Things may get much worse

You wouldn’t think it, but the figures show real wages rising modestly over the last two years (on average, though that means many have suffered falls); the minimum wage and Real Living Wage rising more; resort to food-banks dwindling; more spent on the NHS and on central funding for local councils.

Price inflation has bounced around, and is a bit higher than it was on average from the early 1990s to 2021, but is much lower than in 2022-3.

The Employment Relations Act is limited, but a real advance. Ditto the Renters’ Reform Act.

Yet working-class people wanted a real turnaround in 2024, after the global crash in 2008-9, Cameron-Osborne austerity from 2010, the Covid lockdowns, the economic hit from Brexit, and the inflation spike of 2022-3.

Disgusted

Many are disgusted that Keir Starmer promised “change”, and has offered so little. Part of the disgust must be down to Starmer’s manner, as the epitome of the bureaucratisation of politics, sanctimonious and untrustworthy, ineffectual and control-freaky, apparently unable to deal with political challenge other than by calling security guards or ordering bans and expulsions.

Things could get much worse, soon, and to respond we will need class-struggle combativity, not just fed-upness and disgust.

Prices are likely to rise faster as the effects of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz work through the system.

The consequent dislocations may be magnified by the bursting of any one of the economic bubbles now keeping profits fairly lush: the AI bubble, the cryptocurrency bubble, the private-credit bubble, and the bubble of private buying of US Treasury bonds. That could bring a crash like 2008-9.

Whether with Starmer or Streeting or Burnham, the Labour government will be at sea, and we will face cuts and unemployment on a large scale. Appetite for the fake easy promises of the far right will rise, even if the crisis unsettles Trump.

We will need a labour movement capable of insisting on public ownership and democratic control of high finance and of defending jobs through big strikes and occupations.

We are in our plight now because the labour movement was not able to rise to those tasks in 2008-9 and after, and the nationalist right was mostly able to “capture the market” for discontent.

What we can do in the coming crisis - whether it comes soon, or not for several years - depends on the organising and educating we do in the labour movement now.