FOOD prices in the UK continued to surge at the fastest rate in nearly 45 years in April, as inflation fell at a slower pace than expected. The rate at which grocery prices rose slowed marginally in the year to April, but at 19.1% is close to record highs.
Stoked by the imperialist intervention into the Ukraine war, the inflation rate has shot up over the last 18 months, as food and energy prices have soared, leaving many households going hungry.
The ONS said that inflation was 8.7% in the year to April – down from 10.1% in March but above the 8.2% figure widely forecast by analysts.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt told the BBC that while the fall in the headline rate of inflation was ‘welcome news’, he admitted: ‘There are things underneath those numbers which show that this battle is far from over.
‘We’ve got a long way to go,’ he concluded. Meanwhile the US has tried to distance itself from an armed raid into Russia by its Ukrainian stooges, which Moscow says ended in the defeat and death of a large number of armed insurgents who entered from Ukraine.
Russia later released pictures of abandoned or damaged Western military vehicles, including US-made Humvees, while the US, which has handed billions of dollars in weaponry to the Ukrainian fascists, sought to insist that it did not ‘encourage or enable strikes inside of Russia’.
A state department spokesman acknowledged reports ‘circulating on social media and elsewhere’ that US-supplied weapons had been used, but said his country was ‘sceptical at this time of the veracity of these reports’. In a US news briefing on Tuesday, it was said that: ‘It is up to Ukraine to decide how to conduct this war.’ Russia says 70 attackers were killed, and has insisted the fighters were Ukrainian.
Meanwhile the USA is set to default on its federal debt on June 1 if the US Congress fails to agree raising it’s National Debt ceiling.
US Treasury Secretary Yellen has repeatedly warned that if Congress fails to raise the federal borrowing limit it will lead to an economic and financial catastrophe and collapse for the US and world capitalist economies.
The world capitalist crisis is deepening rapidly to the point of an explosion of economic collapses, wars, civil wars and revolutions!
In the UK, the Tory government is disintegrating with ex-PM Johnson in one corner and Sunak and Braverman in the other, getting ready to tear lumps off each other other, as the economic and political crisis of the UK deepens explosively.
On Monday the TUC organised a protest outside the House of Commons against the draconian anti-trade union laws that will turn trade unions into Labour Fronts at the disposal of the bosses.
The current TUC leader Paul Nowak made an ass of himself by pleading with the Tories stating: ‘We’re calling on Tory MPs today to vote with their consciences and not with their whips.’
He added: ‘Even on the Tory right, MPs such as Jacob Rees Mogg are expressing disquiet over this legislation.’ The Tories will treat Nowak’s plea for mercy with contempt. They are bringing in the new anti- union laws to break the unions and turn them into part of the capitalist state.
The RMT leader Mick Lynch however told News Line ‘We support a general strike to defeat this bill, we supported it in the TUC and it is our policy.’
In fact the Fire Brigades trade union has called for a special Congress of the TUC to be called to mobilise the entire working class to smash this bill.
This is the way forward, but workers cannot wait any longer, the enemy is at the gate!
A special Congress of the TUC must be immediately called to set the date for an indefinite general strike to bring down the Tory government and to bring in a workers government and a socialist nationalised and planned economy. This must be done, not just in the UK but throughout the capitalist world.
Where the UK workers lead, the French, German, and Greek workers will follow.
The American workers know that a USA default will destroy millions of jobs and lives in the USA and worldwide.
The America unions must call a massive general strike to put an end to the nightmare scenario that Yellen and Biden and Trump and Sunak want to introduce.
There is not a moment to lose. Forward to the UK general strike, Forward to the US, French and Italian general strikes to smash capitalism and bring in socialist, nationalised and planned economies worldwide!
