DESPITE all of the promises and the pledges made by Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer that he would improve living standards, the exact opposite is happening with the cost of living spiralling out of control.
Data from Retail Economics shows that essential spending for the least affluent families has shrunk by 2.1% since Labour was elected in July 2024.
Rachael Maskell, the Labour MP for York Central commenting on this situation says: ‘Families clearly have been struggling for the last 18 months and that’s pretty evident to all of us who have our feet on the ground.
‘We obviously have a big deadline coming up with the local elections in May.
‘Starmer was very much claiming ownership today of what happens from now, so we will watch this space.’
Workers however have a lot more to do than watch this space – In fact they have a to win the class war with the ruling class while Labour continues to retreat!
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South, commented yesterday: ‘It’s disappointing but it’s not surprising that our energy policy subsidises the affluent middle class vis subsidies to expensive cars, to heat pumps, to other things, and increases the size of the bills for poorer people.’
Nicholas Found from Retail Economics found that: ‘The UK’s most affluent households have fared the best under Labour, with discretionary incomes climbing 10.3% between July 22, 2024 and October 2025.
He added: ‘The reality is that lower income families are still grappling with the legacy of surging prices, with finances playing catch-up with the cost of everyday products which are significantly higher than they were four years ago.’
He added : ‘We’re seeing a generation of younger, lower to middle income households who feel poorer than they were five years ago, and feel worse off compared to their parents at similar ages.’
Faced with the growing economic crisis, and the savage attacks that the working class and the middle class faces on its living standards, it is obvious that what the masses of the working class need is a new and revolutionary leadership, that will demand the expropriation of industries that are being bankrupted, and wage rates that are linked to a working class cost of living index, formulated by the trade unions, so that there are automatic pay rises that match the rises in the cost of living that are taking place every minute of the day.
In these times of extreme capitalist crisis, the trade unions must demand a sliding scale of hours to shorten the working week with no loss of pay, and a sliding scale of wages that keeps up with a cost of living index drawn up by the trade unions.
With capitalism gripped by its worldwide death agony, it is obvious that it is the bankrupt capitalist system that must go, and be replaced by an economy that is owned by the working class as a whole and functions to satisfy the needs of the people.
Capitalism is bankrupted, and will stagger on, until it is expropriated by the working class and replaced by a nationalised and planned economy organised by the working class to satisfy the needs of the people.
The only way forward is through the building of a mass Young Socialists movement and the building up of the Workers Revolutionary Party, to organise the overthrow of capitalism with a socialist revolution.
Capitalism is bankrupted and must be consigned to the museums and the ‘dustbin of history’ and be replaced by a nationalised and planned socialist economy worldwide. Its maxim will be ‘from each according to their ability to each according to their needs’.
Now is the time to build the Young Socialists into the mass organisation of revolutionary youth, and the WRP into the revolutionary party that will lead the British Socialist revolution. It will give mass support to the working people of the world to go forward to the victory of the World Socialist Revolution and the establishment of the World Socialist Republic.
Forward to World Socialism, and to the worldwide Socialist Republic!
