Labour’s Austerity Is a Choice
Despite what Keir Starmer claims, there’s nothing inevitable about another round of harsh cuts — it is a deliberate decision to avoid confronting the powerful.
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Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune.
Despite what Keir Starmer claims, there’s nothing inevitable about another round of harsh cuts — it is a deliberate decision to avoid confronting the powerful.
In seeking to restore Private Finance Initiatives for the building of new infrastructure, Rachel Reeves is ignoring the realities of a ‘buy now, pay later’ approach — massive profit for corporations, with taxpayers footing the bill.
While the wealthy are able to insulate themselves from the worst effects of climate breakdown, the poor are forced to bear the costs of a crisis they did not cause.
Rachel Reeves’ plans to slash public spending and investment on the basis that Britain is ‘broke’ is a rehash of the exact rhetoric that gave us 14 years of Tory austerity.
Keir Starmer claims that Labour is now ‘pro-business and pro-worker’, but the order of these priorities is no coincidence. Yesterday’s manifesto confirmed that the interests of big business and the wealthy will come first under a Labour government.
The fascist surge across the European Union is directly down to the bankruptcy of centrist politicians — whose failure in addressing soaring inequalities and deep social problems should haunt Starmer’s Labour.
Labour’s new ‘fiscal lock’ means enhancing the power of unelected bureaucrats in the Office for Budget Responsibility. But handing more power to a body that has downplayed the impact of cuts on the economy will only lock in hardship, writes Grace Blakeley.
When centrists claim to be guided by common sense over populism of ideology, they ignore that their loyalty to a bankrupt status quo is a fanaticism of its own.
A new play at the National Theatre explores Nye Bevan’s hard-fought struggle against healthcare profiteers to create the NHS — a fight we must rediscover to save the service from today’s privatisation-loving politicians.
In the 1970s, workers at Lucas Aerospace proposed saving the company by producing technologies that fight climate change instead of waging war — showing how workplace democracy can solve the crises of capitalism.
Jeremy Hunt’s final budget is a straightforward giveaway to every millionaire and landlord in our country — a parting glass to the only people they bothered serving in over a decade in power.
The irony of Keir Starmer’s plan for a ‘patriotic economy’ is that it relies on corporate developers to enrich shareholders, many of which don’t pay their taxes in Britain.
New Labour’s technocratic managerialism agenda involved ceding control of the Bank of England — a decision with profound consequences to this day. While unelected technocrats are able to hike interest rates and engineer economic slowdowns, workers will remain worse off.
Today, the economy officially fell into recession — but it’s unsurprising when austerity has starved the country of all the investment it actually needs.
On the same day that climate scientists announced the world had breached the warming limit of 1.5 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, Starmer effectively announced that he had given up the fight against climate breakdown.
Five activists involved in El Salvador’s historic metal mining ban have been arrested. The spurious charges are proof of the threat authoritarian president Bukele’s cosy relationship with big business poses — both to democracy and to human life.
Britain’s response to inflation proves the choices that shore up economic calm for the elite only prolong crisis for the rest of us.
Germany has blocked billions of pounds of green investment at home and across the EU because of a ‘debt brake’ that makes budget deficits unlawful — proving that ‘fiscal discipline’ is a climate catastrophe.
Rachel Reeves has declared she will make Labour the party of economic stability. But after a decade of rising inequality and falling living standards, what we need is transformation, not more of the same.
American billionaires are suing the Honduran government for blocking the creation of a libertarian city-state in the country. If they win, it will be a devastating victory for corporate colonialism over democracy.