THE Guardian newspaper yesterday revealed that the Tory government is preparing to launch a consultation in the coming weeks on implementing a ‘British homes for British workers’ programme designed to bolster support for Rishi Sunak and his collapsing administration.
Sunak has been left reeling from polls, including one this week published in the Telegraph, that predicted the Tories facing political annihilation at the next general election, while his own personal popularity ratings are approaching zero amongst the public and traditional Tory voters.
In the latest development of the civil war raging in the Tory Party, former Tory minister Simon Case, writing in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday, publicly called for Sunak to be forced out saying the ‘unvarnished truth is that Rishi Sunak is leading the Conservatives into an election where we will be massacred’.
Case said that the Tories had lost ‘key voters’ by its failure to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda, despite all the pledges for a war on immigrants.
While the Guardian reports that this plan has ‘prompted anger from some in government, who warn it could further fuel support for the right-wing Reform UK party’ the evidence is that this is another desperate attempt by Sunak to cling on by presenting himself as a strong leader by adopting the policies demanded by the extreme right-wing.
Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party led by Nigel Farage, is being touted as the future party to take over from the Tories.
Farage despite being Reform’s ‘honourary’ president and main shareholder has kept a distance from the party (not even bothering to turn up to its conference) instead spending his time, in the words of one Tory MP, ‘circling the Tories like a shark’ with speculations he will rejoin the Tories to attempt an extreme right-wing regeneration.
Increasingly, the ruling class are looking for a ‘new party to take on and defeat the working class, just as they looked to Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s to impose a dictatorship on workers.
The entire plan of Sunak to resurrect the ‘British homes for British workers’ is nothing more than a rallying call to attract the most backward and racist elements in society.
Polly Neate, chief executive of the housing charity Shelter said: ‘This policy amounts to nothing more than scapegoating at its worst. It is unnecessary, unenforceable and unjust.’ She pointed out ‘it blames a group of people for a housing emergency that they did not create’.
The Tories blame doctors, nurses and the working class getting sick for the crisis in the NHS. They blame workers fighting for wage increases for inflation, and now blame asylum seekers for a housing crisis that has been caused by all the cuts to council funding, and housebuilding under years of Tory austerity.
While social housing has been cut consistently the Tories have provided all the planning permission and encouragement to giant property developers to build massive luxury flats on land previously occupied by council flats.
Meanwhile, billionaires have bought up and left unoccupied huge mansions throughout London – left empty for decades and used solely as financial assets and investments by property speculators.
The Guardian reports that Sunak intended to make an announcement on his plans last week but was dissuaded after being warned that it would look bad in the same week that Grenfell Tower victims were testifying about their horrific experiences from the devastating fire that claimed 72 lives.
The Grenfell Tower fire opened the eyes of the working class to the callous disregard capitalism has for the lives of workers and their families when it comes to profit. The working class will not be fooled by the Tories scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees for the housing crisis. They see the Tories and capitalism as the enemy.
The working class defeated Mosley and his fascists in the 1930s and will not tolerate any new party imposing the dictatorship of the banks and bosses over them.
The way forward is for the working class to demand the TUC immediately bring down this Tory government by calling a general strike and bringing in a workers government and socialism.
Socialist revolution is the only way to secure a future for workers and young people.
