THE new Tory Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is reported to be preparing to scrap the cap on the multi-million pound bonuses bankers award themselves.
Originally the cap on bankers’ bonuses was brought in by European Union legislation following the 2008 international banking collapse.
Trillions of pounds, dollars and euros were pumped into the banks in a massive and unprecedented bail-out.
In the UK alone, the Tory government pledged over a trillion pounds in the immediate aftermath of the collapse to keep the banks from going under.
In the wake of this catastrophic banking crisis the UK, along with the EU, had no option but to try and head off the anger of workers incensed that bankers were getting unlimited bonuses paid for by savage austerity cuts to wages and public services.
All the cap did was to limit the annual pay-outs to twice the bankers’ salary.
Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson in June also floated the idea of ending the bonus cap but was forced to backtrack after his advisors pointed out that it would be political suicide at a time when nurses were facing having their pay cut through increases way below the existing inflation rate.
No such qualms are inhibiting Liz Truss’s Tory government as the new Chancellor is pledging to tear up all the red tape and regulations on bankers designed to try and prevent the massive boom in speculation that brought about the 2008 banking crash.
Andrew Sentance, an economist who was a member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee during the world banking crash, offered up a mild criticism of the timing of Kwarteng’s plan, telling the BBC: ‘It sends rather a confused signal when people are being squeezed in terms of the cost of living and the government is trying to encourage pay restraint in the public sector.’
He added: ‘So to appear to allow bankers to have bigger bonuses at the same time doesn’t look very well timed.’
In fact, the Tories have no time left to try and rescue a bankrupt British capitalist system from the abyss of recession.
Desperate to breathe life into dying capitalism, they are proposing to throw open the City of London to every speculator, hedge fund spiv and banker, lured by the prospect of unlimited million-pound bonuses, while the working class faces bearing the cost of super-inflation that holds nothing but a future of hunger, poverty and mass unemployment.
The working class will not be confused by the message sent by Kwarteng’s plans.
On the contrary, it will only serve to stoke up the anger and hatred of tens of millions of workers and young people against a capitalist system that functions only to enrich the handful of capitalists and to hell with the rest.
The Trades Union Congress (TUC) announced on Wednesday that it will be recalling its annual Congress on Tuesday 18 October in Brighton.
At its Congress in 2012 the TUC overwhelmingly passed a motion calling on the General Council to examine the ‘practicalities of a general strike’ against the Tory austerity measures at the time.
The TUC General Council did nothing on this motion and refused even to ‘examine’ any action to prevent the vicious austerity programme to pay for the bankers’ bail-out, let alone take action.
Ten years on, with UK capitalism in a crisis more severe than in 2012 and a weak Tory government intent on crushing the working class and its trade unions, the TUC must not be allowed to repeat this betrayal.
Thousands of workers and youth must join the mass lobby of the TUC called by the WRP and Young Socialists on Tuesday 18 October to force the TUC to act by immediately calling an indefinite general strike to bring down the Tories and bring in a workers’ government.
A workers’ government will not just cap bankers’ bonuses but expropriate the capitalist class, nationalise the banks and major industries placing them under the management of the working class in a socialist planned economy.
Join the TUC lobby, and join the WRP to build the leadership for organising the British socialist revolution to put an end to bankrupt capitalism for good.
