Busting the “black hole” myth
Editorial, issue 49 of Socialist Alternative (ISA in England, Wales & Scotland) newspaper
(This article was first published on 25 September 2024)
At the end of August, Keir Starmer took to the Rose Garden at Number 10, for a speech about the upcoming October Budget. What did he hint at? Fixing our broken NHS? Making sure all housing is fit for human habitation following the damning Grenfell inquiry? Raising the minimum wage and taxing the rich to help working class people cope with the cost of living? You can think again!
Instead Starmer said, “Frankly, things will get worse before they get better. There is a Budget coming in October, and it’s going to be painful. We have no other choice. We will face tough choices.”
Anyone who thinks these words are familiar is not at all wrong. They are taken almost verbatim from the Tory government of 2010, who used these same tired slogans before throwing workers’ conditions and services on a bonfire of privatisation and cuts.
Starmer and Rachel Reeves have already provoked mass outrage with the removal of the winter fuel allowance for 10 million pensioners, which will place an estimated 2.5 million people at risk of fuel poverty this winter. In response to Labour MPs worrying about the backlash in their constituencies, Rachel Reeves flat-out refused to publish any kind of impact assessment of this policy which would outline its devastating consequences, or take any kind of measures which would soften the blow. Unsurprisingly however, the majority of MPs in Starmer’s new pro-capitalist Labour Party voted through this brutal attack, with only one voting against and 53 abstaining.
Busting the “black hole” myth
Rather than drawing the obvious conclusion that cuts and ‘pro-market’ policies have destroyed our NHS, Starmer is preparing to take our NHS further in this disastrous direction, promising “no more extra funds without reform”. In his speech where he announced this, he provided us with two choices: “taxing working people, or reform. We know working people can’t afford to pay more, so in reality it’s reform or die”.
The elephant in the room was of course a third choice: taxing the enormous fortunes of the billionaires who have profited from the policies of the last 14 years. But don’t be expecting that from Labour any time soon. Instead of continuing with catastrophic Tory policies, we need to fight for all NHS services to be taken back into public ownership, alongside the big pharmaceutical companies and care services.
The policies already outlined are, in reality, only the tip of the iceberg. Reeves hopes to make £22bn in “savings” in order to plug the so-called “black hole” left by the Tories. This will mean much more austerity, unless mass working-class struggle can force them back.
Reeves’ so-called “black hole” is a fabrication. It is simply a rehashing of the old and tired idea that ‘there is no money left’ to fund services. We need to smash this myth. Since 2010, billionaires in Britain have more than doubled their wealth. Total profits for the capitalists across the UK amount to a whopping £600bn a year – and this is only what gets declared.
We – the working-class majority – need to seize hold of that billionaire wealth. We need mass struggle to force the super-rich to pay, to address the deep social crisis in society, along with the escalating climate catastrophe. But taxing the rich alone won’t be enough. Ultimately, you cannot control what you don’t own. That is why, as part of a socialist programme, we fight for nationalising and bringing into democratic public ownership the utilities, banks, major industries and the giant corporations which dominate the economy. This could then lay the basis for a genuinely green socialist plan of production.
Starmer and the unions
Much has been made about Starmer’s appearance at the recent TUC Congress in Brighton – the first to be attended by a Prime Minister since 2009. Despite promising to end “vindictive attacks” on the unions, Labour is clearly not planning to govern in the interests of the trade union movement. The so-called ‘New Deal For Working People’, which includes some limited reforms in favour of workers, has been watered down beyond recognition. The pledge to end fire-and-rehire has been creatively reworded to ban only ‘exploitative’ zero-hours contracts, providing a million loopholes for employers.
Labour has settled a number of union disputes with slightly more reasonable offers compared to the Tories. Junior doctors were offered a 22% pay rise, along with a 14% ‘no strings attached’ offer spread across three years for train drivers. Although they are still very much insufficient, they do show that taking strike action works. Rachel Reeves explicitly argued that these pay deals were needed to avoid further strikes, showing that the Labour government can be fought most effectively when the workers’ movement takes action.
An important task for the unions now is to win the maximum number of concessions from Labour in office, through struggle against Starmer’s agenda. However, unfortunately, the approach of the TUC still appears to be one of trying to build friendly ‘partnership’ relations with the government. This even extended to the TUC leadership orchestrating a standing ovation for Starmer’s speech, and TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak calling on unions to “roll up their sleeves” to help Labour.
This failed ‘partnership’ model must be abandoned across the whole movement. Workers and their bosses are not ‘partners’ – they have completely opposed interests. Where ‘partnership’ has been adhered to, it has meant the suppression of wages, job losses and a downgrading of conditions.
