Tag: austerity

The European Union is an Imperialist Bosses Club

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (13.10.2026), reacting off-the-cuff to Monday’s Prime Ministerial announcement of forthcoming talks with the European Union. I have no doubt its all about rearmament, but at the same time the wily Burnham is using the angst of the middle class voters to blame Austerity on Brexit, rebuilding the liberal vote for the Labour Party. The idea that Brexit is behind the current economic crisis appears almost hegemonic. Of course it didn’t help, but it’s not the source of the cost-of-living crisis nor much to do with the enormous shift of wealth from the poor to the super-rich everywhere. We really have to call out the disinformation and political sleight-of-hand.

The unedited version below (not my headline – I don’t do first-person!). Please scroll down to the bottom of the page for the subscribe button on the right-hand side! 

Those of us on “The Left” who voted to “Leave” are not about to be cowed into submission. Burnham’s ploy of uniting the middle class vote behind Labour in pursuit of a fresh “Remain” campaign is cynical in the extreme. There is nothing benign or at all socialist about the European Union. Europe has never been a friend of the working class. 

It is worth remembering. Some 52 percent opted for exit, on a turnout of 72 percent, higher than almost any general election. They did so in the face of opposition from three quarters of MPs, the leadership of all three of the biggest parliamentary parties — the Conservatives, Labour and the Scottish National Party — the overwhelming bulk of British industry and almost every major capitalist institution, from the Bank of England to the International Monetary Fund. 

Why? Europe is, and was formed as, a Bosses Club. The European Parliament was created as the frontpiece, the cover, just as are national parliaments, for promotion of regional competition on the world stage – the advantage of Capitalist corporations in competition with Russia and China for the plunder of resources from Africa and India and South America. Sometimes in league with the USA, sometimes independently.

The European Union is a neoliberal organisation acting in the interests of European capital. It has forced the Greek people and then most of the rest into the economic stranglehold and poverty of austerity, cutting social welfare provision and pay rates in pursuit of free trade agreements to raise the rate of profit accumulated by the big corporations sitting inside its borders. 

Britain would have been no better off staying inside the European Market. Oh, perhaps a few of the larger UK based companies would have benefited, but not us workers. Just look at the protests on the streets of Paris and Berlin and Madrid. In 2026 our working class youth are suffering irrespective of national borders. Youth unemployment, wages too low to live on, a raging housing crisis caused by rapacious landlords, cuts to all social provision from health and social care through to pensions. The experience of the economic crisis in Britain is precisely the same in both cause and conditions across Europe and beyond – heightened exploitation in pursuit of private profit. All the wealth we produce gets sucked-up through inflated salaries of the management and into the offshore bank accounts of the big investors and corporate executives.

At the time of the vote back in 2016, Europe was viciously enforcing neoliberalism across the continent, breaking democracy and sovereign States like Greece, and it hasn’t let-up since. In Britain the vote was, above all else, a rebellion by working class people who feel they have had their lives torn apart by the ruling elite. Two-thirds of those classified as skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled workers voted to leave, compared to just 43 percent among those in “intermediate” or “higher” managerial, professional or administrative roles. 

And it wasn’t as simple as a vote for racism. A third of Asian and a quarter of black voters chose Leave. Large, ethnically diverse cities in the north of England voted for exit — including Sheffield, Birmingham and Bradford. Racism was obvious on the Leave side, where anti-immigrant arguments from the UK Independence Party (now Reform UK) and Conservative politicians played a prominent role, especially in the final weeks of campaigning. 

In the final weeks of the Brexit campaign, xenophobia and scapegoating spewed out by the press and politicians to deflect from anger over austerity and privatisation. Many principled people voted Remain with good anti-racist reasoning. It was never a clean or clear-cut poll between opposites.

Class consciousness played a core role in the Brexit vote. This was not about the vacuous superficiality of European travel or buying a second home in the Algarve – the freedom of the wealthy few. The vote was about the pain of Austerity imposed by the collapse of the corrupt banking system in 2008-9. Wage labourers were hurting bad back then, and still are. 

It’s all happening again! This time, as the world economy dives into fresh chaos, the ruling class are using racism and the threat of war as tools to suppress our discontent. Sections of the British Ruling Class were hurt badly by Brexit. The moves to “rejoin” Europe are precepts for emergency rearmament, the military-industrial complex seeking cross-border cooperation to maximise market penetration and profit. Burnham is arguing for Britain’s pride of place in the coming wars against Russia and China. And he’s using the sham of rejoining Europe to fool us all. 

