SOARING prices for bread, cereal and chocolate meant the cost of living rose more than expected last month – these are the fruits of the US-UK decision to promote a war against Russia in the Ukraine!
Inflation, which measures the rate of price rises, fell to 10.1% in the year to March from 10.4% in February.
Grant Fitzner, chief economist for the Office for National Statistics, which provides the figures, said globally food prices were falling, but that had not yet led to price cuts.
Inflation in the UK remains higher than in other Western countries, including the US, Germany, France and Italy. One of the main reasons inflation was higher than expected in March, was that food prices continued to surge.
Food prices have soared as the war in Ukraine has driven up the prices of grains and vegetable oils. Rising transport and packaging costs are also making imports more expensive.
The sharpest rises in March were seen for products including olive oil (up 49%), milk (up 38%) and ready meals (up 21%).
At the same time as the US-UK backed war in the Ukraine drives up inflation and pauperises workers all over the planet, the capitalist system itself is going through its greatest-ever crisis, as the big banks begin to go bust.
When Credit Suisse suffered its share collapse, it was rescued in a deal engineered by the Swiss government that protected shareholders to a greater extent than intended under the banking rules.
That decision entailed ripping up the rule book that was designed to end ‘too big to fail’. That this was done at the first sign of a major crash has raised big issues for the bankers.
Banks spent billions of pounds getting their balance sheets in order after the collapse of Lehman brothers, with massive bailouts of HBOS and RBS carried out by the Brown and Blair Labour governments and the US Bush administration.
Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, raised the big issue of bank closures speaking to a recent meeting of policy makers and think tanks in Washington. He said: ‘I push back on suggestions that the resolution framework we have got for large banks doesn’t work. It does work. The question is do we use it?’
Martin Taylor, former Chief Executive at Barclays, stated: ‘I don’t think that all deposits should be insured.’
In other words, the bankers are getting ready to sacrifice the depositors’ cash, to save the big banks by bankrupting the depositors, letting them take the strain as they had to do in the major 1930s crash and banking crisis.
Under the Sunak Tory regime workers face massive inflationary price rises as Sunak’s Ukrainian allies get ready to launch their projected ‘offensive’.
This will create a massive financial crisis and crash that will see the banks’ ordinary customers lose all of their deposits, while the big bankers continue to enjoy their gains.
While the ruling classes plan their future at the expense of the workers, the TUC leaders of the trade unions keep quiet, they say nothing and they do nothing.
Some time ago, the Fire Brigades Union called for a Special TUC Congress to be called to discuss a trade union campaign to fight back against the projected anti-union laws to ban strikes unless they conform to government regulations.
On Monday May 1 the trade unions will be marching in London. Workers must insist with the TUC that it calls a general strike on May Day to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government in the UK.
The nationalisation of the banks and the major industries by a workers government is the only way out of the growing and desperate crisis of the capitalist system that threatens to drive the working class back to the conditions of the hungry 1930s.
Only the WRP fights for a general strike and a socialist revolution in the UK as a continuation of the European and worldwide Socialist revolution, alongside the French, German, Greek and American workers who are also battling for socialism.
Join the WRP and its youth organisation the Young Socialists today! Only a socialist revolution offers a future for workers.
