BRITISH capitalism has plunged even deeper into debt! It was revealed yesterday that interest payments on the massive £2.4 trillion national debt have more than doubled in June to £19.4 billion.
This is the highest increase in debt repayment for a single month since records began in 1997.
The independent Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) is now predicting that interest payments on the national debt alone will reach £87 billion this financial year, driven by a rampaging inflation.
A large proportion of the national debt is in the form of government debt stocks and repayment on these are linked to the RPI (Retail Price Index) rate of inflation, currently way beyond the 9.1% official CPI rate.
This massive amount of money is being repaid to the international investors who hold the government debt – the very people who were bailed out following the world banking crash in 2008 by the government printing money.
This flooding of the world with trillions of worthless paper currency by the central banks to prop up international capitalism has driven inflation through the roof. Now capitalism and capitalists are demanding that this colossal debt mountain must be reduced by savagely cutting public spending to the bone, destroying the NHS and every welfare and social provision, while at the same time forcing down the value of wages, driving millions into destitution.
This situation is catastrophic. However, much worse is to come as inflation is set to surge even higher over the coming months.
Previously, the energy regulator Ofgem predicted the cap on energy prices to UK households will rise by 40% to £2,800. Now it is predicted that the cap will increase by 60% to around £3,244 per household.
A family paying £100 a month will be forced to pay £165 to heat their homes and cook food for their children. Tens of millions of workers will face this winter choosing between freezing and starving or both!
The respected money savings expert Martin Lewis has warned that the cost of living crisis workers are facing right now could lead to a ‘consumer strike’.
He told ITV’s Peston politics programme on Wednesday: ‘The big movement that I am seeing is an increase of growth in people calling for non-payment of energy bills, mass non-payment. Effectively, a consumer strike on energy bills and getting rid of the legitimacy of paying that.’
Lewis added: ‘We are getting close to a Poll Tax moment on energy bills coming into October and we need the government to get a handle on that because once it starts becoming socially acceptable not to pay energy bills, people will stop paying energy bills and you’re not going to cut everyone off.’
In fact, the ruling class is quite prepared to ‘cut everyone off’ in order to maintain the huge profits of the oil and energy companies – if allowed to get away with it. Their solution is forcing workers to keep paying for capitalism’s inflationary crisis and bankruptcy, however much that costs – all to keep the bosses and bankers rolling in profit.
However, the powerful working class is showing that it is not prepared to accept being driven back to the poverty of the 1930s. It is taking action and preparing for mass strikes across both the public and private sector for pay increases that match spiralling inflation.
NHS workers, transport workers, postal and telecom workers, teachers and even lawyers are amongst the mass of workers rising up to fight for wage increases that match inflation.
With the working class on the move it is not just the legitimacy of paying energy bills that is being challenged but the legitimacy of a bankrupt capitalist system that can only survive by making workers pay for the crisis.
The urgent and immediate requirement is for this mass uprising of consumers and trade unions to be mobilised into a political general strike to bring down the Tories and take power by advancing to a workers’ government.
A workers’ government will immediately nationalise without compensation all the major industries and banks, placing them under the management of the working class as part of a socialist planned economy.
Only the WRP and its youth organisation the Young Socialists are fighting for this revolutionary programme – join us today in the organisation of the British socialist revolution!