In his speech to the Labour Party conference on Tuesday Prime Minister Andy Burnham issued a ‘rallying call to the country,’ insisting that we must all ‘pull as one’ and declared that he stood for ending the ‘politics as usual’ and will ‘break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path.’
This turned out to be nothing more than the demand for the working class to accept the reality of a collapsing British capitalism and ‘pull together’ with the bosses and bankers to save a system crushed by a massive national debt.
In order to carry out his rescue mission for British capitalism, Burnham announced his decision to end the triple lock on pensions and to seek to rejoin the bosses’ and bankers’ club, the EU.
Both of these positions represent a tearing up of the Labour manifesto on which it fought the 2024 general election, winning a massive majority.
The triple lock, introduced to lift pensioners out of poverty by raising pensions in line with inflation every year, has been denounced by the Office for Budget Responsibility as one of the main factors contributing to the unsustainability of public finances.
Burnham attempted to dress up this betrayal of the elderly by claiming money saved from scrapping the triple lock would be used to fund his vague promise for a publicly financed social care programme.
Workers will not be fooled by Burnham’s empty promises, they know that all the money saved off the backs of pensioners will be used to pay the interest on the £3 trillion national debt to the hedge funds and financial speculators, who make billions buying up government bonds.
Burnham is also desperate to get the money to fulfil his pledge to pour yet more billions into the arms industry to prepare the UK for a non-existent war with Russia.
Burnham, who claims Labour has a ‘moral duty’ to inflict the pain of the capitalist crisis onto the backs of the most disadvantaged, came under attack from the head of the Unite union – the largest union and financial donor to the Labour party.
Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, told the BBC that scrapping the triple lock and forcing pensioners who get around £12,500 a year, to pay for Burnham’s plans would be ‘morally wrong’.
She added: ‘I can’t understand why we keep going to the well of the poorest in society as a Labour government’, before ending with the usual cry of trade union leaders ‘why are we doing that instead of taxing the rich’.
The elderly, unemployed youth and workers, who rely on benefits to feed, clothe and house their families, have always been first in line for a brutal austerity war from both Tory and Labour governments, while the multi-billionaire capitalist class are untouchable.
In his speech, Burnham acknowledged that his Labour government will face the wrath of a working class determined not to pay the bill for the capitalist crisis when he said that he was prepared to pay the political cost of Labour’s plans for a class war to the finish.
British capitalism is being crushed by the international crisis of a capitalist system that is in its death agony, and prepared to take the working class down with it as it crashes into recession.
The time has come for trade union leaders like Graham to make sure that not just Burnham pays the price but the entire capitalist system.
The working class has only one way forward today and that is to force the TUC to call a general strike to kick out the Burnham government and go forward to a Workers Government and Socialism.
The trade union leaders who refuse to call a general strike must be sacked and replaced with a new leadership prepared to organise the working class to take power, putting an end to bankrupt British capitalism, and advancing to a socialist society where production is used for the benefit of all, not just to provide profits of a handful of capitalists.
Now is the time to join the WRP and Young Socialists to build up the leadership required for the victory of the British Socialist Revolution.
There is not a moment to lose!