Instead, socialists should combine struggles against racism with struggles against the wider attacks on the working class – a major uprising against the cost-of-living crisis. Join with the mass strikes across Europe for international working class unity, not the European Union of Capitalist Profiteers! End Austerity!  

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In an Emergency, Break the Glass!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (6.10.26), mourning the lost opportunities for a class fight against privatisation and Austerity in Britain. Look to the French! And Spanish! Today’s mass strike in France is the key element – workers remain key to wealth creation and when we down tools we have key collective power at the point of production. Simple, but so hard to achieve. Protest does work, to a limited extent and inside the confines of social democracy. Mass Strike works whatever the society. Student protests tend to lead to mass strike when workers see their children attacked by the State, coshed, shot at and their hands blown-off if not murdered. Today’s mass strike in France has already won concessions against pay cuts. In Spain the protests have forced a General Election. this is all what has to happen here – a socialist workers’ mass revolt, not a White Riot!

The edited version is printed here. Please expand the pic at the bottom to read the published article. And please subscribe to this Blog by clicking the button in the bottom right-hand corner.

In an Emergency, Break the Glass!

There is a case for violent riots. As Martin Luther King said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” There are a lot of people unheard in the world. There is a general sense here, too, that we have very little say over our lives or concern for our needs. 

Looking across at Europe right now, perhaps we, too, should be breaking glass to regain our voice. The protests in France and Spain are advisory. School students in France have taken to the streets to publicise the terrible state of schools and colleges. They have been soundly beaten by Police, shooting them with rubber bullets. In response some have resorted to violence. 

It is a core human condition of basic justice that “self defence is no offence”. No government, no municipal authority, no educational body has taken any of the students long-standing grievances on board. At heart, the extreme weather this summer has brought issues to the boil. Classrooms were at over 35 degrees centigrade, impossible to learn in, and now as winter approaches, they’re down to 15C. No-one can learn in these conditions, and shouldn’t be expected to. 

Nor can anyone teach properly in these dilapidated state schools. On United Nations’ (UN) World Teachers’ Day yesterday, teachers in France took strike action and stood with the students, demanding new funding and reparations to the crumbling education estate. Unions are staging a mass strike today. France has experienced the neoliberal onslaught more recently but much faster than Britain, with €46 Billion in cuts now in train. To date, French workers have fought back against privatisation and austerity in a way we have not, with huge protests and strike action. The French government weakens and falls back one step at a time, yesterday withdrawing plans to lower wages further but continueing to freeze pensions. The protests continue. All power to the working class!

In Spain, last weekend’s street violence, perpetrated by incredibly violent policing worthy of the fascist regime of General Franco, has been challenged by a mass outpouring of anger against the injustice of the housing markets. The protests have been so large that they have forced a General Election! Local people have been forced into poverty and squalor by speculators playing the market to raise the price of homes ridiculously above anything working class people can possibly afford. In response, landlords have raised rents to prices that defy value and overwhelm the wages of most. 

When those with wealth are free from rules and regulations, devoid of legal or moral constraint, they run riot. It is the rich who are violently assaulting the working classes everywhere, copying each other internationally in pursuit of private wealth at the expense of the majority. This has long been the case in Britain, one of the first countries to adopt the neoliberal economic model as an experiment, imposed by the International Monetary Fund in the 1970’s.

Margaret Thatcher ensured the privatisation and eradication of our council housing stock that has led to today’s deep housing crisis. Her legacy, with plaudits from today’s annual conference of the defunct Tory Party, includes the highest number of people sleeping rough ever recorded. In England we have 135,000 households living in temporary accommodation including 176,000 children. It will take 119 Years to clear housing waiting lists. We have parasitic housing corporations charging exorbitant service charges for home maintenance never delivered. 

The hikes in housing costs here are unaffordable and, in their consequences, wholly illegitimate. And yet the Tories and their ex-colleagues who have fled to Reform UK, braying in their respective conferences, are promising more deregulation and more free market competition, planning to suck the very lifeblood out of working class people. 

In comparison with the French and Spanish, we have just let the deep crisis across all social services happen, unopposed. We few who do shout out are bombarded by screaming Blackshirts saying the housing crisis is all the fault of migrants, the schools dilapidation caused by Black children and Muslims. These racists are the lackeys of the landlords, whipped-up by flagrant lies to secure and protect the exploitation of the property-owning elite. Fooled.  

