We are now well into austerity. The polite fiction that Starmer’s Labour government would mark a decisive break from the Tories has, for those who still clung to it, finally worn thin. Over £10 billion in fresh cuts, we’re told, are needed to “restore public finances” the phrase itself a masterclass in ideological obfuscation. Restore them to what? And for whom?
In truth, these are the same old cuts in new livery. More than £5 billion is being shaved from departmental spending, an unspoken death sentence for already threadbare local authorities, crumbling schools, and creaking health services. Another £5 billion is coming from “reforms” to welfare, a euphemism that has long meant the poor must tighten their belts while the rich speculate freely.
The line is that these cuts are necessary, that the books must be balanced by 2029–30. But capitalism has never balanced its books. It doesn’t need to. The whole system is premised on inequality, on the siphoning of wealth upwards, on the public subsidising the private, on extracting ever more labour for ever less return. Austerity, in that light, is not a regrettable necessity. It is policy functioning exactly as designed.
Reeves and Starmer promise “stability”what they mean is stasis. Consumer confidence ticks up slightly, we’re told, as if a marginal shift in a mood index is evidence that the strategy is working. But there is no vision here beyond maintaining the current order: a low-growth, high-rent, stagnant-wage economy presided over by a managerial elite terrified of transformation. Starmer’s Iron Chancellor is not for turning, but for how long?
“But there is no vision here beyond maintaining the current order: a low-growth, high-rent, stagnant-wage economy presided over by a managerial elite terrified of transformation.”
And where is the opposition? Not from the Conservatives, of course, they’re only upset someone else is administering the cuts. But you might expect at least a murmur from Reform UK, that self-styled tribune of the “left behind.” Yet their silence on austerity is total. Not a word about cuts to welfare or the strangling of public services. Why?
Part of the answer may lie in internal chaos: Farage’s latest row with Rupert Lowe has ended in suspension and embarrassment. But more fundamentally, their figurehead is once again abroad—this time in Florida, delivering a $25,000-a-table address to Republican donors. Over 800 hours logged on extra-parliamentary ventures since his election last year, and not a minute, apparently, for the unemployed in Clacton or the underpaid in Cleethorpes.
Reform presents itself as anti-establishment, but like all nationalist movements that claim to speak for the people, its true role is to distract from class. Their economic critique never extends to capital. They rail against migrants and “woke elites” while Labour quietly bleeds the social state dry. A two-party consensus, with the Union Jack hung over the ledger.
We march into the abyss, politely.
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