THE ECONOMIC collapse of weak British capitalism has been accelerated this week by the political ‘death spiral’ of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
At yesterday’s cabinet meeting, Starmer defiantly told them that he is not resigning, insisting that a leadership challenge has not been triggered and he wants to ‘get on with governing’.
Starmer loyalists emerged from the meeting insisting that no one had challenged Starmer or suggested he should go, with ultra-loyal Work and Pensions secretary Pat McFadden telling reporters the government should just ‘carry on’.
What’s clear however, is that the Labour government is unable to just carry on regardless of the political crisis ripping it apart.
Despite there being no open challenge from cabinet members to Starmer, it is well known that the right-wing Health Secretary Wes Streeting has been actively canvassing support amongst Labour MPs for him to succeed Starmer, leading to accusations that he is preparing a ‘coup’ to oust him.
Meanwhile on the so-called ‘soft left,’ Angela Rayner, former Deputy Prime Minister, has made clear her own intentions to grab the leadership, possibly joining with Labour’s Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham to kick out Starmer and grab the tarnished crown of Labour PM.
Millions of workers and youth across the UK regard all this backstabbing and manoeuvring by Labour MPs with disgust at a time when they face massive increases in energy, food and rents along with the increasing demands for cuts to the welfare budget in order to pay for the capitalist crisis.
But, as an article in yesterday’s Telegraph newspaper points out, the political collapse of Labour is helping push the weak British economy over the edge of recession.
The article by Matthew Lynn, headed ‘Starmer’s political death spiral is about to trigger financial chaos’, points out: ‘The bond markets have given up on Labour’s chaotic in-fighting. Whoever takes over, or indeed Starmer himself if he survives, will have to deal with a financial crisis.’
Yields – the interest paid by the government to the international financiers who buy up UK debt – ‘are already spiking up’ reaching the highest level for 28 years.
With the UK national debt standing at around £3 trillion and climbing by over £100 billion a year, the interest payments are over £110 billion every year.
Gone are the days when the UK national debt was supported by institutions like pension funds, today it is bought up by hedge funds and financial speculators, using borrowed money, and these ‘bond vigilantes’ are demanding ever increasing interest payments with the threat of dumping their holdings and bankrupting the country.
These capitalist financial vultures are worried that the contenders for Starmer’s job, and even Starmer himself, are making claims to spend more by borrowing, driving the national debt into the stratosphere in order to win over the trade unions and Labour members.
Lynn writes: ‘Add it all up, and one point is clear: the death spiral of the Starmer administration is about to trigger a full-scale financial crisis’.
The only option for whoever emerges as prime minister from the collapse of Starmer will be to carry out brutal austerity cuts to the NHS and the welfare state along with an all-out war on the wages and rights of workers. And the trade unions.
The working class has had enough of being expected to pay for the capitalist crisis and have rejected the Labour government’s attempt to drive them into the gutter of economic collapse and recession.
The working class has the power to put an end to all the manoeuvrings in the Labour government over who best is suited to carry out a class war against workers to dump the crisis on them and their families.
The burning issue today is for the working class to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the banks and major industries, placing them under workers’ management to bring in a socialist planned economy.
The only way to resolve the political and economic crisis is through the victory of the British Socialist Revolution.
