THE abject and grovelling performance of PM Keir Starmer in parliament on Thursday succeeded in uniting Labour and Tory MPs who howled with rage that he refused to release government documents about the job vetting procedure of the disgraced Peter Mandelson on the grounds of ‘national security’.
That forced yet another defeat for Starmer as parliament passed an amendment to allow all the correspondence to be viewed by the parliamentary committee for intelligence and security.
Following trite apologies to the victims of convicted felon Jeffrey Epstein’s sex trafficking offences, Starmer feigned ignorance at the time of Mandelson’s lies, denying his deep and long-time association with the American. ‘Sorry for having believed Mandelson’s lies,’ was all he could say.
Astonishingly, Starmer also claimed that he had been let down by bad advice from the UK MI5 intelligence service, as he went on to criticise the ‘vetting carried out independently by the security services’.
There are now reports among Labour MPs of ‘Starmer being toast’, and calls for him to resign and his advisor Morgan McSweeny to be sacked, and for a leadership election to oust the PM now!
However the two prime contenders for Prime Minister are themselves flawed figures: ex-deputy PM Angela Rayner is under investigation for avoiding £40,000 in housing stamp duty and Wes Streeting is seen as a close associate of Mandelson.
There is no doubt that a post-Starmer Labour government will proceed with the same bankrupt pro-business reformist policies, amid a raging world economic crisis that is bankrupting the leading capitalist economies, and propelling them to wage wars against ex-colonial countries and the working class.
What is obvious is that reformist polices of tinkering with bankrupt capitalism to promote growth are no longer credible, and that it is time for the working class to break with the reactionary reformist policies of Labour and the trade union leaders and to take revolutionary general strike action to bring down the whole Labour government, which also arms Israel to annihilate Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank to seize their land.
Meanwhile, ‘volatile’ currency markets and share prices are symptomatic of the underlying instability and death agony of the whole debt-laden world financial system. Shares in Amazon plunged 11 per cent on Thursday when it announced plans to invest a further $200bn (£147.7bn) in artificial intelligence (AI) and infrastructure.
Sharp share drops hit Wall Street stocks on Thursday as technology stocks plunged; the S&P 500 fell 1.2 per cent for its sixth loss in the seven days. Qualcomm fell 8.5 per cent for one of the market’s bigger losses.
Many high profile names in finance and technology have warned that AI is at risk of becoming a bubble which could burst and bring down capitalism.
Rocketing gold prices to over $5,000 per troy ounce, following a surge of 100 per cent in 12 months, are further debasing the US dollar and boosting a super inflation.
Panic spread through the cryptocurrency markets on Thursday as the price of Bitcoin fell to its lowest level in 16 months, despite US president Donald Trump’s personal and public support for cryptocurrency.
A single Bitcoin went as low as $60,000 (£44,000), its lowest level since September 2024, after hitting an all-time high of $122,200 in October 2025.
In fact, the Trump administration has scrapped several cryptocurrency regulations and Trump has signed a law to support federal backing of cryptocurrency.
But the Bank of England (BoE) and the US Federal Reserve Banks have rejected pressure from Trump to lower interbank interest rates, with the BoE holding them to 3.75 per cent in the UK after the Fed held the US rate at 3.05-3.75 per cent two weeks ago, fearing that lower rates would boost inflation.
With the terminal economic crisis of capitalism exposing the corruption and depravity of the capitalist class and their political servants, there is no other way out for the working class but to overthrow this weak, split and divided Labour government with a general strike to seize power and establish a workers’ government.
Most of the trade unions leaders are silent in this crisis, supporting super austerity in the UK and supporting Labour’s craven support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians.
The trade unions must recall the TUC to organise a general strike to bring down the entire Labour government. Instead, a workers’ government will nationalise the industry, utilities and banks and establish a centrally planned socialist economy.
Join the WRP and Young Socialists to lead this struggle for the world socialist revolution.