There is another way. We can fight back. Take to the streets. Demand housing regulation, legally enforced rent caps, public investment in education and social care. Learn from workers and students in France and Spain. That’s the element of rejoining Europe worthy of chasing!

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Wealth Isn’t Lacking it’s being Hoarded!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (22.9.26), predicting more of the Austerity ideology trying to make us pay for profits and war. The Budget looms, the call for cuts to benefits raises to a crescendo, and the organised working class has to fight or pay up. Mine has been a lifetime in the socialist and trade union movements, now long-toothed enough and battle scarred sufficiently to know the primary cause of our descent – the falsehoods spun by reformist leaders projecting two lies – the first that gradual improvements come from patient negotiations with receptive employers, and the second, that “workers won’t fight”. The truth, as shown by the Cancer Research Strikers only this week, is that workers are ready to fight with the correct leadership offering a positive and militant strategy. Very soon, workers will have to defy their nay-saying leaders and take collective action against their advice and, if necessary, the Law, in order to survive. That is the socialist perspective in the face of the poly crisis of 2026.

The unedited version below, or expand and read the picture to read the published article.

Ideas are a central element of class struggle. Our security and welfare is currently as much under attack from ideology as from war and climate. Every day we are assaulted by media predictions of global chaos, whilst “at home” we are threatened by experts telling us we, the People, are too expensive. 

Wall to wall capitalist propaganda says demands we tighten our belts: cut support for low-paid workers, pensioners and the disabled. Its all Lies! The money’s there!

We, the People, are not the problem. Britain is more wealthy today than it has ever been. 

Check it out. On average, Britons today have access to far more goods, services, technology, healthcare, education, housing amenities, and infrastructure than people of the 1950’s to 2000’s, the inter war years,  Victorian Britain or earlier periods. 

According to the Office for National Statistics, the country possesses an enormous stock of property, financial assets, physical possessions, businesses, infrastructure, and pension funds. The UK’s median net wealth sits at roughly $125,000 per adult making us the world’s 6th largest economy out 193 countries.

Britain is neither “broken” nor poor. Britain is richer than ever. But the “sense” of living here denies the statistics. Real incomes have stagnated compared with the rapid growth of the post-war decades. Wealth is distributed extremely unevenly. The richest 10% of British households hold around 43% of wealth, while the poorest half – that’s 35 million of us – hold about 9%. The rich have hoarded the overwhelming majority of the wealth created by the productivity of the working class.

We live in extremes of wealth and poverty. How? Because the neoliberal experiment that promised “Trickle down” was always a lie. It never happened. The economics of the “Free Market” sucked all the wealth from the working class, through the gross lowering of wage rates, the tripling of housing costs, and the privatisation of public services that ate-up most of the tax-payers contributions previously spent on social support and infrastructure.

Unbridled profiteering in a gangster economy. The top 5% have doubled their wealth through open and applauded extreme exploitation of the rest of us. 

As the General Secretary of Unite the Union, Sharon Graham reflects, “After a decade that has seen prices rise by 40%, workers are sick of paying for crises they did not cause. Energy bills set to be the highest in three years, while the privatised profiteers rake in billions. Mortgage rates are spiking while the banks make money hand over fist.”

Couldn’t put it better myself. The problem exposes the sleight of hand. Trade unions never, never challenged neoliberalism or fought privatisation, instead bending to “follow our members” into one asset-stripping private corporation after another. Housing “externalised” from local council control, health services and social care sold off to private companies, public transport – indeed everything in public ownership – sold off to the cheapest bidder all at the expense of wages and working conditions.

Some of us always knew the dangers of privatisation. We tried to fight, and failed.

Now, with workers really hurting, unable to live on the sickly-sloganed “Living Wage”, we see through the empty rhetoric of union leaders and Labour politicians who have actively done little or nothing. We should have seen mass strike action against “Austerity Britain” from the very beginning, demanding socialist policies for public ownership, redistribution of wealth and the eradication of poverty.

The failure of working-class leadership is directly responsible for the rise of the far-Right. The transnational billionaires are funding Farage and the far-Right precisely because they want their wealth, power and control to continue. They want us to blame the poor and refugees. They feed on passivity and hopelessness. 

Union leaders and career politicians have “sold-out” in return for cosy lives and entitlements – crumbs form the tables of the super-rich. The Autumn Budget will attack us again. We need a new trade union leadership ready for a fight, and a real agitational socialist leadership inside workplaces, organising collective protection and challenging the media lies funded by the ruling class. And a government ready to get our wealth back – tax the rich!

