The 2015 general election campaign is finally underway. This rotten parliament is now consigned to the dustbin of history after five dismal years of austerity, cuts, attacks on the poorest sections of society, corruption and scandals, and huge payouts for the super-rich. Few will mourn it’s passing. If ever a parliament reflected the decay of a system it was this one.
The 2015 general election campaign is finally underway. This rotten parliament is now consigned to the dustbin of history after five dismal years of austerity, cuts, attacks on the poorest sections of society, corruption and scandals, and huge payouts for the super-rich. Few will mourn it’s passing. If ever a parliament reflected the decay of a system it was this one.
The “rollercoaster” of cuts
Despite all the upbeat talk from Cameron and Osborne, the truth is that Britain is not “walking tall” and facing a future of milk and honey. Hidden away in the small print of the 2015 budget is confirmation that there will be between £20 and £25 billion pounds worth of new cuts on welfare spending etc.
Ian Stewart, chief economist at Deloite, has warned in the Guardian newspaper of 19th March that “… whatever happens on May 7th, a major squeeze on public spending lies ahead.” Osborne has promised a more vicious cycle of cuts in 2016-18 – in what the Office of Budget Responsibility (OBR) cheerfully calls a “rollercoaster” – before he hopes to then bribe the voters by increasing real spending in 2019-20.
What does this mean? According to David Sparks from the Local Government Association; “”Between the chancellor’s first Budget in 2010 and the end of the next financial year, the money government gives to councils to provide local services will have fallen by 40%… Local authorities have played a huge role in balancing the country’s books, but more of the same cannot be an option in the next five years.”
Clearly the axe will fall on the most vulnerable sections of society with even the most essential services no longer guaranteed. The OBR has confirmed that next year’s cuts will be four times worse than this year.
Permanent austerity
This is the real backdrop to the general election. Even Osborne’s promise of future spending increases is entirely dependant on the economy going in the right direction. However, this is the slowest and weakest “recovery” in modern history and anything could easily upset the plans of the Treasury. More realistic Tories are talking about “permanent austerity” as the norm from now on.
With just over a few weeks to go, the outcome of the election cannot be safely predicted. Most polling experts anticipate that no party will get an overall majority. There could be weeks of negotiations to form a government with a majority, or even a minority, with a prospect then of a second election later this year.
For a parliamentary system precisely designed to avoid such an outcome of instability, such a result is no mean achievement. No election has been less looked forward to by the mass of people than this one. Given the hatred of many people towards the current Tory-led Coalition of millionaires and bankers’ stooges, how is it possible that the Tories (and their Lib-Dem co-conspirators) are not facing electoral oblivion? Why is it that many people will just not vote at all on May 7th?
Different shades of austerity
To answer this we need to consider what most people want. They want an end to austerity; they want decent pay and jobs; they want a future for the youth of this country; proper public services; a free and well funded NHS, and so on. If Labour was to stand on such a programme of action, rather than the miserable set of pledges they have now announced, then they would easily win in May. However they are not and will not do so.
The Labour leadership is completely wedded to capitalism and have accepted the Tory strategy of cuts in full. No doubt their excuse will be – but how can we pay for all this? Where is the money to come from? The fact is that the money is there, sitting idly in the coffers of the rich. They have done very well over the last few years, very well indeed.
The answer for the working class lies in the implementation of a socialist programme, which would take over the monopolies, banks and insurance houses and use this money for the benefit of society as a whole. If the rich don’t like it, they can get on their bikes and go down to the job centre to get one of those jobs they are always telling us are there ready to be picked up. Instead the voters are set to just have a choice of different shades of austerity.
Pandering to pressure
The Tories will seemingly do their best to still try and lose the election by presenting a raft of new right wing measures in their manifesto – attacks on trade union rights, immigration, benefit claimants and so on – all designed, they hope, to undercut a UKIP now sniping at their heels, and to try and pacify the Tory extreme right wing (the “berserker” group of MPs) who hate Cameron for not being Thatcher mark two.
Sadly, Labour also seems to be pandering to pressure – not only from the capitalists and the right-wing press, but also from the Blairites in their ranks – to shift right as well. Presumably this is what is meant by consensus politics. It all comes down to who will be the least unpopular on May 7th. The Tories deserve to be thrown out, but may well survive given the situation. Rather than deal with the real issues, the parties seem set to fight over such burning issues as the number of kitchens Ed Miliband has. No wonder Cameron doesn’t want a TV debate this time round.
Kick out the Tories! Kick out capitalism!
We need to build the fight to break this useless mold of Westminster politics. Sticking a cross next to a name on May 7th is not enough anymore. We call on all workers and youth – unemployed and retired, students and low paid – to join us in the fight for socialist politics and to build the resistance to austerity and capitalism.
Only Marxism can explain why the system is in crisis and cannot work in our interests. Only Marxism can explain what is needed from the only class which can move humanity forward: the working class who produce the wealth, but who have seen it stolen by the super-rich and their cohorts in government. We say: kick out the Tories and kick out their crisis-ridden system as well!
