By Tom Costello

The total wealth of UK billionaires increased by £35m per day in 2024 according to Oxfam, bringing the total figure up to £182bn. If this amount of wealth was converted into £10 notes, this would be enough to cover the entirety of Manchester one and a half times over.

Meanwhile, Rachel Reeves pretends there is no money left. To plug the government’s self-imposed ‘financial black hole’, the Labour government is preparing a full-frontal attack on disabled people, the sick, the poor and the working class more generally.

In her Spring Statement last week, the government announced a whopping £4.8bn in benefit cuts, alongside Trump style cuts and job losses in NHS England and the civil service. PIP – a lifeline for millions of disabled people, many of whom are in work and rely on it for survival, has seen the heaviest attacks.

370,000 are set to lose their PIP payments altogether. Those who would have been eligible for PIP payments of £15,000 have had this cut to £5,400 – a 64% reduction. Incapacity benefits, which were already planned to be slashed in half, will now also be frozen until 2029-30.

The government’s own figures estimating the impact of these cuts are truly damning. The number living in poverty in the UK are set to rise to 14.5 million, including an extra 50,000 children.

This austerity is directly tied to a new push across Europe and the world towards increased militarisation. British imperialism’s adventures abroad are being prioritised directly over the needs of the working class. While the poorest households are thrown onto the scrapheap, arms spending is to rise to 2.5% of GDP by April 2027, and that’s only the first step towards 3% and more. As always, there’s plenty for weapons, tanks, fighter jets and bombs used to kill children, but nothing for feeding them.

The ‘ballooning benefits bill’: busting a myth

This government has dressed this austerity up as being somehow compassionate. Directly echoing Tory talking points, Reeves, Starmer and Liz Kendall have sickeningly spoken about these cuts as being a means of “helping people back into work”. In particular they have sought to demonise those with mental illnesses, implying they are ‘not real disabilities’. Creating a division between the deserving and undeserving poor is an age-old tool of the ruling class.

Reeves also cites the ‘ballooning benefits bill’ as part of her justification for cuts. The media is routinely reporting on the claim that one in ten working-age people now claim either disability or incapacity benefit. But why is that? The truth is that capitalism has been increasingly making us ill.

Millions are made unwell by the crises created by this system – those made mentally or physically unwell from the stress of the cost of living crisis, those still suffering with the long-term impact of the preventable Covid crisis, those who have to act as unpaid carers for family members and so are kept out of work. Added to those who were made ill by not receiving the treatment they needed from an underfunded, under-staffed and semi-privatised NHS, along with those who are made unwell in work, whether that be through low pay, excessive hours and/or precarious conditions. The list could go on forever about the various ways in which capitalist austerity has made us sick.

Struggle needed

There is already clearly massive opposition to these attacks throughout society. A struggle against them is beginning, with the growth of Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), along with the new campaign Crips Against Cuts.

These cuts absolutely can be stopped, and it is possible to push the government back. But only if we are clear about how we can stop them.

While individual acts like writing to your MP can be useful as a way to apply pressure, this is completely insufficient. MPs are all too often happy to simply ignore emails, or to send placeholder replies registering the ‘concerns’ of constituents.

A much more effective method is building struggles outside of the parliamentary arena. This means building mass struggles and a coordinated fightback on the streets, in the workplaces and communities. It means using methods of struggle – protests, demonstrations and occupations. All councils who haven’t made clear their opposition to passing on cuts need to be targeted with mass campaigns and lobbies. All MPs who haven’t indicated they will vote against austerity should have their offices protested and occupied.

It is also crucial to build a wider movement of all those committed to building a fightback. This means harnessing the unique power of the trade union movement. All unions need to mobilise alongside anti-cuts campaigns, providing help, resources and mobilising their membership. This means ditching the approach of all-too-many union leaderships of seeking friendly relations with the Labour government, instead building a struggle to force the government to pay up.

This is why Socialist Alternative members in the trade unions are among those who recently initiated a petition, calling on our unions to put themselves directly at the head of a national demonstration against all austerity. The June 7 demonstration called by the People’s Assembly Against Austerity is a welcome step, and we should build for the biggest turnout possible. But our unions cannot keep outsourcing the fight against cuts. The unions should instead take a direct lead in organising and building for this, along with future protest actions.

We saw during the 2022-23 strike wave what could be achieved if an approach like this was taken. The strikes, led by rail, mail, health and many other sections of workers effectively paralysed the previous Tory government, contributing to its eventual downfall. Similar action, coordinated and joined up – ultimately including mass strike action – can make this government back down.

Political alternative

This fight against yet another austerity government is fundamentally political. The absence of a left-wing political alternative to Labour has created an alarming vacuum which, given the huge anger in society and hatred towards this government, is already being channeled into increased support for Reform UK. The amount of people who are saying ‘I am angry, so I will give Reform a go’ should be cause for deep concern.

Farage has cynically used the mass anger generated by these cuts to peddle false narratives claiming migrants and refugees are being prioritised above the ‘real’ British people. This serves the capitalist elite perfectly well, who face no challenge to their wealth when the cause of our problems are instead pinned on other working-class people.

Farage and his fellow racist MPs are not ‘men of the people’, they’re multi-millionaires whose platform is to fully privatise the NHS and go even further in pushing austerity. But it’s not enough to just say this; a political alternative for the left is needed.

Socialist Alternative is calling for Jeremy Corbyn and other independent MPs currently being sidelined by Starmer to fully break with Labour and set up a new left party against war and austerity. Such a party could act as a space to bring together anti-cuts activists, trade unionists and all those seeking to build a pro-working class alternative to both Starmer and Farage.

We can’t afford capitalism – for socialist change! 

Socialists don’t only fight against austerity; we also fight against the root cause of it. We fight for immediate reforms which can benefit working class people, the poor and the oppressed, while at the same time pointing to the fundamentally different system which is both possible and necessary.

The attempt to chip away at all gains won by the working class over decades is testament to how fundamentally bankrupt this system of capitalism is. This is why we fight for a socialist programme, one which not only aims at the super-rich and the billionaires, but buries and replaces their system once and for all with a socialist one, based on genuine equality, freedom from poverty and oppression, and solidarity between working class people all over the world.

If you want help with organising a protest where you are based, or want to learn more about joining Socialist Alternative, contact us today!

We fight for:

• A new left party of struggle, with an anti-war, anti-austerity and socialist programme.
• No more austerity! No to Reeves’ brutal cuts – defeat this government of the super-rich in the streets!
• Benefits which reflect the real cost of living. Raise benefits to at least the minimum wage, tied to inflation.
• Scrap the Work Capability Assessments, which are designed purely to punish the poor and the sick. No more sanctions!
• Seize the wealth of the billionaires! For massive taxes on the super-rich.
• We can’t control what we don’t own – nationalise the banks to take on the tax dodgers.
• A fighting trade union movement. Fight for a 32 hour workweek and a £20/hr minimum wage. For fully-paid sick leave, pensions and holiday pay for all from day one.
• A fully-funded, well-staffed NHS on decent, trade union rates of pay. For democratic control by workers and service users.
• Public ownership – bring the NHS, energy, utilities, transport, banks and the key sections of our economy into public hands, under democratic working-class control.
• A socialist world, free from war, poverty, exploitation and oppression