PRIME Minister David Cameron promised yesterday that there are ‘painful cuts ahead’ that will last for years, and that he would be carrying out ‘difficult decisions’ to slash pay, pensions and benefits.
He added that his dealing with the £156bn budget deficit and the almost £800bn national debt would be ‘unavoidably tough’ and change ‘our whole way of life’.
By saying ‘our’, Cameron, a rich ruling class figure, meant ‘your’!
The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government has already outlined plans for £6.2bn cuts this financial year. Its emergency budget on June 22 will lop tens of billions off of public spending – more than originally pledged – because the problems were ‘even worse than we thought’, he said, as he blamed the Brown government for the ‘debt crisis’.
Cameron said Labour had let the economy get ‘out of balance’ and had greatly expanded the public sector even as the private sector was shrinking.
Economic growth had been based on ‘unsustainable’ booms and government spending, he said.
Cameron concluded that he was making decisions that had ‘enormous implications’, adding: ‘I want this government to carry out Britain’s unavoidable deficit reduction plan in a way that strengthens and unites the country.’
It would be more truthful if he substituted ‘ruling class’ for ‘country’ since Cameron and his Lib Dem accomplices are planning to make the working class and the middle class suffer to save the bosses from the crisis that the capitalists and bankers created.
It is a capitalist crisis, but the working class and the middle class are going to be made to pay for it, for many years ahead in ‘inevitably painful times’.
For the bankers and the capitalists it is to be luxury living as usual, for the masses it is to be a living hell, as the system hurtles deeper and deeper into crisis until a new world war is the only way out.
In fact, yesterday Cameron declared war to the bitter end on the public sector.
He said: ‘By the end of last year our economy was over four per cent smaller than in 2007. But if you look behind the headline figures, you see why we face such a massive deficit today.
‘Because while the private sector of the economy was shrinking, the public sector was continuing its inexorable expansion.
‘While everyday life was incredibly tough for people who didn’t work in the public sector with job losses, pay cuts, reduced working and falling profits, for those in the public sector life went on much as before.
‘Since 2007 public spending has actually gone up by over 15 per cent – some £120 billion in just three years. And while private sector employment fell in this period by 3.7 per cent, public sector employment actually rose.
‘So it really has been a tale of two economies. A public sector boom – and a private sector bust. But there was a problem with the previous government’s public sector splurge.’
He added: ‘And now we’re all paying the price because the size of the public sector has got way out of step with the size of the private sector.
‘We’re going to have to get it back in line.’
The message of Cameron is clear. Capitalism has gone bust and the private sector has gone bust with it.
Government policy is to bring the public sector into line with the collapsed private sector, that is to shut it down and impose complete ruin onto society, by sacking several million public sector workers.
In fact, the way out of the crisis is to expand the public sector and abolish the failed private sector by nationalising the banks and the major industries under workers control, bringing in a socialist planned economy and putting an end to capitalism.
Yesterday, the major trade union leaders responded to Cameron’s speech by saying correctly that it favoured robbing the poor to save the rich.
They however have no policy for the crisis.
The News Line does. As soon as Cameron and Osborne announce their emergency budget the trade unions must call an indefinite general strike to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government that will put an end to capitalism through carrying out a socialist revolution. This is the way forward.