LABOUR Prime Minister Keir Starmer arrived in Washington yesterday for a first meeting with President Trump since his inauguration last month.
The situation in Ukraine is top of the agenda. Speaking on the plane to the US, Starmer told reporters that he wants Trump to agree that, in the event of any peace deal agreed with Russia, the US will offer security guarantees to the Ukrainian regime.
Starmer has committed to putting British troops on the ground in Ukraine as part of a European ‘peace keeping force’ and pledged a massive increase in defence spending to pay for his promises.
The question is where is all the money for increases in defence spending coming from?
Starmer claims that cutting the spending on overseas aid will pay for increasing defence spending to 2.5% of GDP (with the promise to increase it to 3%).
But as the Telegraph newspaper points out ‘even this may not be enough’ to increase the size of the military, restock the weapons stockpile – badly depleted through handing weapons to Ukraine – and investing in new technology.
Instead, it says: ‘Some truly sacred cows will also need to be slayed for the numbers to add up.
‘The two greatest areas of spiralling spending are working-age benefits and expenditure on pensioners, including the state pension, pensioner benefits, social care and the NHS,’ according to the Telegraph.
The paper laments that pensioners ‘will regrettably need to take a hit’ as the triple-lock on pensions becomes unaffordable.
The article doesn’t appear to be too concerned about the NHS and workers’ benefits being slashed as Starmer must ‘do the right thing’ because Britain ‘has neglected our external and internal defences for too long’.
As the article makes clear, the only way that Starmer can fulfil his pledge to US president Donald Trump to increase defence spending is by a massive slashing of benefits, cutting funding for the NHS and slashing civil service jobs.
Already, Labour Chancellor, Rachel Reeves has demanded 5% ‘savings’ across all government departments, putting 10,000 jobs on the line.
The unrelenting attack on the NHS reached a new level this week when it was revealed that University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is recruiting a doctor to work exclusively treating patients in A&E corridors. The London Whittington Hospital last month advertised for nurses to work 12-hour ‘corridor care’ shifts.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the Times newspaper that this was a ‘frightening and worrying indictment of how bad things have become’ in A&E departments across the country.
But the NHS and workers benefits were of no concern to Starmer as he jetted off to pay tribute to Trump.
Starmer is offering up every gain made by the working class to be sacrificed in order that British capitalism will be able to offer up a morsel to the US, in the hope that Trump will be gracious enough not to impose the 25% trade tariff he has promised for the EU on the UK.
The working class is to be made to pay for imperialist wars and to fund the exploitation of the whole world by the bloated capitalist class.
The working class in Britain has the power to put an end to the class war that the Starmer Labour government is waging on behalf of the bankrupt capitalist system. Workers will never accept having their wages, jobs and the gains of the Welfare State destroyed to boost the profits of the bankers and bosses.
While this crisis develops to breaking point, the reformist leadership in the trade unions remains silent and refuses to take any action to defend the jobs, wages or rights of workers!
The TUC has uttered not one word even of criticism of the Starmer government, let alone mobilise any working class action in opposition to Labour’s declaration of class war on the workers.
The time is long overdue for general strike action. The working class, in its giant trade unions, must force an immediate re-call of the TUC Congress to remove these leaders and replace them with a leadership prepared to organise the strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down Labour and bring in a workers government and socialism. This is what has to be done!