Over recent weeks, Port Talbot has for instance seen the shocking loss of 2,500 jobs at Tata Steel. This could have been avoided had the union leaderships not taken a ‘wait for Labour’ approach, cancelling and postponing strike action in the hope that the new government would deliver a better result. Where there are similar threats to industrial jobs, such as at British Steel in Scunthorpe and at Grangemouth in Scotland, fighting shopfloor campaigns and ultimately strike action need to be built, with demands to save jobs through nationalisation.
The trade unions must not hand Labour any kind of honeymoon. We need to prepare for mass struggle. If this isn’t done, it is the right wing and far right who will feed even more off the existing discontent in society.
Tory leadership race and Reform
Now facing electoral oblivion and outflanked by Reform, the ailing Tories are faced with an existential question: Do they even have a future?
Whatever the answer to this question, one thing is clear. The Tories are going to shift increasingly to the right, even beyond the racist ‘stop the boats’ campaign waged in the election. Their party has been ‘Trumpified’ from top to bottom.
Both Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick, the two frontrunners in the leadership race, are both symptomatic of this drift. Both represent the ugly, reactionary politics of Suella Braverman and Jacob Rees-Mogg. Both place the blame for the Tories’ loss on the party supposedly being too left-wing and ‘woke’. Badenoch has referred to Reform UK supporters as “our people”, while Jenrick has promised to “put Nigel Farage out of business, to make him redundant” – in other words, to outflank him on the right and make the Tories again the main force of the right wing in British politics.
Of course, whether the Tory Party will be able to do this remains to be seen. Farage’s ambitions to become the ‘real leader of the opposition’ must be taken seriously. When he isn’t desperately trying to stop his show on GB News from being axed, he has positioned himself as a false ‘anti-establishment’ voice.
The racist riots and attacks which swept Britain in August, despite being suppressed by the showing of solidarity and street mobilisations, nonetheless give an ugly taste of the forces that the right can muster.
Despicably, Labour has also fed into this with their own growing anti-migrant rhetoric. Starmer’s recent visit to Italy to learn from far-right Prime Minister Georgia Meloni’s racist border policies shows exactly where his government is heading.
The time for a new party is now
Starmer’s honeymoon, if he ever had one, has now come to an end. According to a 3 September YouGov poll, only 19% approve of the government’s policies, compared to 55% who disapprove. The winter fuel and child poverty votes alone led to Starmer’s personal approval ratings to drop by 20 points.
There is clearly no shortage of anger towards the political establishment. But to stop this from being harnessed by the right, the left and workers’ movement urgently needs to build a new, genuinely anti-establishment party based on struggle.
Small but positive steps have been taken by Jeremy Corbyn and the four other anti-war independent MPs in setting up the new Independent Alliance. While unfortunately not a party, this left bloc of MPs have made clear their desire to challenge the Labour government’s austerity measures and support for imperialist war, signing joint letters and statements alongside acting together in parliament.
The presence of such a bloc shows what could be possible in building a counterweight to the right, but a bloc of independents in parliament will not be enough. What we really need is a party. ‘Collective’, the umbrella network for left-of-Labour candidates who stood in the General Election, has now begun discussions about taking this necessary step.
At a private meeting held on 15 September, with former North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll, film director Ken Loach and Corbyn present, plans were discussed for Collective to be turned into a new mass left political party. Organisers at this meeting proposed a target of 100,000 members by 2025, as well as a minimum of 150 elected councillors next year and ultimately a dozen MPs at the 2029 General Election.
Unfortunately, Corbyn and a number of other key individuals have not yet taken the bold step needed of calling for the creation of a new party. If they did, that would be a significant step in the right direction. The opportunities for such a party are ripe. It could give a home to hundreds of thousands of workers and youth desperate for a new political vehicle. This is why Socialist Alternative has written to Collective expressing our desire to affiliate to the project and be a part of its discussions going forward.
To be truly viable, discussions about the future of Collective will need to be opened up to the widest possible layer, drawing together trade union activists, climate, anti-racist, feminist, LGBTQ+ and Palestine solidarity activists, as well as socialists, to openly debate and adopt a strategy and programme. As we have outlined in previous issues of Socialist Alternative, we think a socialist programme based on working-class independence is essential for a new party to succeed, by standing against pressures of ‘lesser-evilism’.
The process of launching a new party should also coincide with struggle outside of parliament – on the streets and in the workplaces. A mass anti-austerity demonstration on the week of Starmer’s Tory-lite Budget, called by Corbyn and others with bold demands to tax the rich and nationalise key services, for instance, could act as a major launch pad for a new political formation.
To be part of this necessary discussion, Socialist Alternative has published a new pamphlet, The New Party We Need. With a foreword signed by leading trade unionists and health campaigners, this manifesto outlines how a new party should be formed, lessons from our movement’s history and the burning need for a radical socialist programme against the declining capitalist system.
