As Labour prepares to impose another round of destructive austerity at the behest of their corporate sponsors, the Scottish Socialist Party has reiterated its call for a worker-led fight back.
Richie Venton wrote in The National about how we can confront and defeat Labour austerity:
“‘Ruthless’ – not my description but that of Keir Starmer on the cuts he plans to make to public expenditure.
“Briefing the press on behalf of Chancellor Rachel Reeves, a Treasury spokesperson was blunt: “If we have to choose between raising taxes and cutting spending, we will cut spending.”
“Speculation is rife that Labour will stage a March Budget which will enforce departmental cuts even deeper than Reeves previously signalled. These were already deeper than the austerity inflicted during 14 years of Tory government.
“Why? Supposedly in response to the soaring cost of government borrowing. But underpinning the Labour’s political choice of ruthless austerity is their self-imposed straitjacket of entirely invented “fiscal rules”, whereby day-to-day spending must be matched by tax receipts.
“Because the party refuses to tax the millionaires and corporations, this means cuts, rather than government borrowing to revive the economy and heal the savage wounds inflicted on millions of working-class people since bankers triggered the financial crash of 2008.
“Labour are crawling on their knees before the same parasitic class of bankers, spivs and speculators, desperately reassuring them their profits are safe in Labour’s hands.
“As we warned at the time, Labour’s Budget reliance on turbocharged economic growth was a cruel fiction, as last month’s barely visible 0.1% increase testifies. There again, capitalist economic growth in itself is no cure for the diseases of poverty, job insecurity and grotesque inequality which scar society.
“The vast bulk of any increased output of goods and services goes not to those who create that wealth – it is grabbed by billionaires, millionaires and big businesses, the capitalist rich. Umpteen facts prove this.
“The average chief executive among the FTSE100 richest companies made as much in the first three days of 2025 as it will take the average worker the entire year to earn. Since 2020, the richest 1% have grabbed two-thirds of all newly created wealth.
“Capitalist businesspeople gifted Labour at least £15.5 million before the election to ensure a tame pro-capitalist government which would always put profit before people. It’s proving a safe investment for them! Even if the relentlessly repeated £22 billion gap in public finances is not sheer invention, it is a mere drop in the bucket compared with government annual spending of more than £1 trillion.
“Labour’s chosen method of filling this “black hole” is to shovel millions of the most unfortunate people into it.
“We’re familiar with their crimes against children’s benefits, pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payments, and the Waspi women. Next in Labour’s sights are the benefits of long-term sick and disabled people. Labour “justifies” this assault with claims to be “the party of work”.
“If so, why haven’t they taken Grangemouth into public ownership to defend thousands of skilled jobs? Or taxed corporation profits and the very rich to invest in local government, the NHS, education and other vital public services, creating the accompanying jobs?
“No, Labour are instead hell-bent on punishing people either born with chronic conditions and disabilities, or who have acquired them from slum housing conditions in childhood, industrial injuries and unsafe working conditions, or mental ill-health from the stresses of poverty and insecurity in a society rigged for maximum profit and minimum care of people.
“Labour want to demonise and punish the victims of a society which can’t provide secure work, safe working conditions or an NHS fit to look after them, after decades of under-investment. There is no excuse for cuts to benefits and public services, or the galloping NHS crisis, given the oceans of wealth lapping round our knees in this, the sixth-richest economy on Earth.
“When the NHS was established in 1948, Britain’s national debt then was more than 250% of GDP, compared to 100% at present. If Labour’s “fiscal rules” had been applied in 1948, there would be no NHS. It’s not the first time a Labour government has carried out austerity in response to capitalist crisis, paralysed by their own besotted belief in that system.
“Unlike that of Starmer, the Labour government of 1974-79 was elected with excited enthusiasm after the miners’ strike toppled Ted Heath’s Tories.
“Expectations were high from a government manifesto promising “a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of power and wealth in favour of working people”.
“Hopes were shattered when the Labour leadership grovelled to big business and the IMF. Starmer’s Labour are galloping towards increased privatisation of the NHS in response to horrendous waiting lists resulting from deliberate refusal to invest in public health.
“Labour have chosen the capitalist road of profit before people and it’s about time the leaderships of the organised trade union movement fought back with both arms –industrial and political. The TUC, STUC and individual trade unions – still comprising the country’s largest civic organisations – need to confront Labour austerity with co-ordinated industrial action, but also with a set of political alternatives.
“A good start would be a vigorous campaign in workplaces, on the streets and with public rallies demanding taxation of the rich and big business, and extension of democratic public ownership to all key services and industries.
“The Scottish Socialist Party are campaigning in the streets and within our unions for measures such as a 5% wealth tax on millionaires, which would raise £260bn in one year – four times the entire Scottish budget and enough to fill Labour’s “black hole” 12 times over. Even just applied to Scotland’s 10 richest people would raise £1.15bn – enough to hire 25,000 public-sector workers.
“Audit Scotland has just confirmed taxpayers still owe another £23bn on PFI projects, whereby we pay back £5 for every £1 invested in hospitals, schools and other services. Cancellation of that debt to bankers and speculators could, for example, pay £30,000-a-year to 155,000 workers for the next five years!
“The potential power of 600,000 Scottish trade unionists, their families and socialists, needs to be mobilised to demand vast public investment in the NHS.
“These same forces need to demand councillors set no-cuts budgets in defiance of Labour’s austerity and insist the Scottish Government immediately abolishes the regressive Council Tax and double funds for local jobs and services through emergency introduction of the progressive Scottish Service Tax advocated by the SSP.
“In essence, the organised trade union movement should spearhead a campaign for public ownership of society’s bountiful resources to provide 21st-century healthcare, education, and public transport, all free at the point of use. This is the mirror opposite to the practices of the Labour Party which far too many unions still fund, as they wield the axe against their own members.
“There’s loadsamoney! But it’s in the wrong hands, and far too few hands. We need radical socialist change, not just change from Tory austerity to Labour austerity.”