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Defence Investment Will Cost Us Elsewhere

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment Column in the daily Plymouth Herald (30.06.26), having to address the mythology and lies of the government’s Defence Implementation Plan published the same day. It’s a huge document offered and fast military rearmament and the effective militarisation of society. I focus on the government lie in suggesting a doubling of military spending can relate the economy. Whilst not wanting to rely on outdated (to the point of equally mythological) Keynesianism, the very fact, across all sectors, finance investment in any sector other than armaments and soldiery creates and sustains more jobs, is a single point that demolishes the entire document. There is, of course, far more to say, such as the capitalist crisis driving war. But I’m simply answering the government foil of a headline. War doesn’t produce growth!

The unedited version below, or stretch the pic of the published article to read:

Here comes yet another dip in our welfare funding. Who said Austerity was over?

The DIP – the Defence Investment Plan, published this week – has been delayed by in-fighting between competing UK government departments and the heads of the armed forces. Tensions represent the politics of speedy rearmament versus social refurbishment. 

The Generals, Admirals and Corporate Executives of the western military-industrial complex have besieged UK governments with demands to quadruple, or more, arms spending as a proportion of the wealth Britain produces each year. Strict fiscal controls mean that money has to be found by cutting government spending elsewhere. Cutting our Welfare.

The argument, aside from warmonger’s thrust for ever more war, is that rearmament produces jobs and reflates the economy. This so-called “defence Dividend” is a complete myth. Cutting investments in civilian employment in order to fund a larger military budget harms growth. And in this climate crisis, the absence of funding for fast adaptation collapses our nations security.

Military procurement creates fewer jobs than the equivalent funding for transport, health, education, social care and even libraries and museums (congrats to The Box btw!). Spending £1million on military procurement, by government’s own figures, creates 9.4 jobs. The same £1m produces 12 jobs on the railways, 13 in healthcare, 15 in education, 20 in social care and 25 when invested in cultural activities! The jobs required to adapt to new climate and extreme weather dwarf these figures, if the investment should ever be agreed.

Military spending is capital intensive, with a shrinking workforce. Jobs in the military industry have plummeted since the 1980’s despite comparatively higher spending in real terms. Much of the tax cash investment goes to overseas firms and profits for the private arms companies. The billions do not trickle down into the general economy.

There is no defence dividend! Today’s DIP will mean another £15 billion for deadly weapons of war, paid for by cuts to critical public services and investment in action to halt climate breakdown. The new Prime Minister Burnham looks set to increase military spending even higher.

Why? In part it’s the political ideology of nationalism. Some bizarre drive to “Restore Britain” as the colonial military Empire of the 19th Century. Britain is directly engaged in warfare right now, billions in armaments going to Ukraine to attack Russia, and billions more spent in support of weapons for Israel’s devastation of Palestine, Lebanon and the US war with Iran. 

Ahead of next week’s NATO meeting, the UK Establishment want to show its power. There is competition for such rearmament across a fast-militarising Europe. Germany wants to be the primary military power in Europe. The US F35 jets delivered to France represent more power and influence to the French. The German rearmament is very serious, reflecting a far-Right section of the ruling class actively wanting military conflict with Russia – even arguing for the “righting the wrongs” of the outcome of the Second World War.

2026 has seen the highest amount of global conflict since the Second World War. Nuclear weapons clearly do not prevent war – they actually increase conflict. Yet the UK is investing heavily in nuclear weapons – unusable unless the intention is to destroy all human society. 

Truth is, the UK’s status in NATO relies upon nuclear weapons. The value is not in weaponry but in a seat at the big boys table: the P5 dedicated diplomatic forum where the five permanent UN Security Council members meet to discuss strategic stability and nuclear doctrines. UK consequently also sits on the NATO Nuclear Planning Group (NPG), dependent upon State alignment with US military policy. Nuclear War is the sum total of the “special relationship” with the United States of America.

The illegal Iran War has cost the global economy dear. The UN calculates that at least 32million people will be plunged into poverty as a result of the war, largely through its impact on energy and fertiliser supplies. We will suffer the consequences of shortages and price hikes this Autumn and Winter. 

Thankfully, the majority of the UK population do not want a war. But what does that mean? To stop war we need a show of demand for peace and against rearmament across the country.

It is clear that the warmongers are in power. We have to build a mass anti-war movement, challenging rearmament and militarism now, and placing our social welfare and climate security first and foremost!

