THE euphoria over figures released this week that the UK inflation rate in July had dropped to 6.8%, meaning that prices were shooting up at a slightly slower rate than in June, has quickly disappeared despite all attempts by the Tories to talk it up as a ‘light at the end of a tunnel’ moment.
Food prices continue to rocket above the 6.8% inflation rate, standing officially at 14.8% in July, while the Resolution Foundation calculates the average family’s annual grocery bill has risen by £960 since 2019-20, and the cost of energy for a typical household has risen by £910.
The latest figures produced in March this year showed that the number of children in food poverty had doubled in just one year with one in five households (22%) having to skip meals, going hungry or not eating for a whole day during the week.
Rents in the UK have soared by an average of 5.3%, in London rents have surged 5.5%, while mortgage repayments have gone stratospheric as banks pass on the increased interest rates to their tenants.
Families forced to go without food, unable to pay the rent and facing eviction or having their homes repossessed, is the pain that the Tories and the Bank of England are insisting the working and middle class must pay to bring down inflation by driving up interest rates.
Tory Prime Minister Rishi Sunak repeated his pledge to halve inflation on Wednesday saying: ‘If we stick to the plan I’ve set out we’ll get it done.’
Sunak may think his plan is working but other voices amongst the Tory supporting media have thrown in the towel when it comes to saving a bankrupt British capitalist system from doom.
Yesterday, The Daily Telegraph had a comment piece with the headline: ‘If you’re under 50, it’s time to jump ship – get out of Britain while you can.’
The author, Sam Ashworth-Hayes, writes: ‘If young British people knew what is good for them, they’d be on the next plane out of the country.’
Working class youth haven’t got the means to jump on the next plane but this doesn’t worry the author at all, as he lists the economic pain inflicted on all generations in a Britain that he says, is ‘not so much stagnating as it is fossilising’, with real wages below their level in 2008 after years of Tory wage freezes and austerity cuts.
But for Ashworth-Hayes: ‘The best reason to leave, though, is not that other countries are richer, or growing faster. It’s that the UK seems incapable of solving its own issues, and if anything they look set to get worse.’
According to him, the choice facing the working and middle class under 50 is either ‘stay and try to fix things, or leave for a better alternative’, and bemoans the fact that ‘there is precious little political impetus to fix any of these issues’.
For the working class, there is no alternative but to stay and fight it out with a ruling class and Tory government.
It has no way of abandoning the sinking ship of British capitalism and heading to some promised land of high wages and secure jobs.
In reality, the world crisis is engulfing every capitalist nation from the US, drowning in debt and whose banks are teetering on the brink of collapse, to the EU which is already crashing into recession.
The only future for workers of all ages is to ‘fix’ capitalism once and for all by putting an end to it.
It is the bosses and bankers who need to be swept out of society and replaced with a nationalised socialist planned economy working for the benefit of all.
The working class has the strength to put an end to the deadly farce being played out by the Tories, the Bank of England and now the articles calling for people to jump from the sinking ship.
The burning issue is to force the TUC to mobilise that strength.
The central demand at next month’s TUC Congress must be to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and socialism.
This is the way forward. Join the Lobby of the TUC on September 11! Join the WRP and its youth movement the YS today!
