crap pretend Labour

Morning Star: Mass action is the antidote to Labour-Tory policy consensus

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking about the economy at the Association of British Insurers in the City of London, May 7, 2024

“LABOUR and the Tories move closer on economy.”

Thus a headline in the Financial Times last week. The FT speaks not just to and for British finance capital, but to capitalists worldwide needing a steer on British and international politics.

Unlike the bought-and-paid-for Tory press, it usually does so without demagogy or partisan point-scoring. Its conclusions are therefore to be taken seriously.

It writes: “Despite being the official opposition, Labour has signally refused to oppose many of [Jeremy] Hunt’s recent economic policies…” including the cuts to National Insurance.

Further: “Hunt set out 110 measures to boost the economy in his 2023 autumn statement and Labour opposed none of them. The same applied to all of the policies announced in the chancellor’s spring budget this year.”

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has also agreed with all Chancellor Hunt’s financial services reforms, has accepted his target of ensuring falling debt as a share of national income within five years, and adopted his corporation tax rate.

The Tories have repaid the compliment up to a point, stealing Labour proposals on taxing non-doms and the North Sea oil and gas industries.

But this convergence is mainly on Tory terms, with Labour dumping any proposal, like its green investment plans, which sit outside the consensus around a new austerity.

For that is what is on offer at the general election. It is a further squeeze on public services and wages to help improve the competitive position of British capitalism.

Reeves and the Labour Party pretend that their approach represents “change” because it offers “stability” after years of Tory chaos.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-mass-action-antidote-policy-consensus

Continue ReadingMorning Star: Mass action is the antidote to Labour-Tory policy consensus

Coming soon …

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Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler
Image of Fascists Mussolini and Hitler

I need to write an article about whether we are fighting modern Fascists. I think that we are. Should the Israelis and their Zionist supporters be recognised as Neo-Fascists? If Israelis are Neo-Fascists, then their supporters like the UK’s Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer are also Neo-Fascists. Should climate destroyers be recognised as Neo-Fascists? They’re often the same people.

Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel's Gaza genocide.
Zionist Keir Starmer supports Israel’s Gaza genocide.
Continue ReadingComing soon …

Basic UK local elections maths

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Math in the US, maths in the UK …

Summary of my basic maths on the UK election results so far. I’m starting from the interim results reported at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2024/england/results at 10.10 am BST, there are still a few results to be announced.

The Conservative Party has done very poorly, losing 48.5% of it’s elected councillors.

The Labour Party has only a 20% gain in elected councillors and so hasn’t done particularly well from Conservative losses.

The Liberal Democrats have a 25% gain, getting an extra 101 elected councillors.

The Green Party and Independents have a gain of between 69 and 70%, the big winners yet again.

Residents Associations have a 30% gain.

Reform UK have done well with 2 councillors, none before.

Workers Party of Britain – George Galloway’s party – have done very well with 4 councillors, none before.

My maths skills are not capable of calculating percentage increase from nothing to 2 or 4, don’t know how it is applied.

Continue ReadingBasic UK local elections maths

Morning Star: The Tories have wrecked the NHS – but that doesn’t mean Labour will rescue it

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tories-have-wrecked-nhs-doesnt-mean-labour-will-rescue-it

The NHS overtook the economy as voters’ biggest concern in February, according to polling by Ipsos. Small wonder when waiting lists have hit 7.5 million: there can hardly be a person in the country who doesn’t have a friend or relative who has been affected.

And the Conservatives bear a heavy responsibility.

In the decade up to the pandemic, real-terms healthcare spending per head rose on average by just 0.4 per cent a year — in four years it actually fell, despite rising pressures on the service.

That compares very poorly to the record of the last Labour government, which raised spending by 5.7 per cent a year on average from 1997-2010. It even compares badly to that of the Thatcher and Major Conservative governments, which averaged a 2.1 per cent annual increase.

But we should be more cautious than Poulter about endorsing Keir Starmer’s solution.

Starmer and shadow health secretary Wes Streeting have pointedly refused to offer the increases in NHS budgets that the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments delivered. Streeting is emphatic that he will not “pour money into a 20th-century model,” instead demanding reforms which, in increasing reliance on the private sector, both mimic existing Conservative policy and are unlikely to make a difference to waiting lists (because private healthcare in Britain recruits from the NHS, so overall capacity will not grow).

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Britain’s public services are collapsing under the strain of decades of neoliberal policy. In the NHS, hospitals have been undermined through outsourcing services to the private sector as well as by the cost of PFI debt — both issues with their origins in the Blair years.

To restore our NHS to health, we need a reversal of privatisation and outsourcing and a forced end to all PFI contracts, as well as a significant increase in overall funding to bring us closer to healthcare spending levels in France or Germany.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/tories-have-wrecked-nhs-doesnt-mean-labour-will-rescue-it

Continue ReadingMorning Star: The Tories have wrecked the NHS – but that doesn’t mean Labour will rescue it