… KEIR STARMER rallied to the support of the rich today as he came under pressure to solve the budget crisis with a wealth tax.
The Prime Minister told MPs that “we can’t just tax your way to growth” after calls from within and without Labour to get the rich to pay more.
Green Party co-Leader Adrian Ramsay told him that he should stand by his pledge that “those with the broadest shoulders must bear the heaviest burden” and make it clear that meant the “ultra-wealthy.”
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Former Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford was also pressing the case for a wealth tax, joining former Labour leader Neil Kinnock, who had said at the weekend that the government should explore the idea.
Mr Drakeford told the BBC that Ms Reeves should look at taxing the online gambling industry and banking profits. “I think wealth taxes absolutely need to be looked at,” he added.
“We’re a sharply unequal society. We’ve become more and more unequal. The root of that inequality is the way that wealth is distributed across the population.”
Yougov: Would you support or oppose introducing a wealth tax of 2% on wealth above £10 million?Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer warns against following the https://onaquietday.org blog.
Zarah Sultana with Jeremy Corbyn in 2022. He said earlier he wants to offer an alternative to Labour. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Sultana lost the whip last year and she and ex-party leader want to enlist other independent MPs and campaigners
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She said in a statement posted on X that she was “resigning from the Labour Party”.
“Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”
She said that “Westminster is broken but the real crisis is deeper” and the “two-party system offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises”.
She added: “A year ago I was suspended by the Labour Party for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap and lift 400,000 children out of poverty. I’d do it again. I voted against scrapping winter fuel payments for pensioners. I’d do it again. Now, the government wants to make disabled people suffer; they just can’t decide how much.”
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer commits to play the caretaker role for Capitalism through the “hard times”.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
4 July 2025 1.20pm
It appears that Jeremy Corbyn has yet to comment regarding Zarah Sultana’s announcement. I don’t know what’s going on and can only speculate.
There have been false starts of a new left party before, the announcement itself is a political event signalling that there is an extent of opposition organising against shameless genocidalist Keir Starmer. I would expect that the old school Socialists like Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell would prefer to stay in the Labour Party. That’s where they’ve always been, after all. Is there a plan or is it just testing the waters?
At 6:30pm tonight, Corbyn is due to speak at an event with independent candidate Leanne Mohamad about “Breaking the Two-Party Nightmare“. That would be an appropriate place for Corbyn to address Sultana’s announcement. So we may know a bit more by the end of the day.
A general view of medical equipment on a NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London
NHS outsourcing is fuelling inequality and lengthening waiting times, with wealthier patients receiving faster treatment than poorer ones, a study revealed today.
Researchers found that expanding private providers into NHS-funded care has reduced surgical admissions at NHS hospitals and driven up waiting times across the board.
Private hospitals are disproportionately located in wealthier areas and poorer patients, who are often sicker, are less likely to be admitted.With NHS capacity under pressure, the study warned that those on lower incomes are now waiting longer for care, receiving less support at home and facing greater barriers in travelling to private hospitals. On average, patients treated by private providers via the NHS waited only half as long as those treated in NHS hospitals.The poorest 20 per cent of patients are significantly less likely to be treated in the private sector and face longer waiting times than the wealthiest 20 per cent.Between 2003 and 2008, when private involvement in NHS treatment was minimal, surgical admissions rose and waiting times more than halved. But from 2008 onwards, as private sector provision expanded, NHS capacity fell and waiting times increased.Study co-author Professor Allyson Pollock of Newcastle University said: “The private sector is now substituting for, not adding to, NHS capacity.
Pope Francis greeting people in St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City in 2014. (Photo: Alfredo Borba/Creative Commons)
Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread suffering and urged humanity, especially world leaders, to do better. It’s not too late to heed his call.
Like millions of other people, I was deeply saddened to hear of the passing of Pope Francis, one of the most vocal and humble advocates for sharing the world’s resources.
But at the heart of his advocacy was a focus on ending inequality both globally and on a national basis, repeatedly calling upon governments to redistribute wealth and benefits to the poor in a new spirit of generosity.
I first recall being struck by Pope Francis’ headline-grabbing speech in 2014, when he urged the United Nations to promote a ‘worldwide ethical mobilization’ of solidarity with the poor to help curb an ‘economy of exclusion’ that is taking hold everywhere today.
