POLITICAL ‘role reversal’ is the phrase being bandied about by bourgeois political commentators as they scratch their heads trying to make comparisons between the election manifesto’s of Tory and Labour.
From page one of Labour’s manifesto, launched by Ed Miliband yesterday in Manchester, the party’s leadership went overboard to stress that it was they, Labour, who were the party of fiscal responsibility while the Tories represented the party of reckless and unfunded spending.
From the opening words of his speech, Miliband insisted that Labour was not offering a ‘shopping list’ of promises but rather a plan that shows ‘a clear commitment to balance the books’ plus a plan to ‘change the way the country is run’.
His vow was to protect finances with a triple ‘budget responsibility lock’ and a cast iron guarantee that all Labour’s policies are fully funded and will require no extra borrowing by a future Labour government.
More than that, he pledged that the government budget deficit will be cut every year and finally that there will be ‘strong fiscal rules’ to ensure the national debt falls and is turned into a surplus as soon as possible within the next five years.
Along with ‘balancing the books’ by bringing down not just the government budget deficit, which is currently estimated to be about £90 billion a year, and has barely changed despite all the massive cuts in spending inflicted by the Tory-led coalition, Miliband is also promising to ‘bring down’ national debt (over £1.4 trillion) and create a current budget surplus.
At the same time as he was proposing this miraculous transformation in the huge national debts, Miliband is promising a ‘change in the way the country is run’.
According to him, no longer will Britain be run for the benefit of the privileged elite but for the benefit of ‘hard working people’.
To this end, Labour is promising extra money for the NHS, schools and the repeal of the hated Health and Social Care Act, more child care provisions and increasing the national minimum wage to £8 an hour by 2019 – this derisory amount alone shows just how much Miliband really cares for the low paid.
While claiming he would cap profits made by the privateers in the NHS, he made no mention of, and is opposed to, reversing the privatisation of the NHS or any other public service.
As for the banks, whose collapse back in 2008 set off the crisis, all Miliband could say was that a future Labour government would introduce more competition into high street banking by reducing the threshold for market share.
The idea that the world financial crisis battering a bankrupt British economy can be halted and reversed by introducing competition in high street banks is laughable.
Recent history has shown conclusively that banks are too big for a Labour government or any other government to control.
Like every other promise, pledge and vow made by Miliband, it deliberately ignores the depth of the crisis in an effort to persuade workers that Labour can cut the massive and un-repayable debt that is strangling the life out of British capitalism, while at the same time ending austerity.
The only thing in the entire manifesto that is true, is that the Labour Party is completely committed to rescuing British capitalism, balancing the books and keeping the whole bankrupt system staggering on come what may.
Labour can make all the promises it likes in an attempt to win votes but in power it will be forced to carry out exactly the same policies as Cameron, that is of cuts and privatisations to bail-out this bankrupt capitalist system.
Workers and youth will not be fooled by Miliband’s reformist pledges, pledges that will evaporate in the face of the economic crisis.
The working class is rapidly reaching the conclusion that what is necessary is for a party to come forward ready to put an end to capitalism and advance to a socialist society, which will nationalise the banks and industry and place them under workers management as part of a planned socialist economy that produces for need, not for private profit.
This is the ‘change in the way the country is run’ that is required.