A whiteboard message recently appeared at Tottenham Court Road. 'David Cameron is our new PM. We're all doomed'. That's most accurate public service information we've seen in a long time.
After Labour threw the election away by betraying the working-class voters who elected it, we now have a Tory-LibDem (or ConDem!) coalition government. We can expect an onslaught on our public services, our pay and conditions, and our rights. And we need to fight back to defend ourselves.
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After urging people to vote LibDem to keep the Tories out, the LibDems have put the Tories in. This coalition stitch-up shows that the LibDem party is in no sense a friend of working people.
The toffs are back in charge. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are rich men, products of two of Britain's top private schools, and are committed to ensuring that our class, not theirs, pays the price for the economic crisis. Clegg's much-vaunted "fairer taxes" will not see the super-rich made to pay back the fortures they have made off the backs of working-class people.
They have already announced "reform of party funding", which sounds like an innocent effort to clean up a sleazy system under which fat cats buy political power. But Cameron and Clegg have repeatedly attacked the right of trade unions to fund political parties and candidates, and behind the cloak of "reform of party funding" lurks a threat to our right to sponsor candidates, through our unions, who support workers' rights.
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The ConDem coalition will announce swathes of cuts across our public services. Cameron will doubtless tell us that since he has taken a 5% pay cut, we should see our pay pegged back too. But, sitting on his personal fortune of millions and his salary of £200k+, he will hardly notice a fractional cut. Millions of public service workers certainly would!
We already face 800 job cuts on London Underground. More will follow if LU gets away with it. Many of us will see public services in our local communities cut.
We need to link up with other workers across the public and private sectors, and with community groups, passengers and service users - to defend our jobs and our services. We should form a coalition of our own - for jobs, public services and trade union rights.
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If Labour elects as its Leader a candidate who has been part and parcel of its betrayal of working-class people, it will have failed to learn the lessons of its general election defeat. Ed Balls, the Milibands, Andy Burnham ... all would keep Labour going in the same disastrous direction.
Fortunately, John McDonnell will also be standing for Labour leader. John is a principled socialist, who constantly speaks up for workers' interests in Parliament. He would lead Labour in a change of direction, towards the socialist policies that could win back working-class support, and create a genuine voice for working-class people in politics.
The media and the party machine will try to ignore and exclude John's challenge and what it represents. But we and our unions should get right behind him.