Rishi Sunak delivered his first address to the nation as prime minister yesterday morning.
He started by praising Liz Truss and Boris Johnson in a blatant attempt to represent himself as a unifier of all the warring factions that have torn the Tories apart.
He paid tribute to Johnson for his ‘incredible achievements’ as prime minister.
Johnson will be remembered for saying he didn’t care if the bodies piled high during the pandemic as long as capitalism was kept open, along with all the lies and partying while thousands of workers put their lives on the line to keep the NHS and vital services running. Sunak even said he would ‘bring the same compassion to the challenges we face today’ that Johnson had shown!
He paid tribute to Truss for her contribution to smashing up the Tory Party saying her intentions were ‘noble’ and that he admired her ‘restlessness to create change’ but ‘some mistakes were made’. However, he, Rishi Sunak, is going to ‘fix the mistakes’.
Truss’s big mistake was to believe that a bankrupt British economy could take on billions more debt and that the world financial markets would allow this to happen without any reaction.
Faced with the prospect that the UK government was unable to pay the skyrocketing interest on this debt, the big speculators crashed the currency as they took their billions out of UK government bonds.
What the capitalist financiers and hedge fund parasites demanded was austerity cuts on a massive scale to bring down the debt.
In Sunak, these speculators believe they have the man willing to carry out their diktats – as a billionaire and ex-merchant banker he certainly has the right credentials for the job.
Sunak said: ‘Our country is facing a profound economic crisis’ citing the Covid pandemic and the imperialist war against Russia as the causes.
But, he insisted, ‘I’m not daunted’ and that he is ready to lead the country ‘into the future and put your needs above politics’ adding that he would build a government that ‘represents the best of my party’.
The working class has had over 12 years of the ‘best’ of the Tory Party.
12 years of austerity cuts have left the NHS cut to the bone to the extent that any further cuts are impossible if a free health service is to survive.
12 years of wage freezes and pay increases have left millions of workers and their families now facing eye-watering inflation and a cost-of-living crisis which leaves the working class facing a future of poverty levels not seen since the 19th century.
But Sunak is not daunted by the job entrusted to him by the ruling class to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis when he emphasised that, while he ‘fully appreciates how hard things are’, nothing will stop him from making savage cuts to ‘settle the debt’ as instructed by his world banking masters.
Sunak’s final pledge in the speech was that ‘I will unite our country not with words but with action’.
The only action Sunak will be taking is action to smash the unions, using all the law courts and police to enforce all the strike-breaking measures that capitalism is demanding to defeat the mass strike action sweeping the country.
Predictably, Sunak’s appointment as the latest Tory prime minister has been met with demands from the Labour Party for a general election on the grounds that he has no popular mandate.
This is a complete evasion – Sunak made it quite clear that he will not call an early general election but will use the two years before he is obliged to call one to wage a war to the finish against the working class.
The Tories must not be allowed two years. The working class must reject this demand as a diversion from the real issue of bringing the Tories down now by forcing the TUC to organise the massive strength of the working by calling an immediate general strike.
Only a general strike to kick out the Tories, remove the capitalist ruling class, and bring in a workers’ government and a socialist planned economy can provide a future for workers and young people today.
MAKE THE TUC CALL A GENERAL STRIKE!
FORWARD TO THE SOCIALIST REVOLUTION!