ON the eve of the Labour Party conference, Ed Miliband has sought to win the support of the middle classes, and also drive a wedge between the LibDems and the pro-Cameron wing of the Tories, by pledging that a Labour government will reduce maximum tuition fees from £9.000, as established by the current coalition, to £6,000.
Miliband voted against the increase in tuition fees, but as usual feels that principles are just an encumbrance to be got rid of, as he now confirms that he is not prepared to return to the £3,000 cap.
Just as significantly, and perhaps even more to the point, with the eurozone on the point of collapse, his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, has told the Sunday Telegraph just how keen he is to serve in a coalition government alongside the LibDems.
Not so long ago, the Labourites were suggesting that the LibDems deserved to be burnt at the stake for refusing ex-premier Brown’s offer to be part of a Labour-led coalition.
In fact, Balls is just following behind the lead of the Tory Chancellor, Osborne.
He has just issued a warning to the European Union that the clock on the massive nuclear time bomb of EU debt shows that the zone has just six weeks to resolve the euro crisis, before the EU implodes, and the union and its single currency are blown to smithereens.
Osborne and his fellow EU chancellors have apparently agreed that the Greek bourgeoisie must be allowed a ‘controlled’ default, but that a firewall of some 1.75 trillion euros of ECB credit must be rapidly constructed to prevent the contagion destroying the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish and UK economies, by allowing the purchase of unsellable Italian and Spanish debt, and by propping up the main crisis-ridden EU banks.
Balls, in his interview with the Telegraph, revealed his ignorance of the laws of motion of capitalism when he told it: ‘With Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling and Tony Blair, and many other people, I didn’t see this financial regulation crisis coming. So I hold my hands up.’
His master sold off two thirds of the gold reserves for a pittance declaring that gold was just a symbol and had no real value.
Brown also declared that he had resolved the boom to bust crisis of the capitalist system, on the eve of its biggest bust ever.
And now his pupil says that the crisis is one of ‘financial regulation’, meaning that his understanding of the capitalist crisis remains at zero.
Balls revealed his unity with the other capitalist parties when he declared that ‘tough decisions on tax and spending’ lie ahead.
He also added: ‘So I think it is quite conceivable we’ll have a coalition of the Liberal Democrats, and I would be very happy to serve in such a coalition. I would be amazed if that coalition has Nick Clegg at the head of it.
In fact, Balls hints that although he does not want to be leader of the Labour Party, he sees his future as a leader of a future crisis coalition between Labour and the LibDems and the Tories.
In fact, Chancellor Osborne, after a meeting of G20 finance ministers in Washington on Friday, said: ‘Patience is running out in the international community. . . There is a clear sense that there is a deadline for the Cannes summit. The eurozone has six weeks to resolve this political crisis.’
The eurozone cannot resolve its crisis in six weeks or six years since it is the expression of the death agony of the capitalist social system.
What is on hand, in the UK, is a preparation to form a crisis-led coalition national government at a moment of the most acute crisis, that will declare that it is the national will, and that accordingly the working class and the middle class must accept the biggest cuts in the history of capitalism.
The working class must answer any such diktat with a general strike to bring down the government and bring in a workers’ government to expropriate the bosses and the bankers and bring in socialism. This is the only way forward.
