Tory retreats are welcome at a time when the British economy needs further austerity like a hole in the head, writes Ken Livingstone.
Tory Chancellor George Osborne has announced a “5-point plan” following the EU referendum, with the centrepiece being an intention to cut the corporation tax rate to 15 per cent.
Osborne justifies this decision by claiming it will attract extra investment and thereby help to offset the shock of the Brexit referendum outcome.
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The most extraordinary thing about recent political developments in Brazil is that just 55 senators overturned the will of 54 million Brazilians at the ballot box who re-elected President Dilma Rousseff. They did this by suspending her as the President for 180 days and installing Michael Temer as interim President. For those of us who expressed solidarity with activists against the US-backed dictatorship in Brazil from 1964-1985,and stood with the Chilean people against General Pinochet following the 1973 coup there, alarm bells are ringing at this right-wing attempt at regime change in one of the world’s largest democracies.
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Following last Thursday’s referendum, David Cameron resigned, paying a heavy political price for the Tories’ failures and divisions.
Meanwhile, the ongoing attempts to blame Jeremy Corbyn for the result of the referendum are part of an attempt to deflect some of the anger and blame from the Tory government.
Sadly, some have seen it as an opportunity to try to open up another front against Jeremy’s leadership of the Labour Party.
Myself, Tony Benn and Jeremy Corbyn were among those MPs who rebelled against Tony Blair’s decision to introduce tuition fees in 1998.
I remember speaking alongside student campaigners for free education who rightly warned that the Labour government’s decision was the thin end of the wedge when it came to passing the costs of education on to students themselves.
There was something particularly angering about seeing MPs who had themselves benefited from a free university education voting to take away the ladder of opportunity for future generations.
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First, I would like to thank the Morning Star for giving me the opportunity to write a regular column for the paper on austerity Britain and the paper’s support against those who wish to exclude me permanently from the Labour Party, which is much appreciated.
Over 85 years this paper has been an essential voice for social justice and peace and is needed now more than ever.
Last week saw the Queen’s Speech and, as we are growing to expect, the detailed key points that Jeremy Corbyn and Labour MPs gave in response to proposals for more austerity in the speech — most notably on the issue of further rises in tuition fees — received less media coverage than the ongoing warfare in the Tory Party over the EU referendum.
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THE Tories expected to write a script for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour as a weak, irrelevant opposition. Yet, as they review the wreckage of their budget, they must surely know this is not going to plan.
Indeed, polling suggests some of their key policy proposals are now more out of touch with the British people than ever before — from benefit cuts for disabled people to the need for action to save our steel, to the forced academisation of schools.
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Jeremy Corbyn was right to say this week that the Budget the Chancellor delivered was “actually a culmination of six years of failure” and that “this is a recovery built on sand.”
Almost all the growth in our wealth in recent years has gone to the richest 1 per cent, while working-class and middle-class families have seen real incomes cut by 9per cent since the banking crisis.
Yet in much of the media, we are still subjected to the big lie — repeated again by George Osborne this week — that we are in this mess because the last Labour government spent and borrowed too much.
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George Osborne’s budget this week represented a continuation of the same economic strategy that has seen the richest 1% watch their wealth double while ordinary families struggle to make ends meet.
Whilst there were some sweeteners for voters, it lacked a vision for a better future and showed the Chancellor is not listening to the growing coalition of voices – from the experts at the IMF and OECD to our trade unions – that our saying government investment is needed to navigate the choppy waters ahead.
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JEREMY CORBYN has only been Labour leader for just over 100 days but he has already delivered significant change in how politics is conducted and in the direction of travel of the party.
It would be easy, in the light of the froth and noise of controversies, to lose sight of just how profound the change has already been.
Let’s take for example the Tory U-turn on tax credits following their defeat in the House of Lords.
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It has been a terrible week for the Tories, and a very good one for the opposition.
The Tories expected to write a script for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour: incompetence and extremism. Yet as they review the wreckage of their week of tax credits chaos they must surely know this is not going to plan. They are now more out of touch with the British people than the unelected House of Lords.
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