STARMER pledged the Labour government would slash red tape in his speech to the billionaire investors and bankers who gathered in London yesterday at an International Investment Summit, eager to hear his proposals to open the UK economy up to being looted for their profit.
Starmer promised them a ‘golden opportunity’ to end ‘chop and change, policy churn and sticking plasters’ that he claimed were scaring off the international investors.
His central pledge to these representatives of the capitalist financial world was that Labour would follow the same policy enacted by the Tory government of David Cameron in carrying out a ‘bonfire of the regulations’.
The direct result of Cameron’s bonfire of building safety regulations was a raging inferno at Grenfell Tower that killed 72 people.
Just as Cameron boasted tearing up regulations would liberate British capitalism, so Starmer told his audience that slashing regulations that ‘needlessly hold back investment’ would revive a British capitalist system that is on its knees economically and drowning in debt.
Starmer said that ‘political fires rage across the world’ such as ‘conflict, insecurity, a populist mood that rails against the open values so many of us hold dear’ – insisting these ‘values’ are ‘so crucial for making business easy to do.’
The values that Starmer holds dear, which he shares with the speculators and asset strippers, are the values of driving down wages to boost the profits of shareholders – the regulations they want to rip up are those that stand in the way of looting vast profits from their ‘investments’.
This was clearly demonstrated when, on the eve of the conference, an almighty row erupted when Transport Secretary Louise Haigh called P&O Ferries a ‘rogue operator’ and revealed she had boycotted the company after it sacked 800 workers, replacing them with cheap agency staff paid half the official minimum wage – another regulation Starmer undoubtedly regards as ‘holding back’ business.
Despite the fact that Haigh was only repeating the official line taken by Labour in opposition, she was immediately slapped down by Starmer who insisted: ‘That’s not the view of the government’.
The owner of P&O Ferries, the Dubai-based DP World, was attending the conference, so sacking 800 workers was something to be swept aside to avoid any suggestion that Starmer’s government stands with workers not the bosses.
When Starmer attacks those who do not share the same ‘values’ as him and the international capitalist class, he has in his sights the tens of millions of workers and youth who refuse to tamely submit to being exploited and driven into the gutter of poverty by a Labour government prepared to inflict super-austerity in an attempt to bring down the national debt of over £2.7 trillion.
Workers and youth across Britain have made it clear their hatred of ‘values’ that Starmer holds dear.
Values that include the continued arming and support for Zionist genocide in Gaza, the stepping up of war on Lebanon and the preparations for an attack on Iran.
Underlying Starmer’s pitch to the international financial elite, was the promise that Labour, unlike the previous Tory government, would be able to deal with the working class to impose on their backs all the austerity cuts, and privatisation of public services along with ‘iron clad’ support for the Zionist genocidal regime and imperialist war.
In fact, the Labour government after just 100 days in office is already crumbling apart, torn by revelations of sleaze and confronting a powerful working class that will not accept being driven back to the days of the ‘Hungry Thirties’ and the horrors of imperialist war.
Starmer is relying on the craven reformist leadership of the TUC to hold back the working class from taking action.
Now is the time to sack the TUC leaders who refuse to lead any fight against the Starmer government.
The TUC Congress must be immediately recalled and a new leadership established that will call an indefinite general strike to bring down the Labour government and bring in a workers’ government that will nationalise the banks and large industries placing them under the management of the working class building a socialist planned economy.
This is the way forward today.
