need to get organised to take on the bosses, so this generation and the next generation won’t face our current insecurity.
