THE Labour Party conference yesterday morning opened to boos and jeers from delegates furious at the Labour leadership’s manoeuvres to shunt the crunch vote on the axing of pensioners’ winter fuel payments to the tail-end of conference tomorrow morning.
The motion, proposed by five trade unions led by Unite and the Communication Workers Union (CWU), demanded a reversal of this brutal cut to 10 million pensioners, and was expected to be debated and voted on Monday afternoon.
Although any vote at the Labour conference is non-binding on PM Starmer’s government, the overriding concern of Starmer was to delay any vote until after his and chancellor Rachel Reeves’ speeches.
This was a concerted attempt to paper over the cracks in this Labour government that are growing wider by the day – just under three months since its election victory.
The booing and jeering at the Labour conference are nothing compared to the anger and revulsion of workers at a Labour government that has condemned thousands of pensioners to freezing this winter or the decision to keep the Tory two child cap on benefits.
This for Starmer’s government are just the opening shots in a war to impose the economic crisis of British capitalism firmly on the backs of workers, pensioners, children and the sick.
In her speech to conference, Reeves insisted that Britain faces economic ruin unless public finances are ‘stabilised’ – a euphemism for cut to the bone.
Reeves referred to the disaster of Tory PM Liz Truss and her mini-budget of unfunded tax cuts to the rich saying: ‘The mini-budget showed that any plan for growth without stability only leads to ruin.’
The reason why the hedge funds and international financiers dumped UK debt and tipped the country into outright bankruptcy, was because the stability they craved was an outright class war by the Tories to smash the welfare state, cut all public spending and drive the working class back to conditions of the 19th century.
The Tories were too weak to carry through this war on workers, and the same hedge funds and multi-billionaires (who now fund the Labour Party) are relying on Starmer and Reeves to do the job for them.
The powerful working class wouldn’t take this from the Tories, and they are not going to take it from Starmer and Reeves.
This is at the heart of the Labour government breaking apart on the rocks of the capitalist crisis.
This has not gone unnoticed by the Tory-supporting Daily Telegraph which yesterday published an article headed: ‘Brace yourself for the revenge of the Corbynistas’.
The article contains a telling, and largely ignored by the bourgeoise media, fact that the left wing of the Labour Party were for years told ‘socialism can’t win’ but, as the author notes: ‘Jeremy Corbyn almost did it in 2017’ while Starmer got fewer votes than Corbyn in the 2024 election.
Starmer didn’t ‘sweep to power’ on a wave of enthusiasm for his business friendly policies but on a much reduced turnout and an intense hatred by workers for the Tories.
Now this anger is turning on the Labour government, and the austerity cuts that Reeves is promising are essential to stabilise British capitalism. With the UK national debt now at 100% of the total amount of wealth produced by the country these cuts will exceed the savagery of all previous Tory austerity.
It is not the revenge of the Corbynistas that is coming, but the working class intervening to put an end to a capitalist system that is in its death agony and determined to take the working class down with it.
Corbyn and the left reformists, ruthlessly purged by Starmer, clung to the belief that capitalism could be reformed for the benefit of workers.
There can be no reform of capitalism – the immediate issue is for the working class to demand the trade unions organise a general strike to bring down this Labour government and seize power – going forward to a workers’ government and a socialist planned economy.
This demands the rapid building up of the WRP and Young Socialists to provide the revolutionary leadership required to put an end to bankrupt capitalism with the victory of the British Socialist Revolution.