LAST Wednesday Chancellor Osborne, with all the arrogance of a Tory millionaire born to rule, stood up in parliament and announced that he was pushing ahead with cuts calculated to save £4.4 billion through disability benefit cuts in order to pay for tax cuts for the well-off and rich.
Yesterday the brand new Work and Pensions secretary, Stephen Crabb, announced that the cuts to disability benefits, named Personal Independence Payments (PIP), have been abandoned and that the money would have to be made by other cuts to the welfare budget.
Crabb has been drafted in to take over the post from Iain Duncan Smith, who exploded a political bomb under both Osborne and Cameron by resigning last Friday, denouncing the Chancellor, accusing him of pursuing a ‘desperate search for savings’ at the expense of the very poorest in society in order to enrich the natural supporters of the Tory party.
The mantle of ‘humanitarian Tory’ sits badly on the shoulders of a man who, for the past six years, has hammered benefits through caps to Universal Credit and the Bedroom Tax, but that didn’t stop Duncan Smith from tearing into both Osborne and Cameron in an interview on Sunday when he accused them of ‘dividing society’ with their austerity cuts.
The talk of a ‘divided society’ masks the very real fear being felt by a section of the Tory party that Osborne’s blatant budget hand-out to Tory voting ‘middle England’ was pouring fuel on the fire of the rising revolutionary mood amongst workers against austerity.
Duncan Smith and his co-thinkers on the euro-sceptic wing of the Tory party were also convinced that Osborne’s budget, which contained nothing but a tissue of lies about the state of the British capitalist economy, was designed purely as a stop-gap to tide Cameron’s government over until the EU referendum on June 23.
By bribing the Tory shires, who are overwhelmingly euro-sceptic, Duncan Smith believes that Cameron is desperately trying to shore up the vote to remain in the EU; by resigning Duncan Smith has sought to derail Cameron and Osborne and scupper their plans.
What is clear is that the Tory Party is undergoing a terminal meltdown. Osborne is on the way out, taking with him his close friend and political twin Cameron. What is also clear is that the banks and big businesses that are desperate to stay in the EU are now forced more than ever to rely on the leadership of the trade unions and Labour Party to rescue them by delivering the working class vote to remain.
Unite, the largest trade union in Britain, along with the TUC, is spearheading this campaign in the full knowledge that the only thing that can rescue Cameron is a ‘Yes’ vote. Unite members must not allow their cringing leaders to call the tune. It is a disgrace that at the time of the biggest crisis ever of this anti-working class government, these leaders move in to help them out.
We call on all Unite members and all trade union members to take action now and insist a general strike is called to bring this weak, crisis-ridden and bitterly divided Tory government down. The way forward for the working class is clear. They must unite behind the junior doctors and all those in struggle against the Tories, and call every single union out on strike to take on this government and bring it down.
The Tories must be replaced with a workers government that would expropriate the banks and industry and place them under the control of the working class and establish a planned socialist economy.
A workers government must withdraw immediately from the capitalist EU and join with the working class of Europe in the struggle for the victory of the socialist revolution and the creation of a united socialist states of Europe. This requires the building of the revolutionary leadership of the WRP now to lead this fight.
