NEWS LINE urges all of its readers and supporters to vote for Ken Livingstone in the London Mayoral elections today, and to vote Labour in all of the council elections, to dump Boris Johnson as Mayor of London, and to dump the Tories and Liberal Democrats, everywhere their representatives are standing.
Despite the fact that Livingstone’s programme is of the most minimal possible variety, with his main pledges being to cut fares and restore the EMA for school students, it is vitally important to vote out Johnson, to weaken the Tory coalition regime, and to prepare the way for the coalition’s very early removal from office.
In fact, many Tory right wingers see a victory for Johnson as part of the preparation for him to take Cameron’s place, should the numerous scandals that are threatening the coalition, including the News International scandal, and the mass hostility of the working class and middle class to Cameron’s policies, result in him and Osborne having to be removed and replaced.
Bringing down Mayor Johnson will deepen the crisis of the Tory-led coalition and help to create the conditions for action to bring it down.
This will only take place through the trade unions calling a general strike against all of the coalition’s attacks on wages, jobs, benefits, pensions, and its plans to destroy the Welfare State and the NHS.
The coalition must be brought down and be replaced with a workers government that will bring in socialism. Vote Livingstone, drive out Johnson as a step forward in removing the coalition.
JOBLESS RISE IN ITALY AND GERMANY
FOLLOWING the example of Greece and Spain, with their 25% plus unemployment rates and 50% plus unemployment rates for youth, unemployment is on the rise in Italy and also in Germany.
The unemployment rate in Italy reached a 12-year high in March. The third biggest economy in the eurozone, Italy’s unemployment rate has now risen from 9.6% to 9.8%.
Even in Germany the jobless rate is on the rise, and against all expectations has just risen again to 6.8% in March, official figures showed, having been expected to stay at the previous month’s 6.7%.
Last week, Spanish unemployment rose to 5.6 million and is expected to reach 6 million by the end of the year.
Spain is deep in slump and Italy is in recession. Both have seen their borrowing costs rise towards 7%, which would make them unaffordable, and selling their debt impossible.
Spain, the fourth biggest eurozone economy, is expected to be forced to seek out an EU bailout. The problem is that the IMF and the EU Central Bank have not got the funds to bail it out.
The EU economic catastrophe will be politically deepened on May 6th when the final round of the French presidential elections and the Greek general election are due to take place.
The defeat of the Sarkozy regime will see a French Socialist president pledged to partial reflation and curbing the inclination of Merkel and the German bourgeoisie to make the rest of Europe pay for German ‘stability’ by the imposition of more and more austerity.
The Greek elections will see the completely discredited political parties that have allowed the EU central bank and the IMF to appoint governments get their due deserts at the hands of the Greek people.
The outcome of the election can only lead to even bigger revolutionary clashes between the working class and the Greek ruling class that can only be resolved by the working class imposing the dictatorship of the proletariat over Greek society.
The same crisis and the same issue hangs over the whole of the EU. To resolve the economic and political crisis the workers of Europe will have to overthrow the EU and establish the Socialist United States of Europe.
