EARLY results in local council elections in England have seen Labour and the Liberal Democrats gain key councils at the expense of the Conservatives.
Labour won control in Plymouth, Medway and Stoke-on-Trent – a former Labour stronghold which saw Tory MPs win in the 2019 general election.
Lib Dems won control in traditionally Conservative Windsor and Maidenhead.
Analysis of the initial results suggest Labour are making steady if not overwhelming gains, but the party says it is making good progress in the key battlegrounds necessary to win a general election.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer travelled to Medway to celebrate his party’s victory in the Kent council with local activists. ‘You didn’t just get it over the line, you blew the doors off,’ he told the crowd. He said Labour were ‘on course’ to win a majority at the next general election.
Liberal Democrat Leader Sir Ed Davey told the BBC he had a ‘Cheshire-cat’ grin on his face following what he said had been a ‘ground-breaking night’ for his party.
Speaking in Windsor, where his party won its target council of Windsor and Maidenhead from the Conservatives, Davey said: ‘The Liberal Democrats are the big winners in this year’s local elections.’
Results will continue to be declared throughout Friday, including three mayoral contests in Bedford, Leicester and Mansfield.
Ahead of Thursday’s vote, the Conservative Party sought to lower expectations, with party chairman Greg Hands suggesting his party could lose 1,000 council seats. Labour is saying it expected to gain around 400 seats.
Already the stench of a LIb-Lab pact is fouling the air as Starmer desperately seeks to be a Lib-Lab PM.
The main drama in this situation has been taking place in the USA. On Friday, the Daily Telegraph declared: ‘What banks on both sides of the Atlantic have in common is that they have been the victims of collective malpractice by the regulators and the Central Banks.’
The article focussed on the Bank of Italy’s Financial Stability report warning of last week that ‘Just under half of Italian banks have insufficient reserves to repay the cheap emergency loans (TLTROs) over the coming quarters.’
It added: ‘They can find other sources of funding but only at much higher borrowing costs, eating into operation margins.’
It continued: ‘Europe’s banks face more or less the same menace as US banks. Eurozone banks are even more exposed to the deflating bubble in commercial property than US counterparts.’
Jacques de Larosiere the ex-Governor of the Bank of France and ex-head of the IMF added: ‘Central Banks, far from promoting stability, have delivered a master class in how to organise a financial crisis.
‘It reminds me of Goethe’s classic tale of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice whose clumsy use of magical powers produces an uncontrollable trail of disaster.’
Starmer is now lining up to take advantage of the crisis of the Tory Party leadership, to mount his own Lib-Lab pact, on the Blair-Brown model, that will seek to form a government that will force the working class and the poor to pay the bill for the capitalist crisis.
This is why all celebrations at the demise of the Tories are premature as Starmer is more than ready to do a similar job as Blair and Brown to keep British capitalism afloat at the expense of the working class who will pay all the bills.
The trade union leaders must now rise to the historic occasion or be relieved of their posts by the masses of workers.
The TUC must be made to convene a Special Congress to discuss policies to deal with the capitalist crisis.
The TUC must be made to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
The ‘uncontrollable trail of disaster’ must be smashed by bringing down the Tories and going forward to a Workers Government and a socialist nationalised and planned economy for the benefit of the working class, and the youth.
Now is the time to build the WRP and the YS, and to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International world wide. Going forward to World Socialism is now a burning necessity!
