THE UK economic think-tank, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (Niesr), this week issued yet another warning that the US-Israeli war on Iran will push a further 200,000 UK households into poverty.
Rising energy bills for households along with massive increases in petrol prices and food costs is putting a massive strain on family finances it warned.
At the same time, the economic ‘slowdown’ will impact on wage increases and inevitably lead to a dramatic increase in unemployment.
The effect for the working class across the UK from pay cuts and rising unemployment will hit the poorest households hardest.
Adrian Pabst, an economist at Niesr, said: ‘The new energy price shock caused by the war in the Middle East highlights old vulnerabilities. People in the bottom half of the income distribution will see their incomes fall due to lower economic activity and higher unemployment.’
Pabst added: ‘Moreover, lower-income households typically spend a larger share of their budget on energy and food, so rising energy costs and food inflation will erode their living standards beyond the effect of the shock on their income.’
Over 200,000 households will soon be joining the five million already estimated to be living in absolute poverty in the UK. According to the Niesr, these dire predictions are made on the premise that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened to oil and gas carriers and that ‘normal’ trade will resume in the near future.
This latest warning follows a similarly dark prediction for the future of weak British capitalism issued by NIESR last week, that the UK is facing a £35 billion hit this year as a result of US imperialism’s war on Iran.
US president Donald Trump, in an act of desperation, is attempting to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz by sending in the US navy and military under cover of a ‘humanitarian’ plan to ‘guide’ ships through Iranian waters.
Yesterday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf warned that the ongoing situation in the Strait is becoming ‘unbearable’ for the US, adding: ‘While we (Iran) haven’t even started yet.’
With the imperialist war to reorganise the entire Middle East for exploitation by capitalism facing defeat Trump is lashing out, driving a war that will engulf not just the region but plunge the entire world into a global recession.
The crisis is becoming unbearable for workers and young people in the US and across the world with the working class in Britain in line for the biggest hit out of all the major capitalist nations.
It will not be 200,000 extra homes joining the five million already living in desperate poverty but tens of millions of workers, youth and, increasingly, whole sections of the middle class driven back to the starvation period of the last great depression in the ‘hungry 1930s’.
Meanwhile, the Labour government is tearing apart apart over who will replace Starmer after the predicted disaster of this week’s local elections, and carry out the job of trying to divert the anger of workers from rising up against a capitalist system that is crashing and determined to take the working class down with it.
The TUC is completely silent, not even commentating on all the warnings, and refusing to make any pretence of preparing the working class for the huge class struggles that will erupt as workers and youth rise up in revolutionary confrontation with the ruling class and the capitalist state.
TUC leaders who sit back and deliberately leave the mass movement of workers leaderless in the face of the biggest crisis in capitalist history, must be sacked and replaced with a new leadership prepared to organise the struggle for power.
Workers must force the TUC to convene an emergency conference to call an immediate general strike to bring down the Labour government and go forward to a workers government that will nationalise the banks and major industries, placing them under the management of the working class, building a socialist planned economy.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British Socialist Revolution – there is no time to lose.
