2015 and the bumpy road ahead for the UK

As we draw closer and closer towards the general election in 2015 there is much to be concerned and worried about going forward. Not least that whoever gains power next year be it a coalition or a majority government of any sort we will be in for a lot worse cuts and tax rises to come of that we can be in no doubt. “The Conservative-led coalition faces an election next May and its main pledge when it came into office in May 2010 was to ‘balance the budget’ and reduce government debt. After the huge bank bailout and the impact of the Great Recession of 2008-9 on tax revenues and welfare spending, the government deficit stood at over 10% of GDP and gross government debt had rocketed to over 75% of GDP. The government blamed this on the profligacy of the previous Labour government. This was nonsense, of course. Labour had run relatively small deficits, has reduced government spending as a share of GDP and debt was low until the global banking crash.” “And the Conservatives would have done exactly the same as Labour in bailing out the City of London with more borrowing. The Conservatives are obsessed with the government deficit and debt – getting them down has been their measure of ‘prosperity’. But even on this measure, they have failed. Osborne made much of the reduction in the deficit ‘by half’ by April 2015. But back in 2010, he forecast that he would balance the budget by April 2016. He has now announced that this target will not be achieved until April 2019.” With an estimated figure of about 40% of cuts seen so far we are still yet to feel the worst of austerity to be honest. Huge chunks of the public sector could be privatised parts of local government could cease to function as they should and a hell of a lot more out sourcing is on its way to a country which already leads the way in out sourcing. The coalitions plan of eliminating the deficit by 2015 looks incredibly woeful now going into the next 5 years we can expect a very bumpy ride if any plan to eliminate any deficit is to be achieved “And to meet this target, even assuming that Britain continues to grow at 2-3% over the next four years, the government will have to impose a massive round of public spending cuts on welfare benefits and services. It will also have to raise taxes, although it claims that it can cut income tax again during the life of the next government (although that promise is pushed back to 2019). And the deficit is one thing. Government debt is still rising in real terms. Debt is over £160 billion more than forecast back in 2010 and is now well over 90% of GDP on a gross basis and is not expected to peak on the best forecasts until 2019. The government has failed because the UK economy has not grown in income anywhere near as much as the government forecast back 2010. Osborne forecast real GDP growth would average about 2.7% a year; instead it has averaged up to this year only 1.3%, half the rate. At the same time, although unemployment has come down, most of the new jobs have been part-time, low-paid and self employment ( This has meant that real incomes (i.e. after inflation) have fallen by the largest amount since the Great Depression of the 1930s.” We have to be clear young people who have been hit the hardest in real terms by austerity and have seen their pay fall the furthest have very little cause for optimism I’d suggest their future looks very bleak indeed. With little in the way of meaningful jobs and even more so of those which pay a decent wage to the fact many will never see a pension or even afford to buy their own home let alone affording a rent the future for young people growing up today is a very dark one indeed. “The government stood back from imposing too severe a reduction in the budget deficit after 2012, for fear that the economy would drop back into a new slump – and it nearly did. But that just means, in its obsession with the deficit, that if the Conservatives win the election in May, they will launch a new round of austerity measures. Maybe a new round of austerity won’t happen because the Conservatives won’t win next May. But all three major parties are committed to more spending cuts in bowing to the God of ‘fiscal probity’. “All parties support balancing the current budget in the next Parliament. Deficit spending is clearly still deemed to be politically untenable in the UK.” Gavin Davies, FT. Compared to the Chancellor’s plan, Labour would permit extra borrowing to finance investment (1.5% of GDP) and would allow them longer to attain balance for the current budget. But they would still impose austerity to the tune of half the amount of the conservatives. Behind the obsession with deficits and debt lies the real agenda. It is two-fold: to reduce the size of the public sector and destroy any vestiges of the ‘welfare state’, opening up public goods and services to deliver profits to the capitalist sector. The other aim is lower the burden of tax on and increase the subsidies to the capitalist sector over the long term to boost profitability. This hidden agenda is sometimes exposed. Only this week, a Conservative MP called for huge cuts. “The Chancellor could make a £20 billion start by culling Whitehall’s sprawling bureaucracy, enforcing public sector pay settlements, freezing benefits, reducing the welfare cap, scaling back middle-class welfare and looking again at the state pension.” Dominic Raab, Conservative MP for Esher and Walton. Note the attack on the state pension. This has been sacrosanct up to now. But the Conservatives are now preparing to dismantle it, using the argument that the young should not have to pay for the old and that’s unfair. The right-wing Economist magazine took up this call: “Britain’s fiscal problems are partly the result of over-generous spending on the old. They should pay off some of the debts instead of passing them all on to the young.” But apparently it is not unfair for the poor to pay for the rich. In the UK the bottom 10% of income earners pay more in all taxes as a percentage of their income than the top 10%. The government could switch its priorities on spending from defence, subsidies to industry, lowering corporation tax, more tax cuts for the rich to boosting public investment, services and welfare. Despite its headline noise on a few infrastructure projects (rail, flood protection etc), it is doing no such thing. Faster growth would soon deal with any deficit anyway. In terms of real annual GDP growth, the OBR estimates that a 0.1% point increase would do as much over the four years from 2015-16 for the deficit as roughly £3 billion of spending cuts. The trouble is that the UK economy may be growing at 3% a year currently, but nobody expects that to last. The Office for Budget Responsibility has actually revised down its forecasts for growth after this year for every year up to 2019. Even Osborne admitted that the "warning lights" are flashing over the health of the global economy, and Britain "cannot be immune". Yes, any new downturn in the world economy would soon push the UK economy back into recession too. Osborne raises only that risk to a booming UK economy (the fastest in the G7 this year). But there are serious domestic risks too. Most of the contribution to the ‘boom’ of 2014 is coming from the unproductive sectors of the economy (housing – prices rising at 12% a year; and financial services as the City of London ploughs on). Manufacturing output is still struggling and despite a huge devaluation of the pound back in 2010, UK exports have failed to get anywhere near the government’s expectations.” “That’s mainly because the business sector is unwilling to invest in new technology or skilled labour at good rates of pay. Investment to GDP in most major capitalist economies has been falling. But it is particularly low in the UK. And that is because profitability in the corporate sector, although improving a little after all the austerity measures so far, is still below levels seen in the late 1990s or even 2005. After six years, the UK economy has only just got back to where it was before the Great Recession.” It’s certainly going to get a lot lot worse before we even see a glimmer of improvement for most people. With thanks to the excellent Michael Roberts for quotes and extract, you can read his full post and blog over at http://www.applevis.com/forum

