THE SPEED of the UK economy crashing into complete bankruptcy is breathtaking, as it leaves the Tory government along with the Bank of England (BoE) desperately trying to avert disaster with ‘emergency interventions’ over ‘material risk to UK stability’.
Yesterday, the BoE announced that it is making another emergency intervention in the money markets to try to stave off a ‘fire sale’ of UK government bonds – which are used to finance government spending.
This is the second emergency intervention to try to avert a crisis that threatens to ‘contaminate’ the entire economy, bankrupting UK capitalism.
Immediately after Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-budget last month, the international speculators – who buy government bonds and live off the interest repayments for these ‘loans’ – took fright and dumped government bonds.
They saw the mini-budget with its programme of over £45 billion in tax cuts for the rich entirely funded by more debt as the sign that British capitalism is caught in a debt spiral with no escape plan.
The Tories are desperate to ‘calm the markets’ with Kwarteng promising he would reveal his plan to escape catastrophe on 31st October.
The international speculators will not be holding their breath in anticipation. They know that the only Tory option will be to massively increase public debt which will drive the economy even deeper into inflation and recession while at the same time carrying out savage austerity cuts over the entire public service sector.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) estimates that Kwarteng will need to cut £62 billion from public spending to cover his £43 billion tax cuts to the wealthy capitalists.
What is absolutely clear is that there is no economic ‘fix’ for UK capitalism, now viewed by the world money markets as a complete basket case, diving into bankruptcy and with no way out.
The only way for the capitalist class to have any chance of surviving economic Armageddon is to take on the working class and make them pay for the crisis.
With workers across the country taking strike action demanding pay increases to match the skyrocketing cost of living increases, there is no option for the bosses and Tories but to take on and defeat the trade unions.
This intention was made clear yesterday by Tory Health Secretary Therese Coffey, who arrogantly dismissed the strike ballot of nurses over a derisory 3% pay offer, that would give them an insulting 72 pence a week increase, saying that they won’t get any more regardless of any strike vote.
As dockers in Liverpool started a week-long strike over a pay demand in line with inflation, the owners, Peel Ports, issued formal redundancy notices to 132 workers in a move described by Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham as ‘simply the company seeking to intimidate workers taking lawful industrial action.’
Not just intimidation but a declaration – strike and be sacked. This is a massive blow to all those trade union leaders who cling to the belief that limited individual strikes will be enough to force the Tories and the bosses to compromise over pay.
The reality is that the ruling class is prepared to face down strikes using legal scabs to break them and sack any worker taking action.
The economic collapse of British capitalism can only be resolved in a struggle to the finish between the two classes today, with the capitalist class determined to drive workers back to conditions of the 19th century, turning them into little more than slaves to the bosses and bankers.
The working class, the most powerful force in society, has shown its determination to fight. Now it must demand that its leaders mobilise this strength in an indefinite general strike to bring down this Tory government and bring in a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers, and build a socialist planned economy.
The TUC is meeting on 18th October in Brighton – we urge thousands of workers and youth to join the lobby called by the WRP and Young Socialists to force the TUC to immediately call the general strike.
This is the only way forward for the working class to resolve the crisis of bankrupt capitalism by dumping it in the dustbin of history and replacing it with socialism.
