CHANCELLOR John Healey used his speech on Monday to the Labour Party conference to promote the fantasy that the Burnham government would usher in a ‘new age of industrialisation’ to revive a British capitalist system drowning in debt and diving into recession.
Healey’s promises of reviving British industry were significantly lacking in any detail.
Instead, delegates were treated to the usual optimism of the Burnham government having ‘a greater resolve, a greater determination, and greater hope’ after ‘14 years of flatlining Tory growth and living standards’.
This optimism, that the crisis engulfing the collapsing UK capitalist system can be reversed by ‘greater determination’, runs up against the reality that British manufacturing industry has collapsed.
Stephen Phipson, chief executive of the industry group Make UK, was quoted in the Daily Telegraph saying that while he welcomed Healey’s commitment, the stark reality is that businesses ‘are still grappling with crippling energy costs’.
On the eve of the conference, Sir Jim Ratcliff, billionaire boss of the industrial giant Ineos, accused the Labour government of ‘economic vandalism’ saying: ‘With gas prices now 12-times the level in the US and eight times that of China, we just cannot compete.’
Last week, Ineos closed down production at its three plants in Hull citing rocketing gas prices as the reason for the move that threatens the jobs of up to 1,000 workers.
Cold water was also poured on Healey’s fantasy by Liam Sides, the director of Oxford Economics, who said: ‘I personally cannot think of an advanced economy less suited for an industrial resurgence’ than the UK.
Swati Dhingra, a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee, was equally scathing saying: ‘I don’t necessarily see that tomorrow we can suddenly change immediately and become a manufacturing superpower – that’s not going to happen.’
Overshadowing Healey’s optimistic promises is the massive national debt of £3 trillion.
The UK is forced to pay the international hedge funds and financial markets over £130 billion this year in interest charged on this debt, which is estimated to reach over £160 billion by the end of the decade – the highest rate of any of the advanced capitalist economies.
Healey was forced to acknowledge this crisis and the demands from the International Monetary Fund and international bankers and financiers for action to bring this debt down.
Healey vowed he would carry on with the ‘fiscal discipline’ imposed by former chancellor Rachel Reeves and stressed that the way to bring the debt down was to force through brutal austerity cuts to benefits and the welfare state.
Healey told delegates: ‘It is simply not progressive to allow a bigger and bigger benefits bill and a system which offers an income but doesn’t offer a future.’
He announced that the Labour Party had a ‘moral duty’ to cut benefits to bring down the national debt.
The same words were used last year by Burnham’s predecessor Keir Starmer to justify cuts to benefits for the disabled and sick.
The working class wouldn’t stand for it from Starmer and they will not stand for it from Burnham who is actively considering ending the pensions triple lock that pensioners rely on to keep them alive under raging inflation in energy and food costs.
The Labour government share the same ‘morals’ as the bosses and bankers who treat the working class as disposable objects, fit only to be exploited for their labour and in times of capitalist crisis discarded and left to rot in poverty.
The working class has shown it will not be treated as garbage by the bosses and bankers, aided by a servile Labour government.
Now is the time for the working class to force the TUC to immediately mobilise the strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down the Labour government and go forward to a Workers Government.
A Workers Government will expropriate the bosses and bankers placing the banks and major industries under the ownership of workers and building a socialist planned economy to provide a decent future for all workers and young people.
