THE DEMAND for a National Government to rescue the British economy from bankruptcy is rapidly emerging in the bourgeois press, as the only way to impose the savage cuts to wages and social spending on a powerful working class that has demonstrated it is not prepared to accept any more sacrifices to save bankrupt capitalism from collapse.
The bankruptcy of a capitalist system strangled by debt is not confined to Britain, as an article in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper makes clear.
This article by Simon Heffer, a respected bourgeois economic commentator in the right-wing press, spells out the position of the capitalist class internationally that the source of the crisis is wages and welfare payments.
This article headed: ‘The welfare debt trap is eating the economies of Europe,’ cites Germany’s Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who announced that Germany had been ‘living beyond its means for years’, singling out the country’s pension system as the main culprit and promising ‘painful’ austerity to cut public spending.
In France, the then Prime Minister Francois Bayrou blamed ‘excessive’ welfare spending, again targeting pensions, for France’s spiralling debt and insisted that 44 billion euros would have to be cut from annual public spending by increasing the retirement age and ending bank holidays.
French workers rose up in rage against these cuts forcing the French National Assembly to vote to kick Bayrou out of office on 8th September.
Heffer congratulates Merz and Bayrou for ‘being honest enough to admit the unsustainability of their spending polices’ contrasting this with the weakness of Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and a Labour government that failed get a ‘comparatively modest proposal to cut benefits’ through following a massive rebellion by Labour MPs.
The crisis facing the ruling class, is that the working class in the UK and the two largest economies in the EU are not prepared to make the ‘sacrifices’ demanded of them by the international bankers and financial markets.
It has created a political crisis that has become acute even for a Labour government sitting on a massive majority but unable to carry out what is considered modest cuts by the capitalist class.
The imposition of a national government is now seen as the way to resolve this crisis by capitalism.
In his article, Heffer makes a reference to the treachery of Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald in 1931. MacDonald led the Labour government during the global recession ushered in by the crash of Wall Street in 1929.
Heffer writes that following bank crashes in the UK, ‘it was near-insolvency in Britain in August 1931 that caused serious spending cuts, mainly to the welfare bill, to be promised’.
Heffer doesn’t detail these cuts but the measures included a 20% cut in teachers pay, 25% cut in public sector pay and a cut of 20% in unemployment benefit to be achieved through a means test. These proposals, that emerged from meetings of tame Labour ministers and trade union leaders with bankers and bosses, were rejected by the majority of Labour MPs.
MacDonald deserted the Labour Party and working class, joining with Tories and Liberals to form a National Government of salvation for capitalism.
Although Heffer doesn’t openly advocate for a National Government, this is precisely the direction the ruling class is moving towards following the abject failure of Starmer’s government to impose the will of the bankers and bosses on the working class.
This is the reactionary counter-revolutionary role of a national government now being planned.
Today, the working class will not allow itself to be disorientated by a Labour government splitting apart as happened in the 1930s.
On the contrary, workers in the UK and across Europe have shown their determination not to be driven back to the days of the ‘Hungry 30s’ of mass unemployment and starvation levels of poverty.
The powerful working class must now take action to put an end to bankrupt capitalism and all plans for a national government by demanding their trade unions call general strikes to bring down their capitalist governments and go forward to workers governments and socialism.
The victory of the British and European socialist revolution is the only way forward!