THE decision by the Bank of England to keep interest rates at 5.25%, the highest level for 16 years, came as no surprise despite the much acclaimed drop in the inflation rate to 2%.
Clearly the Bank didn’t believe that any corner had been turned by the UK economy and in fact believed that inflation would rise again after the general election.
For the working class this slight decrease in the inflation rate is irrelevant – all it means is that prices are still increasing, just not as fast as previously.
The savage austerity measures inflicted on the working class since 2008 following the world banking collapse has devastated the lives of workers and their families, with over 3 million relying on food banks just to survive and over 4.4 million children regularly going without meals. Millions of families have been forced into debt just to survive.
On Wednesday the TUC published its analysis of unsecured debts – including loans, credit cards, and hire purchase agreements. In a TUC poll 4 in 10 households said they had cut back on food and paying for utilities like gas and electricity this year.
A fifth of those polled (over 2,000) said they had fallen into arrears on household bills – a number that rises to over 1 in 4 for young people aged 18 – 24. 27% say they have been forced to take on loans to cover bills this year already.
In May the Bank of England revealed that the interest rates on overdrafts and credit cards increased to 22.76% and 21.46% respectively.
While the bankers and credit card billionaires reap massive interest income workers are driven into the gutter of poverty.
The TUC estimates that real wages for average workers would now be £14,700 a year more if their pay had kept up with wages growth before the 2008 banking crash – a crash that the working class has been paying for in order to bail-out the international bankers.
The TUC is good at producing analysis of the crisis driving workers into abject poverty but it refuses to take any action.
Instead the TUC, along with other trade union leaders, are doing nothing, instead pushing the fiction that any incoming Labour government will be the salvation of workers.
The fact is that, as everyone knows, the Labour Party under Keir Starmer has committed itself to be the saviour of capitalism not the working class.
There is no difference between the policies of the Tories and Labour over how to rescue a British capitalist system drowning in debt.
Both are committed to bringing down the massive national debt, currently over £2.4 trillion, with Labour saying this will be achieved by ‘growing’ the economy without bothering to detail how any growth is possible in an economy that is diving into recession.
The only way for a future Labour government to cut the debt pile is to carry out massive cuts to public services, exactly as the Tories are pledged to do.
The only growth that Labour has positively identified is the growth in spending on arms to the fascist Ukrainian regime, and building up UK armed forces to confront the ‘enemies’ of imperialism, Russia and China, along with the masses of the world who are rising up against imperialist occupation and wars.
At the annual conference of the giant Unison union this week, its general secretary Christina McAnea boasted that ‘Under Labour, we will have a place at the table.’
A place at the table is the holy grail for these union leaders, a chance to play the role of attempting to hold back the revolutionary tide of workers and youth refusing to being driven back to conditions of the 19th century for the profits of the bankers and bosses.
The time has come for the working class to demand its unions force a recall of the TUC conference to replace these leaders with a new leadership prepared to organise to bring down a Labour government carrying out the demands of the capitalist ruling class by calling a general strike and bringing in a Workers Government and socialism.
The only alternative to bankrupt British capitalism is the victory of the British socialist revolution.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists are standing on this revolutionary programme – join today!