Labour reveal their real face of cuts and more cuts, time for a new workers party

This weekend just gone confirmed to me and to many that labour are no alternative and will not offer a way out of the current crisis we find ourselves in. Some would say this weekends move to accept spending cuts is a cupitulation but i'd disagree labour has been pro cuts all along it has just disagreed with the speed of them that is all. Not the fact that cuts are needed at all.

Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, says Labour faces "a big task" to regain economic credibility and win back public trust.

In a speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday, Balls said he accepted every spending cut being imposed by the coalition and endorsed George Osborne's public sector pay freeze, adding that it might need to continue beyond the end of the current parliament.

His announcement, first revealed in an interview with the Guardian, is an attempt to challenge accusations that Labour is not credible on the economy.

In his speech, Balls said Labour could not and would not make "any commitments" before the next election to reverse the coalition government's tax rises or spending cuts because "we don't know how bad things will be on jobs, growth and the deficit".

Balls said he would not have taken the same approach to tackling the deficit as the coalition, adding that the next Labour government would also have to "deliver social justice in tougher times".

"And as we make the argument that cutting spending and raising taxes too far and too fast risks making the economy and the deficit worse not better, it is right that we set out where we do support cuts and where we would be making the tough but necessary decisions," he told the Fabians.

The shadow chancellor said it was "inevitable" now that public sector pay restraint would have to "continue for longer in this parliament".

"Labour cannot duck that reality. And we won't. Jobs must be our priority before higher pay," he said.

Balls said Labour had to offer an economic alternative that would boost growth now and deliver "responsible capitalism" over the longer term.

But he added: "To make that alternative work and be credible, it must be underpinned by a clear commitment to balanced but tough spending and budget discipline now and into the medium term."



This to me comes as no surprise at all only that people are surprised by this and that the labour party are tory light hand have been for some time now.

The idea that capitalism can be responsible is ridiculous quite frankly what is responsible about making the poorest in society pay for the mistakes of the richest?

Labour who are a fully fledged capitalist party now offer no alternative and as such i'd urge anyone who still considers themselves a socialist in teh labour party to leave that rotten dead party and help us form a new workers party.


We in TUSC and the socialist party do not accept the need for any cuts at all. We feel there is the money in society and the county is not broke or hard up as the neo-liberals would have you believe . For god sake we are one of the richest nations in the world. Where is that money then you ask ?

Well at the top of society the evaded 120 billion in evaded tax by rich corporations for one. Scrapping trident and ending all wars and defence spending will free up huge amounts of money to be invested in public services and a huge affordable council housing building project providing much needed homes to 5 million people on the housing list and also much needed jobs too.

Labour is not the alternative as much as they like to tell you fluffy words like social justice labour values and nonsense like that. They dont mean a word of it when they agree with the tories on pretty much every point.

Its time to break with labour and take a brave step towards a new fairer future starting with a new workers party. Leading eventually to socialism