DAVID Miliband yesterday urged the Labour Party to rally behind Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who is facing mounting opposition in the working class because of his openly Tory, pro-banker policies.
Miliband, the foreign secretary, posing as a wise man told Andrew Marr that it would be ‘fatal’ if the party ‘failed to defend the leader’.
As well, Lord Levy, known as ‘Lord Cashpoint’ after his fund raising antics in support of Tony Blair (a central part of the ‘cash for honours’ allegations), chimed in with a few paragraphs from his new book. These were to the effect that Blair believed that Brown was not capable of beating Tory leader David Cameron, meaning that he must go.
All the opportunists in the Labour Party parliamentary faction are now shivering with fear for their jobs and their own final salary pensions come the next general election.
Meanwhile, the working class and the middle class are being hit by the growing economic crisis, and experiencing massive price increases at the same time as the government is handing hundreds of billions to the banks, while frantically seeking to cut their wages and pensions.
Faced with this situation, the working class is becoming angrier and angrier.
The reason for Brown’s unpopularity is crystal clear.
It is that he has chosen to carry on with the discredited Blair’s privatisation and deregulation policies at home, and his imperialist policies abroad. In fact, he has speeded these policies up in response to the growing banking collapse.
He is pushing the privatisation of the NHS and education, as well as bringing in plans to force the disabled off benefits.
He is keeping British troops in Iraq and is reinforcing the army in Afghanistan.
He is prosecuting a war against the public sector trade unions, seeking to impose three-year wage-cutting deals on them when the cost of living is escalating upwards by about 20 per cent as far as working class necessities are concerned.
Brown arrogantly gives an open cheque to the bankers while abolishing the 10p lower rate of income tax for the poor.
Blair grew to be hated by the working class, while Brown is both hated and despised.
In fact, most workers see that the loyalty of this Labour government is to the banks and to the bosses, and that it intends to stand with the capitalists and fall with them as well.
The Labour government’s policies are the biggest vote winner for the Tories, because they amount to a cynical betrayal. To make their comeback the Tories have to do absolutely nothing – just sit back with arms folded and watch Brown, Miliband, Benn, Straw and Darling do their work for them.
The working class is also becoming more and more angry with its trade union leaders.
They actually handed the Prime Minister’s job to Brown, by refusing to support the would-be left candidate of that time, who was pushing a moderate socialist-type programme, John McDonnell.
He could not get the 35 votes to force a leadership election. The trade union leaders would not even invite him to address the 2007 London May Day march, so keen were they to shoe Brown into the job.
Now these bankrupts are getting their reward: massive kicks in the teeth from the government that is determined to serve big business.
In fact, the only way to keep Brown and co from handing over to the Tories is for the trade unions to mobilise behind the Grangemouth striking workers, and all workers who are fighting pay and pension cuts, and to call a general strike to bring the Brown government down.
This is what must follow on from last week’s strike action by 400,000 workers and the Brown government’s pay cuts.
The only way to keep the Tories out is to bring down the Brown government, to go forward to a workers’ government that will expropriate the bosses and the bankers and bring in socialism.
The WRP is leading the struggle for this policy in the workers’ movement and for a new leadership to lead the working class forward. This is why more and more workers are joining the party. Make sure you do too.
