TORY prime minister Rishi Sunak, in his first major policy speech last night, pledged to maintain and even increase military aid to Ukraine to prolong the imperialist war on Russia.
Sunak grandly announced: ‘We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. We will maintain or increase our military aid next year. And we will provide new support for air defence.’
Sunak went on to boast that: ‘Under my leadership, we won’t choose the status quo. We will do things differently,’ adding that this ‘means standing up to our competitors, not with grand rhetoric but with robust pragmatism.’
Sunak didn’t elaborate on what standing up to competitors with ‘robust pragmatism’ means in practice, but the working class will be in no doubt that they are being expected to pay for all the vast sums of money being poured into the Ukrainian government.
The UK is the second largest source of money and advanced military weaponry for the fascist-supported Kiev government – after the US.
In September, the Tories admitted this when they revealed that £2.3 billion in military aid has been sent to Ukraine this year.
Earlier this month, Sunak met with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in Kiev where he said that Britain ‘will continue to stand with you until Ukraine has won the peace and security it deserves.’
Limitless billions to keep the war on Russia going but nothing except poverty for the working class at home! And no security for nurses taking strike action over a 17% pay claim that Sunak was quick to insist is ‘not affordable’.
All the pay demands being made by workers are unaffordable as far as British capitalism is concerned, with Tory transport secretary Mark Harper insisting at the weekend that there is no question of transport workers or any striking worker getting an inflation-level pay increase.
Nurses’ pay has dropped by as much as 20% in real terms over the past ten years leaving them struggling to feed their families and pay the soaring energy bills.
Millions of workers are facing energy bills of £5,000 in April as the price of oil and gas is driven through the roof – accelerated by the war on Russia and the sanctions that have cut off energy supplies to Europe and driven up prices on the world markets.
The position of Sunak and the Tories is that the working class in Britain can starve, freeze to death and face mass unemployment as inflation spirals out of control and Britain dives even deeper into recession.
And that this is worthwhile in order for imperialism to wage a war to weaken Russia – regardless of the cost to the working class and regardless of the lives of Russians and Ukrainians.
It is a war worth waging to try to save a bankrupt capitalist system and the profits of the bosses and bankers according to Sunak – the prime minister installed by the international bankers to drive super austerity through to rescue British capitalism.
In his speech, Sunak said that British capitalism has to make ‘an evolutionary leap’ in foreign policy, standing up to ‘our competitors’.
While not naming these competitors, it is clear that Sunak is talking about Russia and China – he has previously described China as ‘the single biggest state threat to our economy’.
So a weak, collapsing Tory government is declaring war on China and limitless billions for a war on Russia to weaken its economy and prepare the way for regime change in order to reassert the world position of imperialism.
But the main war is being fought out against the working class at home as the Tories face an unprecedented uprising of workers refusing to be driven into the gutter of poverty and starvation.
The burning issue today is to force the TUC to get off its knees and organise the huge strength of the working class in a general strike to bring down the Tories, replacing them with a workers’ government and socialism.
A workers’ government will expropriate the bosses and bankers and end all support for the imperialist war on Russia.
Only the WRP and Young Socialists fight for this revolutionary policy and perspective – join today.
