YESTERDAY, in a speech in London, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch made an offer to Keir Starmer to work together on a plan to slash spending on welfare and benefits.
Badenoch proposed a cross-party committee of Labour ministers and their Tory counterparts to agree plans to make savage austerity cuts ‘in the national interest’. She made this offer for the Tory party to rescue Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves in the aftermath of the humiliating retreat forced on Starmer’s government by a rebellion of Labour MPs over earlier plans to cut benefits for the disabled.
With Labour MPs under pressure from a working class that is rising up and refusing to tolerate a Labour government carrying out super-charged austerity to bail out bankrupt British capitalism, Badenoch is offering a lifeline to Starmer and Reeves.
Starmer was forced to do an abrupt U-turn on cuts to Disability Allowance that would have ‘saved’ £5 billion from the welfare bill, but the requirement to make even more savage cuts not only remains but is increasingly demanded by the international finance markets.
These international financial markets that buy UK government bonds – used to finance government spending over and above the amount raised through taxation – have driven up the interest repayment on their loans pushing the national debt into the stratosphere.
This followed the defeat of Starmer and recognition by the world investors that this Labour government is, despite a massive majority in Parliament, fragile and unable to implement the austerity cuts demanded by the world bankers.
At this point of crisis, Badenoch has stepped in with an offer of what amounts to a coalition with Starmer to force through cuts to the welfare state in the ‘national interest’ of the bosses and bankers.
Starmer used the ministerial ‘reshuffle’ forced on him last week by the resignation of Angela Rayner to move sharply to the right, bringing in Pat McFadden as the new Work and Pensions Secretary with, according to the Telegraph paper, ‘a brief to slash the cost of benefits and get unemployed young people back to work’.
Reeves is preparing for an Autumn Budget in November where she will unveil her plans to make massive cuts to welfare spending while making sure that the wealthy and corporations are not at risk of increased taxation.
Starmer’s ministers have dismissed Badenoch’s offer of support in cutting welfare rather than increasing taxes, but the fact remains that a coalition with the Tories to inflict massive economic pain on the working class and youth is precisely what capitalism is demanding.
In her speech, Badenoch raised the threat that unless Starmer takes drastic action to slash public spending by destroying the Welfare State, then ‘otherwise we will end up going to the IMF cap in hand.’
The matter of the UK being forced to beg the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for money to bail the country out of bankruptcy has been raised by economists in recent weeks.
While the IMF simply doesn’t have the money to bail out a UK economy drowning under a national debt of over £3.2 trillion, the threat of being forced to beg for money from them serves as a cover for Starmer and Reeves to insist that sacrifices must be made by workers and youth.
Jeffrey Franks, former head of IMF Europe, told the Telegraph that the threat of being forced to go cap-in-hand to the IMF ‘sometimes helps policymakers to push through decisions that they know they need to, but it’s easier to do when you can blame the IMF.’
Despite ridiculing Badenoch’s offer, the catastrophic economic crisis of capitalism is driving this weak Labour government towards some form of coalition with the Tories to carry out the requirement to smash the powerful working class to keep bankrupt capitalism from collapsing into bankruptcy.
The way forward is for the working class to resolve this crisis by demanding the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Starmer government and bring in a workers’ government and socialism.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists fight for this policy and perspective – join today to build up the revolutionary party to organise the victory of the British Socialist Revolution – there is no time to lose.
