THE cringing prostration of Labour prime minster Keir Starmer to US president Donald Trump finally paid off at the weekend when Trump condescended to have a telephone conversation with Starmer.
According to reports of the conversation, Starmer was at his nauseating best in congratulating Trump for his victory in the presidential election and for the ceasefire agreement forced on the Israeli regime.
The fact that the Gaza ceasefire was a result of the Palestinian resistance defeating the Israeli genocidal war to crush Gaza was obviously not mentioned by Starmer – who has been the faithful ally of US imperialism and its support for Zionist genocide.
The massive defeat inflicted on imperialism’s Middle East military enforcer was deliberately ignored, to be replaced with the narrative of Trump the great ‘deal maker’ bringing peace through diplomatic pressure on Israel.
Praising Trump to the heavens was designed by Starmer as the basis for begging the US president to exempt the UK from his policy of waging economic war on every country in the world in an attempt to rescue the supremacy of US capitalism.
In return for all this praise heaped on him, Trump bestowed on Starmer a pat on the head saying that he, Starmer, was doing ‘a very good job thus far’.
The very good job that has earned Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves Trump’s gracious approval is the full-on drive by Labour to end regulations that the bosses and bankers complain stifle growth.
Among the proposals Reeves is planning, is to end restrictions on the banks’ ability to lend mortgages and looting the giant corporate pension funds for millions to be used to invest ‘for growth’.
Planning regulations are to be ended along with legal challenges, to ‘kick start’ the economy by allowing developers to push through housing and infrastructure building with no restrictions.
At the same time, Reeves is bending the knee to the multi-billionaires with her expected ‘watering down’ of Labour’s pledges to tax non-doms.
Non-doms are those foreign nationals who live in the UK but are exempt from paying tax on the vast profits they make outside the country.
Cutting taxes for the filthy rich while abolishing restrictions on the rights of bankers and corporations to rampage through the country in search of the economic ‘growth’ that Starmer and Reeves are committed to, is music to the ears of Trump.
The idea that British capitalism can grow its way out of crisis is a fantasy. British capitalism is literally drowning in debt, while yesterday the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) reported that bosses in the private sector expect a ‘significant fall’ in economic activity in next three months.
The Telegraph reported that companies are already laying off workers, moving jobs overseas and ‘curbing investments’ in anticipation of the hit to their profits from Reeves’ tax increase on National Insurance contributions.
High street giant Boots has announced it is selling off all its shops while the Spanish bank Santander revealed at the weekend it would be pulling out of the UK – although this was quickly denied shortly after the announcement.
Starmer earned his pat on the head from Trump by dropping all pretence of Labour being a ‘government for workers and business’ and launching a class war to the finish to dump the capitalist crisis on the back of the working class.
The powerful working class in Britain will never passively accept being driven back to conditions of mass unemployment, the destruction of the NHS and all the gains of the Welfare State to keep the bosses and bankers in profit.
Workers and youth are turning on the Starmer government, while the TUC leaders remain completely silent on all the attacks being launched by Reeves.
This complicity with the Labour government must be ended and the TUC forced to take action.
Workers must demand an immediate recall of the TUC conference to organise a general strike to bring down this Labour government and bring in a workers’ government.
A workers’ government will nationalise the banks, major industries and corporations placing them under the management of and for the benefit of the working class, replacing bankrupt capitalism with a socialist planned economy.