Robbing the poor

Though the Tories care little or nothing for the working people they exploit to keep the bourgeoisie in clover they have to pose, like virtuous Roman Senators, as impartial governors of the state machine  –  especially in the run-up to the general election. When the going is good the bourgeoisie will sacrifice a tiny fraction of their immense wealth to maintain the health service and what’s left of the “welfare state”. When times hard – and they certainly are now as we enter the 16th  year of a recession that still shows no sign of recovery – they will try to pass the entire burden onto the backs of the workers with austerity measures that they call the “national interest”.
This week’s Spring Budget was no exception. Jeremy Hunt tinkers around income tax and national insurance contributions but at the end of the day it was as Keir Starmer said "just another short-term cynical political gimmick”.
This is a budget for the wealthy drawn up a government that represents the ruling class. People on low incomes or benefits will be hit by cuts in the social wage. Pensioners face an average £1,000 hit to their incomes because of the tax changes. The Labour leader says the Tories “give with one hand and take even more with the other" and "nothing they do between not and the election will change that” – and on this occasion he’s quite right. But Labour has nothing to offer in exchange. 
The renationalisation of all the utilities, industries and services that were once in public ownership would pour billions back into the Treasury. The health service could be rescued by restoring the wealth and profit taxes of the Wilson era and scrapping the Trident nuclear arms system could easily provide the funds to end the homelessness crisis. But the Starmer leadership is committed to maintaining the tax-break regime that began after the Tory come-back in 1979  
Paul Nowak, the General Secretary of the TUC slammed “a deeply cynical budget” packed with “wishful thinking on productivity and pre- election gimmicks”.  We need a government that will take responsibility for growth, Nowak said, with stronger public services and strengthened public infrastructure not least to meet the climate crisis. For working people up and down the country a change of government cannot come to soon.
Indeed. We will all be glad to see the back of Sunak. But we’ve also got to defeat the class collaborators and bureaucrats who run Labour and most of the unions these days. If we don’t we can only expect the same again from Starmer & Co.

A slap in the face for Starmer

Galloway bagged almost 40 per cent of the vote in the Rochdale by-election last week that was dominated by the war in Gaza. Starmer and the sad-sack Blairites that surround him told us that the average Labour voter wasn’t interested in Palestine. Last week proved them wrong.
Though there is a substantial Muslim minority in Rochdale the swing to Galloway and his new Workers’ Party of Britain went far beyond the Muslim community. Disowning their own candidate for supporting Palestine and making remarks deemed to be “anti-Semitic” by the Starmer bureaucracy didn’t help Labour either.
Galloway says he believes his win will “spark a movement, a landslide, a shifting of the tectonic plates in scores of parliamentary constituencies”. But, of course, we’ve heard all this before.
The MP kicked out of Labour for opposing the imperialist invasion of Iraq in 2003 returned to Parliament on two previous occasion on his old Respect platform. But Respect never took off as a national party. Whether Galloway is third-time lucky this time round remains to be seen but without the mass support of the union movement that seems unlikely. 
Nevertheless George Galloway’s victory was a slap in the face for Starmer & Co. It augurs well for Jeremy Corbyn’s re-election in London and it was a warning shot to Labour to never take their traditional vote for granted. Now it’s their turn to look over their shoulder. Let them wonder where their slavish support for Israeli aggression and boot-licking the Americans is taking them...   

The voice of the oppressed

The Israelis are rampaging through Gaza. Raiding hospitals. Killing women and children. Destroying schools and homes .Spreading terror with bombs and drones – that’s what their much vaunted army is good at – but it’s a different story when they come up against the Palestinian resistance. The Israelis are paying a high price for their aggression in Gaza and the West Bank. Their northern border is ablaze. Over half a million Israelis have fled abroad to escape the fighting and the Houthi Yemeni government’s blockade has closed Israel’s only port on the Red Sea.

China, Russia and the Global South are demanding an end to the fighting but these calls are ignored by the Israeli government that knows that it can do whatever it likes under the protection of US imperialism.
Though Americans maintain the pretence that Israel is an independent state everyone on the Arab streets knows that the Israelis can do nothing without the sanction of US imperialism and that ultimately it is the US government that denies Palestinian rights and seeks the destruction of the Palestinian resistance.
The most venal and aggressive sections of the Anglo-American ruling class that thought this was going to be the “New American Century” are dying on the streets of Gaza.
They can’t crush Arab resistance. They can’t stifle the global anti-war movement calling for an immediate end to Israeli aggression. The voice of the oppressed, the millions that support the legitimate rights of the Palestinian Arabs is being heard across the world. Let them hear it in Tel Aviv! Let them hear it in Washington!

Meanwhile in Rochdale...

A former Labour leader tells us the party’s leadership has sometimes lacked political “savvy” with its handling of recent crises, including its green spending pledge and the Rochdale by-election. But Neil Kinnock, a grandee who now sits in the House of Lords, was perhaps understating the crisis of confidence that has shaken the Starmer leadership over the past few weeks.
Labour still has a huge lead over the Tories but the mounting anger at Starmer’s refusal to call for an immediate end to the fighting in Gaza is undermining Labour’s support throughout the movement.
Dumping the Labour candidate in the Rochdale by-election shows how unfit Starmer is to lead the Labour Party. The Zionist lobby that launched the witch-hunt that drove Ken Livingstone and many other supporters of the Palestinians out of the Labour Party worked hand in glove with Blairites to undermine Jeremy Corbyn. Last week they joined the Tory media to force Starmer to get rid of Ali.
Azhar Ali, a member of the Muslim community, has been suspended after making some anti-Israeli remarks at a private meeting deemed to be “anti-semitic” by the Tory press. The leader of the Labour group on Lancashire County Council; an advisor to Tony Blair and Gordon Brown during the last Labour government had been, until last week, a staunch supporter of Starmer & Co and was seen a safe pair of hands to hold Rochdale. Disowned by Labour but too late to replace him Azhar Ali’s name will still appear on the ballot paper as the official Labour candidate at the end of the month.
Now the door’s wide open for yet another George Galloway come-back. Standing on his own “Workers Party of Britain” platform the veteran Palestinian solidarity campaigner hopes to be swept back into Parliament by a protest vote that goes far beyond Rochdale’s Muslim community.