Tories in disguise. Struggling families will pay for Starmer’s coronation

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June 2010, George Osborne delivered an emergency budget to address what he called “the largest budget deficit of any economy in Europe”. The outgoing Blairite Labour government (in link step with the neoliberal establishment across Europe) bailed out the banking cartels in 2008, socialising their losses so as to protect the asset portfolios of the super-rich.

Alistair Darling threw £137 billion at the problem of underwriting the gambling debts of banks, hedge funds and bond holders. Two questions remained after this abrupt and egregious abandonment of free market principles:

a) Where to apportion blame? (since it couldn’t be laid at the door of those actually responsible obviously)

(b) Who was going to pay for it?

George Osborne’s solution was typically Tory – blame and fleece the poor. The real reason for the deficit was Labour’s disastrous private finance initiatives (which they are panting to repeat) and the eye watering sums they used to wash away the sins of casino capitalism. Osborne simply gaslighted the nation into believing that profligate welfare spending was the real issue and austerity was born.

Fast forward to 2024 and the new Blairite cabal is wailing about a black hole in public finances. Whenever a natural Tory like Keir Starmer warns of ‘tough choices’ prepare for poor bashing with better media management.

Labour has already said it will end winter fuel payments for 10 million pensioners while allowing energy prices to rise by at least 10%. The privatised energy companies are warm and toasty from the £420 billion in profits made since 2021, the pensioners not so much.

After retaining the Tory two-child benefit cap which locks in child poverty, Owen Jones asked ‘what is the Labour Party for?’ and if foodbank Britain starts wondering that too, they should note that Labour has pledged to increase money to NATO and to give Ukraine £3 billion a year for as long as it takes.

Labour has announced a reduced regulatory framework for property developers (the UK already the worst the housing stock in Europe) but ruled out building council houses. So no hope for the homeless and if you are in social housing then Rachel Reeves is to announce that social rents will rise above inflation for the next 10 years – perhaps not the ‘change’ struggling families voted for.

Starmer’s Labour exists to push forward Tory policies while pretending to do the opposite, to effect the illusion of democratic choice, that is why the media and the Labour right worked so hard to defeat the Corbyn project and drive socialism to the margins.

If will soon occur to those who voted for Starmer’s big banner promises of ‘change’ that they have actually voted in another Tory government. About the only good that may come from this rollover jackpot (for the rich) of the Thatcherite hegemony, is that the UK may finally tire of the ruling duopoly and seek a genuine alternative.

A new party of moderate democratic socialism must be readied for the next election, the costs of believing in the Labour delusion mount daily, its wholesale capture by the establishment must now be conceded and faced head on.

There will no ‘tough choices’ for Labour in government only PR strategies, they will defend and extend the power and wealth of the owning class at the expense of everyone else, just as Tories always do.

We ordinary folks have a simple choice – replace Labour with a party that actually represents us or guzzle the media Kool Aid as red and blue Tories drag the us into the abyss.