Bereft of ideas, trying to stop his public popularity from falling, Sir Keir Starmer has decided to mimic his ‘special’ friend Donald Trump. Only the PM does this with all the charisma of a run-down bus shelter on the promenade of a wet and windy English seaside resort in winter.
While Trump calls for the environment to be trashed (“Drill, baby drill”), Sir Keir asks, politely, for more things (what exactly?) to be built. “Build, baby build” he is reported to have said to reporters at a construction site for a new nuclear power station.
Aping Trump’s destruction of the US foreign aid programme, meanwhile, the ‘Labour’ leader is now making massive cuts to British aid, to pay for an increase in military spending – although the numbers do not add up.
Now Starmer has decided to add Elon Musk to his repertoire of impersonations. Musk has been causing chaos in the US federal government by bullying employees out of their jobs and arbitrarily sacking government workers. The tech billionaire was even pictured at a conservative jolly wielding a chainsaw.
No chainsaw for brave Sir Keir. But it has been reported that his Labour government is preparing a “Trumpian plan” for the civil service, with more performance-related pay, sacking “poor” performers, digitalisation, and so on.
Barely concealed beneath the spin, this is yet another attack on civil servants. After decades of real pay cuts, civil servants are now being asked to do more with less.
Civil service trade unions, including PCS, will need to explain what is happening and take a real campaign to our members. Industrial action will be needed to fight these attacks, with a careful plan of action to win strike ballots.
Despite its parliamentary majority, the government is weak. With resolute action, the unions can win this battle.
Starmer: the mad-man let loose with scissors!
Mark Anthony, Kingston
On 13 March, early in the morning, a certain ‘sensible’ politician decided to abolish NHS England.
But don’t you worry – if we believe the words of our knight in shining armour, this will swiftly put the NHS back on track and back into the “democratic control” of the British Government!
Removing NHS England is simply removing one head of the NHS’ terrible bureaucracy hydra. Starmer’s message amounts to saying, “Don’t worry, everyone! Just one more terrible organisation gone, and then the NHS will be fixed!”
But as Sky News reporter Beth Rigby correctly pointed out, “If this is not austerity, what is?”
Starmer bravely answered by saying “There is no return to austerity” – and I for one would have to agree with him! How can something return if it never went away in the first place?
The truth is that this latest move is nothing more than the continuation of the cutting away at social services which we saw under the Tories. This is a task which Starmer’s Labour has taken up gladly since day one!
All of this is coming in the midst of Starmer pledging 2.5 percent of the British GDP – with a target of 3 percent in the future – being spent on the UK ‘defence’ budget.
Many have asked, where exactly is this money going to come from during this period of economic stagnation and crisis?
Wes Streeting has answered this for us, and shown the real reasoning for the abolition of NHS England. He explained that once it is gone, up to 50 percent (!) of staff who could be redeployed will instead see their job cut instead, providing “hundreds of millions of pounds worth of savings.”
And there we have it. The smoke-and-mirrors of Starmer wanting to ‘save’ the NHS by putting into ‘democratic control’ quickly fades away, and the truth is revealed.
Cuts, cuts, cuts! Austerity, austerity, austerity! This is the mantra of the Labour Party, because this is all that capitalism can offer us.
It’s ‘warfare, not healthcare’ according to Starmer! With the NHS on its knees, there can be no trust in the ‘democracy’ of Starmer’s big business government. What we need is real democratic control of our services, in the hands of ordinary working people.
