THE Bank of England yesterday increased the interest rate for the 13th time in a row from 4.5% to 5%, heaping economic catastrophe on workers and the middle classes already reeling from sky-high inflation, and now facing an economic recession which holds a future of mass unemployment and poverty not seen since the 1930s Great Depression.
On the eve of the Bank’s latest increase, figures from the Office for National Statistics showed that government borrowing had pushed the national debt pile above the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (the value produced by the total UK economy) with the Tories forced to borrow £20 billion in May, more than double the £9.4 billion it borrowed in the same month a year ago.
This money was borrowed to plug the gap between government spending and the money the Tories received from taxes.
The ONS blamed the gap on increases in benefits’ spending and the poverty level pay rises imposed on NHS staff.
The working class are to blame is the message being pumped out by the ruling class and the bankers, as they become increasingly hysterical in their doomed attempts to find a way to survive the huge debt pile that is engulfing them.
This debt pile will only be increased by the Bank’s latest increase, which will push up the already massive debt repayments the Tories make every month to the international bankers, who buy up government bonds to finance bankrupt British capitalism.
Of course, none of this debt repayment gets a mention when the bankers blame the massive increase in government borrowing.
Only workers’ wages, spending on benefits and financing the health service are the targets for the savage cuts the bankers and the Tories are preparing in the name of bringing down inflation by pushing Britain into recession.
In fact, recession is now the policy of both the Bank and the Tories. On Wednesday, a senior economic advisor to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt urged the Bank to ‘create a recession’ and demanded it ‘create a ‘climate of fear’ amongst workers and companies.
A climate of fear to force companies struggling to avoid collapse and bankruptcy by making workers redundant and cutting the pay of those remaining.
A climate of fear amongst workers as mass unemployment and poverty is the outcome embraced by the Bank and the Tories, as they see the only way out of their crisis is to create an army of unemployed workers prepared to beg for whatever starvation level wages those companies that survive are prepared to pay.
While the Tories and the Bank are welcoming a recession to cut public spending by driving the working and middle classes into abject poverty, no such constraints are made on pumping billions into the imperialist war against Russia.
While wages and spending on health, education and every public service will be sacrificed the Tories have pledged a total of £5 billion, with unlimited amounts to follow, to the fascist supported Ukrainian regime of Zelensky in its war to weaken Russia.
The aim of the Tories is to establish Britain as a dominant imperial power in the Ukraine and surrounding regions, exploiting its people and industries for the profits of the bankers and bosses.
This is the only way capitalism can survive – through wars to re-establish imperial domination across the world, and war on the working class at home by a Tory government armed with anti-strike laws, enforced by a corrupt, racist and brutal police force.
The working class will not stand for this as workers have clearly shown in their determination to fight for wages and to defend their hard-won rights.
With British capitalism in its death agony the time is now ripe for the working class to act and use its huge power to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This will show the way forward for the working class of the world to put an end to capitalism with the victory of the world socialist revolution.
