Given the writhing death agony of the Tory government, it now seems inevitable that Starmer’s Labour will come to power at the next election with a considerable majority.
Most of the public will welcome the defeat of the Tories. At the same time, the prospect of a Starmer government generates little enthusiasm amongst workers and youth.
Can you blame them? Starmer and his Blairite team are determined to pour ice-cold water over any hopes of reform from an incoming Labour government. “The cupboard is bare,” they cry. “Don’t expect anything from us.”
The working class are told to suffer in silence, while Starmer and his acolytes fawn over the bankers and capitalists.
It is to these creatures – Britain’s ruling class – that Starmer and his clique have sold their souls. They will do whatever their rich masters demand of them.
Above all, this means making the working class pay for the crisis of British capitalism, through greater austerity and cuts in living standards.
Bankruptcy and betrayal
In the past, the right-wing Labour leaders would at least make some promises in order to get into power – then they would betray. But Starmer wants to get his betrayals in before he even gets the keys to Number 10.
At a recent event in Leicester, a Labour-controlled city facing potential bankruptcy and massive cuts, Starmer was asked what he could do to help. The answer was nothing.
“I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep,” the Labour leader asserted.
While campaigning in the West Midlands, he was asked again about the £4 billion gap in local authority funding. “I can’t pretend that we could turn the taps on,” he replied callously. “There’s no magic money tree that we can waggle the day after the election.”
In other words, councils on the brink of catastrophe will have to fend for themselves, no matter the disastrous consequences.
The new Labour leader of Stoke city council similarly complained about having to make “unpalatable decisions that will hurt our sense of what is right and wrong”. But such crocodile tears will bring little comfort to millions of vulnerable working-class people struggling to make ends meet.
Elsewhere, the town of Port Talbot in South Wales is facing destruction akin to that seen following Thatcher’s closure of the coal mines, with the shutting down of the local steelworks’ blast furnaces.
Yet Starmer has refused to nationalise the steel industry in order to protect jobs. Instead, he has merely suggested pouring more money into the pockets of the bosses.
Reassuring the ruling class
There is not a week that goes by without a new announcement from Labour about watering down or reneging on its promises. Pledges around green investment, raising taxes on the rich, and scrapping tuition fees: all of these have been broken.
Scandalously, shadow health secretary and arch-Blairite Wes Streeting has even written in Murdoch rag The S*n recently, proudly stating that a Labour government would encourage parasitic private providers to feed off the NHS.
Under pressure from his new chums in big business, meanwhile, Starmer is now also toying with the idea of diluting his party’s programme on workers’ rights.
The Labour leadership’s talk about economic ‘renewal’ and ‘growth’ is all hot air on the basis of a crisis-ridden British capitalism.
“Fiscal responsibility is non-negotiable,” parrots shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves, as she prepares the ground for austerity. She says that a Labour government will be profoundly “pro-business” and committed to financial discipline.
No surprise then that Starmer and Reeves have announced their admiration for Margaret Thatcher, the most hated figure in working-class communities. This is a signal to the ruling class to say that the capitalists’ interests will be completely safe in their hands.
The Labour leaders’ support for Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians also underlines their subservience to US imperialism, the most counter-revolutionary force on the planet.
Scandalously, the resignation of councillors in protest over Gaza has been described by senior Labour figures as the party “shaking off the fleas”.
Class war
These ladies and gentlemen will go to any length to appear respectable in the eyes of the establishment. Labour is therefore no longer “a party of protest”, but a sensible government-in-waiting, led by a knight of the realm.
In preening and grooming themselves for government, they act no differently to the Tories. Once in office, as night follows day, Starmer will continue with the Tories’ anti-working class policies.
But the working class will not take this lying down. Given the accumulated anger in society, a Starmer government will face an avalanche of struggle, and will become one of the most hated governments in recent history.
Their attempts to revive British capitalism will simply provoke greater radicalisation and further polarisation in society. There will be swings to the left, but also to the right. A defeated Tory Party will certainly shift even further rightwards, as its most frenzied layers take over.
Young workers, and the youth in general, meanwhile, will be open to revolutionary ideas and the need to overthrow this rotten system.
The deepening crisis of capitalism globally is therefore preparing revolutionary explosions in Britain, as elsewhere. Class war will be on the order of the day.
Prepare for revolution
The Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) will intervene in these movements and struggles, arguing for communist policies. We will fight for every reform and against every attack. But we will also link these battles to the need to overthrow capitalism.
Only by the working class coming to power and taking over the giant monopolies, banks, and insurance companies – by expropriating the capitalists – can the crisis be resolved in our favour.
There is no half-way house, as the ‘lefts’ in the trade unions and Labour Party argue. Capitalism needs to be overthrown, root and branch.
The task of our party, the RCP, is to skilfully link the programme of revolution with the real movement of the working class. There are no shortcuts. We must patiently explain our ideas.
The British revolution is certainly maturing within the depths of society, as the crisis of capitalism bears down on the working class.
We must make haste, and prepare ourselves and our party – organisationally, politically, and theoretically – for the great events that impend. We must rise to the challenges posed by history. There has never been such an important or worthy task.
As Marx said: “Philosophers have interpreted the world. The point, however, is to change it.”
Blackpool South by-election: We need a revolutionary alternative
A by-election is due to take place in Blackpool South on 2 May, following the resignation of Tory MP Scott Benton, who was caught offering paid lobbying services to a fake gambling company in a journalistic sting.
This is another blow to this crumbling Tory government – the 11th by-election Sunak has faced since becoming prime minister.
Workers going to the polling station will be confronted with poor odds, however. There is no prospect of progress for Blackpool residents under either the Tories or Starmer’s Labour.
Elected back in 2019, Benton promised to ‘level-up’ the town. Since then, however, local residents have since seen Blackpool South become the 17th most-deprived constituency in the country.
Nearly half of the area’s neighbourhoods are amongst the 20 percent most income-deprived parts of the country, with the eighth-worst level of employment and crime rates, and the worst life expectancy in England.
Blackpool has also suffered a £1bn drop in the tourist trade: an industry that accounted for 40 percent of Lancashire’s entire economy in 2018.
Of course, none of this concerned Benton. His only mistake, from the Westminster establishment’s perspective, was being too obvious in his prostration towards big business.
Even then, the former MP was in no rush to resign. It took him a whole year after these revelations emerged to finally fold and leave the table.
Both Sunak and Starmer will be anxious not to see a repeat of the embarrassment of the Rochdale by-election.
At the moment, there are no wild-cards like Galloway. Yet the two major parties and their leaders are indistinguishable from each other. Workers and youth might therefore hedge their bets elsewhere, or not at all.
One thing is certain: under the present crisis of capitalism, further austerity, degradation, and misery is the only hand being dealt to the working class.
We must prepare to fight back. Workers can put no trust in these capitalist politicians, whether they wear blue or red.
Instead, we must build a revolutionary alternative. The Revolutionary Communist Party is the ace up our sleeve.
William Gedling, Lancashire Communists
