ON THE eve of the Tory Party Conference, with the party split from stem to stern over Brexit, Tory leaders have announced that they are to continue with PM May’s conversion to the corporatist views of ex-Labour leader Ed Miliband that she displayed after she was appointed by the Tory 1922 Committee.
Fearing a second Brexit-type disaster the Committee decided not to allow a Tory leadership election, so May’s campaign was stopped in mid-launch and her appointment as Tory PM announced!
Fearful for her base in the party, May announced outside 10 Downing Street that the party was now the party of working people and she sought to bring forward some corporatist policies to try and bind the working class to capitalism!
This masquerade will feature at the Tory Party Conference. It has already been made known that Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green will announce that tens of thousands of people claiming the main benefit for long-term sickness will no longer face repeated medical assessments to keep their payments. Green will say it is pointless to re-test recipients of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) with severe conditions and no prospect of getting better.
However, ministers remain committed to a cut to be introduced next April in the amount of money that some new recipients of ESA will receive. From April 2017, payments will fall to £73 for new claimants in the ‘work-related activity’ category. The Tories never change!
PM May has faced criticism from the country’s biggest firms by calling for ‘responsible capitalism’. This has caught on with Labour MPs and even the TUC who now say that ‘responsible capitalism equals socialism!’
The Prime Minister wants to put workers on company boards and also rein in ‘excessive pay’ to try and show that she is not ‘just for the privileged few’. Chancellor Hammond, following his leader, warned in Saturday’s Telegraph that ‘demonstrations of popular sentiment’ such as the EU referendum vote in the UK and the rise of Donald Trump in America show that voters will no longer accept ‘irresponsible’ business practices.
He insists that the measures, particularly plans to put workers on boards, are ‘something that responsible businesses will recognise can be positive for them’. Amid growing concerns about the collapsing German Deutsche Bank, Hammond tried to reassure voters that the British – and global – banking systems are more ‘resilient’ than before the 2008 financial crash.’ He says: ‘We have resolution mechanisms in place to ensure if there was a problem with a systematically important bank anywhere in the world, the world’s central banks would co-operate together to resolve it in a way that didn’t contaminate the wider system.’
However, steps are being taken to strengthen the Tory Party and to win new recruits. Prime Minister Theresa May has asked Tony Blair’s former policy chief to review employment practices.
Matthew Taylor will look at job security, pay and workers’ rights and will also examine whether there are ways to increase opportunities for carers, people with disabilities and the elderly. Its just the policy ticket for wooing discontented Blairites whose attempt at a Labour Party coup have failed and are already repeating the new truth that ‘responsible capitalism equals socialism’.
May is aiming to strengthen the Tory Party and its slender majority by splitting the Labour Party, as the banking crisis deepens and a new catastrophe, bigger than 2008 emerges. In the face of these developments it is clear that the Corbyn-led Labour Party must have a policy to deal with the developing banking crisis, outside of sticking their heads in the sand.
They can’t just repeat the ridiculous idea that they will stop the capitalist crisis by bringing in a special regulation. Labour must announce its socialist policy for the crisis. This must be that it rules out another disgraceful bail-out accompanied by mass austerity, and rules in the nationalisation of the banks and the major industries under workers’ management to bring in a planned socialist economy that will be able to defend the jobs, wages, homes and basic rights of the UK working class.
