Social and Economic Policy

Keir Starmer told Daily Mail readers (12 April): "My commitment to Nato and the UK's nuclear deterrent – maintained on behalf of Nato allies – is unshakeable. Absolute. Total".

The Local Government Service Group Executive of the public services union Unison has proposed to its conference (16-17 June) to highlight the cuts for funding domestic violence services as a part of a broader campaign for local government funding.

“This life activity they sell to other people in order to secure the necessary means of life. [Wage-workers] work that they may keep alive. They do not count the labour itself as a part of their life; it is rather a sacrifice of their life... “What they produce for themselves is not the silk that they weave, not the gold that they draw up the mining shaft, not the palace that they build. What they produce for themselves is wages... “Life for them begins where this activity ceases, at the table, at the tavern, in bed”. So wrote Marx, in Wage Labour and Capital . Since about 2000 bosses have...

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has responded to Jeremy Hunt’s 6 March budget by saying that things will be difficult under a Labour government and she may “have to” cut public spending. Hunt made some tax cuts — 2% off national insurance — scooped Labour’s plan to end the “non-domiciled” tax exemption for rich people, and squared it all with the “fiscal rules” by projecting public spending cuts in years ahead. Reeves makes dogma of no tax rises on the rich other than ending a few loopholes. So, “do the math”, as they say... A first answer to Reeves was given by Andrew Harrop of the Labour...

The very-mainstream Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that the Tory government’s current plans mean real-terms cuts of around 1.2% in NHS day-to-day spending. That is the largest reduction for over 50 years, and from a position where the NHS is already staggering — with big staff shortfalls and record waiting lists, and a backlog of repairs needed to hospital buildings. Local councils are being pushed into dramatic cuts. Yet the Tories plan tax cuts for the 6 March Budget. These are to be “balanced” by promises of new spending cuts in year ahead. Even the chair of the the Office for...

It’s a fairly mainstream view in Britain that healthcare, as a vital public service we all rely on, should be socially provided, for free, and funded by taxation. Similarly, few people would suggest we ought to have to pay to enter public parks, and accept that these should be “paid for” by taxes and free at the point of use. And despite the substantial marketisation of higher education, many people still hold to the view that education should be free, right through university. So why not transport? Transport is as vital a service as any other; why should something so essential for the...

The Tories are talking about tax cuts in the Wednesday 6 March budget. They will “balance” those with notional public spending cuts from 2025 which (they reckon) will be someone else’s problem to implement. The Labour leadership has pledged itself to uphold the “fiscal rules” and also not to raise taxes on the rich and big business beyond spots like repealing the “non-domiciled” exemption. That puts Starmer and Reeves — and, more importantly, the working class — in an impossible trap. Solidarity is pushing in the unions and the Labour Party to force Labour to increase taxes on the rich and big...

“The deathblow to money fetishism”, wrote Trotsky, “will be struck only upon that stage when the steady growth of social wealth has made us bipeds forget our miserly attitude toward every excess minute of labour, and our humiliating fear about the size of our ration. Having lost its ability to bring happiness or trample people in the dust, money will turn into mere bookkeeping receipts for the convenience of statisticians”. Then, he explained, “the distribution of life’s goods, existing in continual abundance, will not demand — as it does not now in any well-off family or ‘decent’ boarding...

The latest official figures show prices were flat (zero inflation) for the last months of 2023 (September to December inclusive), and food prices are actually falling. That is true on both CPI and RPI measures of inflation. The published “headline” figure shows “4% inflation”: that is the movement from December 2022 to December 2023. With increases won in the 2022-23 strikes coming through, average real regular wages (seasonally adjusted) recovered a little (2.2%) from March 2023 to Dec 2023. Still wages have not recovered from the impact of high inflation in 2021-2 (6% decline between April...

Can Atalay was elected as the Member of Parliament for Hatay from the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP) in the 2023 election. Since 2022, he has been serving an 18-year prison sentence for his involvement in the Gezi Park protests in 2013. We have translated this article from Marxist Tutum. Can Atalay’s court case has bounced back and forth between the Constitutional and Supreme Courts like a tennis ball, but the regime has once more shown its open contempt for the law and the Constitution by finally removing the TİP MP for Hatay from Parliament. Before the reading of the Supreme Court’s verdict...