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We’re Constantly Distracted by Crisis

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (7.4.26), where I write a piece, edit it down to the maximum of 600 words, and then it’s edited again to meet the so-called “standards” of the corporate media. Little surprises me these days, but to see my phrase “Distracted from paedophile Presidents and Princes…” have the term “paedophile” edited out did raise my eyebrows. I thought, at least, that Trump has had a court case rule him as such, and that Randy Andy had been stripped of all titles and wealth because his alliance with Epstein. Oh well, there we go, the article is about the Climate crisis anyway!

The unedited version below, or read the published article by expanding the picture.

The latest HD pictures of the Earth from space are undeniably moving. An expressed emotional response often includes something about vulnerability.

So it should. One look at the globe and its obvious that everything is connected. The question is, what should we focus upon? Is there a first priority if we are to protect and sustain life on Earth?

Where should we start? Right now, moonshots are distracting from illegal wars and genocide distracting from the rise of fascist organisations distracting from paedophile Presidents and Princes distracting from corrupt exploitative billionaires and all distracting from the climate crisis.

And there it is. One look at our world and it should be clear that climate and environment are top and centre.

“Planet Earth is being pushed beyond its limits”, announced United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres reporting on the 2025 State of the Global Climate Report, completely eclipsed in its urgency and warnings by the war in the Middle East. The Earth’s energy imbalance – the gap between heat absorbed and heat released – is the highest on record. The vast majority of the heat, 91%, is absorbed by the ocean, harming marine life, fuelling storms and causing ice melt. Arctic and Antarctic ice loss together with melting glaciers are driving sea-level rise. Our weather has become more extreme. In 2025, heatwaves, wildfires, drought, tropical cyclones, storms and flooding impacted hundreds of millions of people and caused billions in economic losses.

In February this year, the UK’s Joint Intelligence Committee, on which heads of MI5 and MI6 sit, released a heavily edited version of its national security assessment of the climate crisis. It came with a stark warning: “some ecosystems will start to collapse by 2030 or sooner”, suggesting an immediate threat to national security, prosperity, food systems and public health.

Government intelligence agencies have compiled full scientific reports on the imminent national security implications of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse.There’s talk across the Establishment of adaptation to a world at an average temperature 3C higher than 150 years ago. We are locked-in to a return to Pliocene conditions, 3C hotter and, eventually, a 20m sea-level rise.

You may expect the government to share this knowledge with everyone so we can all make important life decisions. But the UK’s Defra has refused a Freedom of Information request to see the full, uncensored report prepared by the Joint Intelligence Chiefs in connection with national security threats associated with climate and ecological breakdown.

The question remains unanswered: what do we need to do to be able live in these conditions? Perhaps die in our billions? Those who have significant resources to build away from floods and fires, insulate our homes against severe temperatures, access nutritious foods that are grown despite soil-depletion and chemical pollution, will live. But that’s not the most of us.

It is no coincidence that the far-Right is being sponsored to call-out climate science as false conspiracy, and oppose net-zero targets at the ballot box. “Drill, Drill, Drill!” Is the cry of the oil industry lobbyists, echoed by far-Right idiots hoping for crumbs of cash and power from the Billionaires’ tables. The barbaric decadence at the top of global capitalist society has never been more obvious, now funding climate denial to a greater extent than their previous campaigns denying cancer from smoking or asbestosis from unsafe chemical production. Starmer complies with support for new drilling at the Rosebank field in the North Sea.

The global North is being lulled into believing we’re safe from the climate crisis. Those in the tropics and Earth’s southern regions are already suffering climate chaos. As Jane Fonda said last week, “There’d be no climate crisis without racism!” This is probably the main reason behind Trump and Farage opposing net zero goals away from fossil fuel dependency: in the first instance, stopping climate chaos will be of primary benefit to the countries of the global south, non-white populations! To hell with that, let them die first! Racist it is, but also very short sighted – the worse chaos global heating causes the tropics, the more likely the temperate zones will suffer seasonal dissonance, extreme weather and food shortages. The climate does not recognise national boundaries or human cultural differences.

The climate crisis is not a matter of opinion. The real conspiracy is the opposite of that spouted by The Deniers – governments have compiled the information on the Climate Crisis already – they’re just not letting us see it, preferring to distract us with photos from space. We should each make the links and act now.

We are each at liberty, for now, to submit a Freedom of Information request to government to release the full report produced by the Joint Intelligence Committee on the national security implications of climate breakdown, biodiversity loss and global ecosystem collapse. Email your Freedom of Information (FoI) to informationrequests@defra.gov.uk

In the meantime, stop war to stop the murder, massive environmental destruction, pollution and global heating carbon emissions, and campaign against the opening of any and all oil and gas fields, most urgently, Stop Rosebank!

