THE TORY Party is now in its biggest ever crisis, after the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Health Secretary both resigned on Tuesday evening.
Health Secretary Javid, in his resignation letter to PM Johnson, said: ‘We may not have always been popular, but we have been competent in acting in the national interest.’
He added: ‘It is three years since you entered Downing Street. You will forever be credited with seeing off the threat of Corbynism, and breaking the deadlock on Brexit. You have shone a very welcome light on the regional disparities in our country, an agenda that will continue to define our politics. . .
‘I served you loyally and as a friend, but we all serve the country first. When made to choose between those loyalties there can only be one answer.’
He has broken with Johnson after the latter was exposed as believing that the law of the land should not apply to the PM.
Ex-Chancellor Sunak, in his resignation letter, wrote: ‘We both want a low-tax, high-growth economy, and world class public services, but this can only be responsibly delivered if we are prepared to work hard, make sacrifices and take difficult decisions.
‘I firmly believe the public are ready to hear that truth. Our people know that if something is too good to be true then it’s not true.’ He in fact accused the PM of being a liar.
He added: ‘They need to know that whilst there is a path to a better future, it is not an easy one. In preparation for our proposed joint speech on the economy next week, it has become clear to me that our approaches are fundamentally too different.’
Meanwhile the pound continues to fall to a two-year low against the dollar as energy prices continue to soar.
On Tuesday, the pound fell below $1.19 for the first time since March 2020. The FTSE 100 stock market in London fell nearly 3% on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, the BBC reported that UK household energy bills are heading to £3,000 per year this winter. The rise is 7% higher than the predicted prices on which the government’s recently announced cost of living support package was based. National Energy Action said there were ‘few signs of energy prices becoming affordable this winter’.
Last week, the Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, speaking at the European Central Bank’s annual policy forum, issued a warning that soaring inflation would hit the UK harder than any other major economy during the current energy crisis. He said Britain faces a faster and steeper downturn as households are ‘battered by a very large national real income shock’.
Bailey said that the British economy is ‘at a turning point’, and that the energy price surge and the war in Ukraine had combined to trigger spiralling inflation and the biggest drop in disposable incomes in decades.
He said that he would act more forcefully if painfully high inflation, forecast to reach 11% in October, persists.
Bailey added for good measure that: ‘The UK economy is probably weakening rather earlier and somewhat more than others. I think that’s been evident now for a few months.’
He warned: ‘There will be circumstances in which we will have to do more on rates.’ He said: ‘We’re not there yet in terms of the next meeting. We’re still a month away, but that’s on the table.’
Stefano Pessina, the head of Walgreens Boots Alliance, said that the UK is heading for a worse crisis than other European countries. He said: ‘The war in Ukraine does not help with its impact on the cost of oil, gas and commodities further exacerbating the speculation around it. We will go into a recession. I suspect that the UK will have a big recession, probably bigger than other European countries.’
In fact the capitalist crisis is developing so rapidly and deeply that an economic collapse is developing that will see hundreds of millions of working people thrust back into conditions that have not been seen since the 1930s.
The way forward, as this desperate crisis of the capitalist system develops, is through the mobilisation of the working class to carry out socialist revolutions to take the power and get rid of capitalism, bringing in planned socialist economies.
The working class is ready for action to defend its jobs, wages, its right to strike, to go forward to a better life and not live in fear of a capitalist catastrophe.
On Saturday June 18th, over 100,000 workers marched in a TUC-organised demonstration to the Houses of Parliament. There, they voiced their full support for the RMT strike action and supported the call for a general strike.
In fact the TUC used this mass demo as a safety valve to let off steam, and refused to call any more action when workers were demanding a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government.
Workers up and down the country must now mobilise to force the TUC to call a general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers government and a socialist planned economy. This is the only way forward. Join the WRP today!
