TORY prime minister Liz Truss didn’t waste time. She fled the country immediately after the meltdown of her government at the Tory Party conference.
Yesterday she jetted off to the Czech Republic for ‘key meetings’ in Prague with European politicians where the number one item will be trying to maintain a united front in the imperialist war against Russia.
No wonder she fled the UK! It only took hours before all the empty claims in her speech boasting she was ushering in a new era of tax cuts that would grow British capitalism out of recession unravelled.
Truss insisted that tax cuts for the rich and cuts in corporation tax that would hand billions to corporations and their shareholders, would also benefit workers.
Putting money in the pockets of working people would mean they could spend more and create growth, while giving multi-billionaires, bankers and corporations even more would mean investment in the failing UK economy.
No one, of course, believed that the ruling class and the financial speculators would do anything other than pocket the money, or use it in further speculations on the world stock markets.
As for any tax relief finding itself into the pockets of workers, this lying fantasy was exploded by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) when it finally got the opportunity to analyse the decisions by Kwarteng in his mini budget.
Despite all the boasts of a ‘tax cutting’ mini budget, detailed analysis by the IFS released yesterday revealed that chancellor Kwarteng will impose an extra £21 billion on income tax. The burden of this massive tax increase will naturally fall on the working class with the average household £1,450 a year worse off. This is a result of a Tory freeze on the income levels at which income tax kicks in.
As workers’ wages creep up, still far below the inflation rate, so this threshold is exceeded – meaning even low paid workers are pushed into higher tax brackets as a result of this ‘stealth tax’.
No wonder Kwarteng and Truss were so desperate not to have their ‘tax cutting’ budget scrutinised independently. Truss is seriously contemplating a similar cut in pensions by keeping state pension increases locked into average wages instead of increasing in line with inflation, as the Tories had pledged.
With inflation hitting over 10% and rising, this option is very attractive to a Tory government happy to see pensioners freeze to death and workers unable to feed their children or pay the rent in order to ‘rescue’ a shattered capitalist system.
Truss and Kwarteng’s empty fantasy of a tax cutting renaissance for British capitalism certainly didn’t cut any ice with the international financial markets.
As Bloomberg UK noted yesterday: ‘A wild first month for Liz Truss’s government has seen at least £300 billion wiped from the combined value of the nation’s stock and bond markets.’
This ‘wild first month’ will only get wilder as tens of millions of workers rise up over having their lives destroyed, as capitalism demands they bear the burden of the capitalist crisis.
While the working class is demanding action and thousands are on national strikes across the country for pay increases and to protect their jobs, the leadership of the TUC have remained completely silent.
No statements from the TUC about the crisis or the meltdown of the Tories, no support for all those union members on strike or preparing to strike and certainly no call to bring down the Tories.
The TUC, in the face of the crisis and Truss’s commitment to make strikes illegal, is completely silent, content to let Truss prepare to wage a war to the finish against the working class unhindered.
The TUC must not be permitted to betray the working class to the Tories through its refusal to fight.
At the TUC Congress on Tuesday 18th October News Line calls on thousands of workers to join the lobby in Brighton to demand that the TUC call a general strike to kick out the Tories.
If the TUC leadership refuse this demand they must be removed and replaced by a leadership prepared to organise a political general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers government and a socialist planned economy.
Join the lobby of the TUC on the 18th!