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The Time has Come to Revolt Against Inequality!

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald (12.3.24) saying less than enough about the vile and cynical use of Parliament by the super-rich to continually fund their lifestyles on the backs of mass poverty. Their propensity for exploitation has no bounds, their audacity to extract billions of taxes paid by us to ensure the services we need only to be pocketed into offshore personal accounts is beyond criminal – extortion and corruption do not explain it well enough. The gangsters are in charge of the World.

The idea of One Nation is absurd. We live in a class society, layers upon layers of strata, of groupings, based upon wealth and power. Britain’s Capitalist class is one of the very richest in the world, and three times as rich as 15 years ago.

This is why we have political groups, Parties, purporting to represent the interests of each of the competing classes. Democracy is meant to replace open conflict by representing the tensions through debate in Parliament and local Councils, right down to neighbourhood forums

These structures are weaker now, wielding less representation of the people and demanding less accountability of those with power than anytime in the last eighty years. The adoption of free market economics, replacing the post-war mixed economy with overt competition and privatisation, has led all Parliamentary parties to value growth in profitability over social infrastructure. That’s the basis of the common political sense that “they’re all the same”. Politicians all subscribe to neoliberalism.

There are a range of very good reasons as to why most people have little faith in politicians. In recent years it has become apparent that government policies are more based upon the influence from corporate lobby groups than the People. 

It is the owners of big business who are actually in control, Parliament no longer offering even a mediating role between the needs of the bosses and the needs of the workers. 

Protection of corporate profits is now the observable purpose of government, the success rate proven by the record profits of the biggest lobbyists – banks, fossil fuels, supermarkets and arms manufacturers.

The end result is more akin to a nation of citizens and slaves than universal suffrage. The wealth is so accumulated into primarily the top 1% and minimally to the next 30%, that the bottom 70% of those in the UK have a a sliding scale of disposable income, no chance of accumulating real wealth, and a diminishing say in society. The bottom 50% (over 30 million of us), are without any honest representation or wherewithal independent of our week-by-week wage.

Last week’s budget was a stark illustration of this. A government preaching to its core supporters, giving away more tax money to the super-rich whilst trickling some crumbs to its voter-base, the formal opposition party barely disagreeing with that general political approach.

The result. Political spin and bluster on the one hand, more unending Austerity on the other.

The headline cut of another 2p in the £ off National Insurance will benefit higher earners the most: someone on £50,000 a year will save £1,310 — five times more than a worker on £20,000 and 15 times more than somebody on £15,000. It will cost the Treasury an extra £10 billion a year that could have been earmarked for State schools and the National Health Service.

But the frozen tax thresholds will actually mean those on a salary io £25,000 a year will take home £20 less a month. The tax allowance freeze disproportionately impacts the poorest workers because a larger proportion our income being taxed, our wages being low and insufficient. Similarly, pensioners with a small employment pension (they’re mostly very small) will pay more tax.

The pre-election government propaganda was a complete lie, the Chancellor shouting “Lower Taxes” pretending to help hard working people whilst actually giving handouts for bosses and the rich. Hunt increased the VAT tax threshold for small businesses from £80,000 to £90,000 and reduced the higher tax rate on property capital gains—the amount you make from selling property—from 28 percent to 24 percent.

This means more money for bosses and for rich people with big houses at the expense of all the essential services that the working classes rely upon.

The Budget announced huge public spending cuts – £20 billion in cuts by 2028, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. Health & Education will see 1% above inflation increases, not matching the increase in need. Public transport, universities and councils will all see devastating new austerity measures, on top of the past fourteen years of Austerity.

Successive governments have stolen, yes, held back and clawed back, some 65% of council funding compared with twenty years ago. Local services – essential services – have been slashed, those that can make a profit sold-off, the rest devastated or demolished completely. 

We have local Councils going bankrupt and forced to raise taxes, a health crisis, a housing crisis, a crisis of our children’s nutrition and mental health, a cost-of-living crisis engineered to maximise the living standards of the richest.

Working class people are not stupid. We see and understand what’s happening. And we know when we’re being lied to. In advance of the general election, few believe it will result in the fundamental changes needed for improvements to the conditions of the mass of the working class. In historical periods of such lack of trust in our leaders there is usually revolt, sparked by the experiences of inequality and injustice. Now is that time.