ONLY two weeks into 2025 and the capitalist world is reeling from an economic crisis of historic proportions – a crisis that has completely upended any semblance of bourgeois political ‘normalcy’ and is ushering in the period where the working class internationally is faced immediately with the issue of taking power.
All the utopian dreams peddled by Keir Starmer and his Chancellor Rachel Reeves that they would ‘grow’ British capitalism by cutting down government spending, and only borrow money from the international speculators in order to invest in building the UK out of recession have been shattered.
This week, the pound plunged after government borrowing costs surged to their highest level in 16 years.
In order to finance spending, the government borrows money by selling bonds on the international money markets.
It is the interest rates on these bonds that have shot up.
When interest rates were held at near-zero level by the Bank of England these repayments were just affordable on a national debt that is currently standing at about £2.8 trillion and increasing daily through interest charges.
One of the features of this latest development that is causing panic amongst economic commentators is that in the past interest rates have been driven up by speculators (called ‘bond vigilantes’) selling off government bonds.
Today, however, these international speculators are just refusing to buy UK government bonds for the simple reason that the country is diving headlong into recession and with it a massive political upheaval.
They are not interested in a country that is going bankrupt and unable to repay its debt.
In the UK, these bond vigilantes are seeing an economic disaster being run by a Labour government that despite a massive majority in Parliament is despised and hated by workers and youth.
Moreover, it is a working class that has refused to accept the brutal austerity of previous Tory governments and will certainly not put up with even more savage cuts from Labour.
Piling even more disasters on British capitalism is Donald Trump becoming president on the 20th January.
Trump, attempting to deal with the huge US economic crisis, has declared war on the rest of the world.
This week, it was revealed in the press that Trump is considering declaring a national economic emergency which would give him powers to impose tariffs against rival nations on the grounds of US economic security, without any recourse to international or US law.
To ‘save’ the multi-billionaire capitalists, Trump is preparing to assume the mantle of dictator to impose massive cuts on US workers while bankrupting the rest of the world.
In its advanced state of imperialist decay, there are no friends or allies for capitalist nations only enemies to be economically crushed or invaded, and brought under direct US control – as Trump promises for Canada, Mexico and Greenland.
The move to a Trump dictatorship in the US is the historic response of the ruling class when faced with a working class rising up against a capitalist system determined to inflict poverty on workers at home and genocide on Palestinians abroad, in order to reorganise and control the world’s resources for super-exploitation.
Stunned by the overwhelming opposition and calls for action by workers and young people to end genocide in Gaza, the British state is moving to crush even peaceful demonstrations demanding that the Labour government ends complicity in mass slaughter.
This week, the police banned the march on Saturday 18th January due to start outside BBC HQ in London.
This ban is despite the police having agreed the march two months ago and that all previous marches were entirely peaceful.
Workers and their unions must take warning from this move to crush opposition to imperialist slaughter – a slaughter supported to the hilt by Labour’s Starmer.
A ban on any opposition to the Labour government and its support for genocide will be extended to a ban on any demonstration or struggle by workers against being driven into poverty to rescue bankrupt British capitalism.
Trade unions must immediately issue a call for their members to rally in their hundreds of thousands on Saturday 18th and make this the day that the TUC is forced to call a general strike to kick out the Starmer government and bring in a workers government and socialism. This is the only way forward!