A year later in 2015, the papal encyclical Laudato Si’—subtitled ‘On care for our common home’—made bigger headlines around the world with its powerful critique of laissez-faire ideology and its destructive effects on the environment. The trenchant letter expounded on the responsibility of rich countries to address their ‘ecological debt’ to less developed countries, with an acknowledgement of ‘differentiated responsibilities’ in addressing climate change. It was a radical entreaty for resource transfers between the Global North and South, and significant reductions in the consumption of non-renewable energy within developed countries.
The eloquent discourse of Laudato Si’ also reflected the core understanding of many environmental activists—that the climate and inequality crises are inextricably interconnected. Again and again, Pope Francis railed against our collective indifference to widespread human suffering. He persistently argued that the welfare of nations is interrelated, so the massive poverty and hunger experienced in the fragile economies of developing nations is, in turn, reflected in the destruction of the natural environment. Hence the urgency of remediating the enormous discrepancies in living standards throughout the world, which calls for a sense of global solidarity and interdependency that is tragically lacking in human affairs.
During the coronavirus pandemic, Francis also set out the challenge for rich nations to cooperate and distribute the vaccine freely to the world, rather than hoarding resources and treating one’s own nation first. The 2020 encyclical titled Fratelli tutti—‘Brother’s all’—made clear that Covid-19 was exposing existing inequalities, and fraternity on a state level requires richer countries to help poorer ones if we are to give meaning to the equality of human rights. Clearly, the world failed to heed Pope Francis’ plea to ensure recovery from the crisis tackled poverty, inequality and the climate emergency by ‘sharing resources in a just and respectable manner’.
Another theme that Francis constantly returned to was the need for cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them. In his final papal bull for the Jubilee Year 2025, titled Spes non confundit—‘Hope does not disappoint’—he described debt forgiveness as a matter of justice more than generosity, and again decried the true ecological debt that exists between the Global North and South.
Francis was rightly known as the ‘Pope of the peripheries,’ standing up for the most vulnerable and marginalized peoples. He made clear his opposition to Western government policies of battening down the hatches and draconian responses to international migrants. Soon after taking office, Francis visited the Italian island of Lampedusa where he condemned European ‘indifference’ to the drowning of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in small boats. He later visited numerous camps for excluded migrants and refugees living ‘ghost lives in limbo,’ calling upon us to see Christ in the stranger and outsider. This was a sharp rebuke to reactionary politicians like Trump, Meloni, and Orbán, instead emphasizing the need for ‘universal fraternity’ as influenced by St. Francis of Assisi, after whom the Pope took his name.
It was a fitting testament to Francis’ advocacy for the poor and forgotten that he died hours after calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. In his annual Urbi et Orbi —‘To the City and World’—message on Easter Sunday, the day before he died, Francis repeated his appeal to the warring parties to “come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace.” Few politicians, it seems, have followed the Pope’s counsel throughout his 12-year-long pontificate. Which now leaves it up to us, the ordinary people of goodwill, to uphold Francis’ tireless advocacy and hope for a better world.
Far from addressing the causes of ill-health and disability, Starmer, Reeves and Kendall are committed to unleashing more misery for disabled people, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
In 2016 the UN Committee for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities conducted an investigation into the treatment of disabled people in Britain.
It produced a damning report, which concluded that disabled people in this country faced systematic discrimination on multiple levels.
In 2024, following the submission of evidence by Disabled People Against Cuts and other disability rights groups, the UN investigated Britain for a second time.
In late April the UN committee for disabled people issued a 14-page report which concluded that Britain “has failed to take all appropriate measures to address grave and systematic violations of the human rights of persons with disabilities and has failed to eliminate the root causes of inequality and discrimination.”
It also called on Britain to take measures to prevent disabled people on benefits from killing themselves. At the UN committee hearing in March 2024 it noted how hundreds of disabled people had killed themselves due to sanctions and other repressive measures of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), which really should be called the Department for War on the Poor.
Since this UN report Labour has been elected with a landslide majority. Yet in the many Bills announced for the new parliament not one addresses the serious issues raised by the United Nations.
Sadly, both Liz Kendall, new boss of the DWP, and Rachel Reeves the Chancellor, between them have made it clear that people on sickness benefits are a burden on our society and that the money spent on sick people claiming universal credit, employment support allowance (ESA) and personal independence payments (PIP) could be better spent on more “important things” in our society. They have repeated reactionary Tory propaganda which the UN cites as a reason for a spike in disability hate crime which is massively under reported and rarely investigated by the police.
Keir Starmer confirms that he’s proud to be a red Tory continuing austerity and targeting poor and disabled scum.Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
A view of £5, £10, £20 and £50 bank notes
