Labour’s newly appointed Chancellor John Healey delivered his first major speech on the collapsing UK economy in Coventry yesterday.
Healey tried to strike an optimistic note claiming that the UK is ‘turning the corner’ and insisting that the Labour government under Andy Burnham is committed to ‘wealth creation’ and growing the economy out of bankruptcy.
Healey was insistent, during all the vague promises about growing the economy, on the fundamental principle of the Labour government to ‘fiscal discipline’.
He said: ‘On my first day in the Treasury, I said that fiscal discipline was my first priority as Chancellor. It underwrites every promise this government makes.’
The discipline that he and the Labour government hold as their most precious principle is a commitment ‘to meeting the fiscal rules at the upcoming budget, to balance the books with a buffer to protect against uncertainty, to controlling borrowing to bear down on inflation, and reducing long term pressure on our public finances.’
In plain language, Healey and Burnham intend to cut the massive national debt of £3 trillion by carrying out a super-austerity war to slash spending on the public services, pensions, and the NHS along with benefits to the unemployed and disabled.
Healey claimed there was ‘nothing progressive about the government spending £1 in every ten on debt interest.’ He went on: ‘You know, if the debt interest were a government department, it would be the second biggest in Whitehall after health, bigger than defence, the Home Office and Justice put together’.
In a clear warning to workers he added: ‘That’s why staying true to our values means being honest about the need to control government spending.’
The ‘values’ that Healey and Burnham cling to are the same values that drive the hedge funds, bankers and industrial capitalists, not the values of the working class and youth.
The capitalist class are demanding that the Labour government smash up all the gains made by the working class in order to save their profits and rescue a decaying capitalism from collapse.
Being ‘honest’ about the requirement of a bankrupt capitalist system to impose absolute poverty on workers and youth requires the Labour government to attempt to convince them that they must sacrifice their lives for the greater good of the multi-billionaire capitalist class.
The previous Labour government of Keir Starmer attempted to make inroads on the national debt in a failed attempt to cut the benefits of disabled people.
The wave of anger that swept through the working class led to Starmer dropping the plan and contributed to his eventual forced removal, much to the horror of the hedge funds who buy up the UK’s debt.
Healey’s speech was clearly intended to reassure the bond vigilantes that he and Burnham, with his ‘man of the people vibes’, can achieve what Starmer failed to do – impose the crisis of UK capitalism on the backs of a powerful working class.
While Healey was speaking in Coventry, a few miles away the economic crisis was driving a coach and horses through his boast of growing the UK economy when Britain’s largest car manufacturer, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), announced 4,000 jobs cuts in the UK in what business and trade committee chair Liam Byrne called a ‘body blow to workers, families and communities across the West Midlands.’
While the working class is expected to gratefully accept such body blows, the TUC maintains complete silence and inactivity.
The TUC shares with Labour the same values – that workers must suffer to keep the bankers and bosses from crashing under the impact of a world crisis engulfing capitalism.
The time has come for the working class to say enough is enough and demand the TUC call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers and advance to a socialist planned economy.
We call on workers and youth to join the lobby called by the WRP and Young Socialists of the TUC annual conference on Sunday 13 September to force the trade union leaders off their knees to call a general strike now!
