THE speech by Labour’s Chancellor Rachel Reeves to the party’s annual conference on Monday was nothing more than an appeal to the international financial services and private equity firms to invest in British capitalism.
Reeves’ pledge was that Labour has changed and is fully prepared to create the conditions for international finance capital to loot the UK, with the Labour government carrying out its job of keeping the working class and its unions under control.
Reeves’ speech was interrupted by protesters who held up a banner reading: ‘Still arming Israel, still backing polluters’.
Another protester shouted out: ‘We are still selling arms to Israel’ before he was seized by security personnel with pictures showing him being grabbed around the throat before being knocked over.
Reeves’ response to this unwelcome intrusion of the genocidal war being conducted by Israel was to parrot the lines: ‘This is a changed Labour Party. A Labour Party that represents working people, not a party of protest.’
This is a Labour Party that ‘represents working people’ by cutting the winter fuel allowance to pensioners, that refuses to lift the Tory two-child cap on benefits and which is now declaring a war on the sick who claim benefits.
It’s a Labour leadership that has treated the union-sponsored motion demanding the fuel allowance cuts be reversed with utter contempt, by pushing it back to the final hours of the conference in the hope most delegates will have gone home.
The one thing that Starmer’s Labour Party will not protest about is the genocidal war being waged by the Zionist regime against Palestinians and which has been extended into a war against Lebanon.
Starmer’s regime has gone out of its way to stifle any protest at this conference, with a ban on posters advertising pro-Palestinian meetings from using the words ‘genocide’ or ‘apartheid’, while yesterday it was reported one delegate had been removed and suspended from membership for the crime of wearing a ‘Free Palestine’ badge.
Starmer may think he has scraped through this conference by stifling dissent, but the crises both at home and in the Middle East are escalating far beyond his ability to control the massive wave of rebellion over the Labour government’s brutal austerity attacks on workers and the ‘iron clad’ support of Labour for an Israeli regime preparing for an all-out war in Lebanon.
On Monday, Israeli airstrikes in Lebanon killed nearly 500 people in just one day and further attacks have continued.
Now the Zionists are preparing for a ground invasion with Israel’s chief of staff promising yesterday to ‘speed up’ the offensive.
Having completely failed to crush Hamas and the Palestinian resistance in Gaza despite murdering over 40,000 Palestinians, Netanyahu is banking on launching a war of extermination in Lebanon that will inflame the entire Middle East.
Too weak to defeat Hamas in Gaza, Netanyahu is relying on the US and its imperialist lapdogs in the UK and Europe to come to his aid by providing troops on the ground to carry on with his genocidal war. Already, the US has committed to sending more troops to the region to bolster the thousands already deployed along with warships, fighter jets and air defence systems.
The working class and youth in Britain and across the world are rising up against a capitalist system that in its final imperialist stage is attempting to resolve its crisis through wars to drive workers into the gutter of poverty while waging war abroad in an attempt to reimpose its dictatorship of the world.
The time has come to put an end to capitalism and imperialist war, by the working class seizing power and going forward to socialism.
The TUC has called for a ‘workplace day of action’ on Thursday 10th October in support of an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
This day must become the start of an indefinite general strike to kick out the Starmer Labour government and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
The burning issue today is the building up of the WRP and Young Socialists required to lead the British Socialist revolution to victory – join today there is no time to lose.
