‘I want to talk to you about a new settlement for new times. A fair Britain for the new age. . . my unwavering focus is taking this country through the challenging economic circumstances we face and building the fair society of the future.’
Brown concedes that the UK after 11 years of Labour rule is not the fair society, but is in fact one where the rich have got much richer and the poor much poorer.
He also spoke abut the crisis and a world turned upside down.
‘You know, each generation believes it is living through changes their parents could never have imagined – but the collapse of banks, the credit crunch, the trebling of oil prices, the speed of technology, and the rise of Asia – nobody now can be in any doubt that we are in a different world and it’s now a global age.’
‘In truth, we haven’t seen anything this big since the industrial revolution. This last week will be studied by our children – as the week the world was spun on its axis – and old certainties were turned on their heads.’ This is including his certainty that he had devised a bust free capitalism under which the banks could have unlimited credit and debts.
Where were his policies to deal with this world turned upside down. They were nowhere to be seen.
Instead we got a series of empty word forms about ‘freedom’ and the ‘fair society’.
There is nothing free about holding people for 42 days in jail without having to charge them, or fair about cutting public sector wages at a time of a price explosion, or agreeing that to rescue banks tens of thousands of workers will be sacked.
These critical developments he attempted to hide under empty phrases, such as ‘fair chances for everyone matched by fair rules applied to everyone’. This does not tie up with the policy that the majority must sacrifice everything to save a cabal of greedy bankers and capitalists.
He did speak about his ‘constants’ from the time in the 1990s when ‘Tony and I asked you to change policy to meet new challenges.
‘We are and will always be a pro-enterprise, pro-business and pro-competition government. . .’
He added: ‘But the continuing market turbulence shows why we now need a new settlement for these times – a settlement that we as a pro-market party must pursue.’
First of all a pro-market party is a capitalist party.
Its policy for these times is to rescue the banks and capitalism at the expense of the working class and the poor.
This has class logic. What is very fair for the bosses and bankers is very foul for the workers and the poor. There is no above class fairness.
Brown advocates ‘a settlement where both markets and government are seen to be the servants of the people, and never their masters.’
No-one has ever experienced a capitalist market that is the servant of the people or a capitalist government that is. This is supreme nonsense.
This market that serves the people according to Brown is ‘where what counts is not the pursuit of any sectional interest but the advancement of the public interest – and where at all times we put people first.’
This hypocritical rubbish is from the mouth of the man who has just organised the rescue of the HBOS bank at the cost of at least 40,000 jobs. A very fair settlement for the bosses, but a very foul deed for the workers.
He continued: ‘And so it falls to this party and to this government, with its commitment both to fairness and to business, to propose and deliver what after recent events everyone should now be willing to accept – that we do all it takes to stabilise the still turbulent financial markets and then in the months ahead we rebuild the world financial system around clear principles. And friends, the work begins tomorrow.’
He is talking about spending hundreds of billions propping up banks, while at the same time holding down workers’ wages and privatising the Royal Mail, the NHS and education – all to save the bosses and bankers.
The working class must reply to this plan with industrial action to bring down the Brown government and bring in a workers government.