THE Prime Minister Gordon Brown has presided over a capitalist state rescue of the bankrupt banking system, which has seen the deployment of up to £1.2 trillion in gifts, loans, and guarantees.
These state maintained banks are now refusing to lend the cash out, but feel confident enough to resume paying one million pound bonuses!
To carry out this policy Brown has doubled the national debt and built up a budget deficit of 12.8 per cent of the GDP, that will reach £178 bn this year.
Yesterday, in a major pre-election speech, he announced what everybody knows, that the economic crisis is far from over, and that there are ‘bumps in the road ahead’.
He continued to declare, that ‘we’ will weather the storm together’, meaning that the working class and the middle class will be made to pay the bill for any additional measures that he sees fit to impose to further his rescue operation.
Insisting that he will carry on building up the state debt he declared ‘now is not the time to turn back’, adding to his big business audience ‘I will not let you down’.
He continued to attack the Tories, on the only difference that he has with them over this crisis, that is that they will carry out the most savage cuts too early, and deepen the depression.
His only difference with the Tories is on the best way to save British capitalism.
He warned that Tory pledges of immediate savage cuts will lead to them ‘recklessly and rapidly’ withdrawing the government support put in place after the financial collapse of 2008. This will ‘risk driving our economy back into recession’.
He added to his big business audience that they should stick with him and not take a gamble on Cameron.
‘With me what you see is what you get – and the stakes are high, we dare not risk the recovery, for our task above all else is to preserve and expand the jobs and lift the standards of life of the British people.
‘We are weathering the storm. Now is no time to turn back. We will hold to our course and we will complete this mission.’
The mission is to save British capitalism. The role of the working class and the middle class is to pay the bill!
Already there are a million youth without jobs, already there is a wholesale closure of industry taking place and while inflation is rocketing upwards pay freezes and open pay cuts are being imposed onto millions.
The Civil Service union, the PCS, warned earlier this week, in the course of its 270,000 strong strike action, that over 100,000 more civil servants are to be sacked.
Postal workers are being told by their CWU leaders that they have no alternative but to accept the closure of up to 50 Mail Centres, and more than 30,000 sackings, and that if they do not accept these savage cuts being carried out under the Brown government, they will be imposed on them.
Corus workers are demanding that the Teesside Corus plant be nationalised, while BA is seeking to sack thousands of airport workers and slash their terms and conditions of service into the bone, as well as cut their wages.
This is supposed to be, according to Brown-loving union leaders, the lesser evil compared to the Tories.
In fact Brown is preparing the way back to power for the Tories by his betrayal of the working class.
One PCS member told News Line last Monday that the best way to greet the general election is with a general strike.
We applaud the policy. In fact the working class must now organise to defend its vital interests.
Capitalism must he got rid of and not saved.
Capitalist governments that want to make savage cuts must be brought down by general strike action and be replaced by a workers government and a socialist revolution.