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Grace Blakeley is a staff writer at Tribune, and the author of Stolen: How to Save the World from Financialisation.
Despite what new Labour prime minister Keir Starmer says, there’s nothing inevitable about another round of austerity — it is a deliberate decision to avoid confronting the powerful and presenting a real alternative for working-class people.
The Labour Party’s chancellor of the exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is arguing for austerity on the grounds that the government is broke. In fact, the UK’s economic woes are due in large part to a decade-plus of insufficient public investment.
In the UK, Labour has committed itself to balancing the books and pledged not to raise taxes on big business or the wealthy if and when it forms a government. If a Labour government abides by these pledges, it will mean reimposing austerity.
Neoliberalism was never about shrinking the state to unfetter markets and enhance human freedom. In her new book, Vulture Capitalism, Grace Blakeley argues that neoliberalism has always sought to wield state power to maximize profits for the rich.
Fixing Britain’s housing crisis requires rebuilding the country’s publicly owned housing system — the opposite of the private developer–centered approach recently announced by Keir Starmer.
This week the UK was officially declared to be in a recession. The economy is suffering from a long-term refusal by the government to increase public investment — helping make Britain one of the worst economic performers among rich countries.
After scrapping its pledge to invest £28 billion in green energy, Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has no real climate policy — just platitudes about shrinking the deficit and promoting economic growth.
Germany is blocking billions of euros in investment domestically and across the EU because of the country’s commitment to low budget deficits. This “fiscal discipline” is undermining economic growth and decarbonization goals across the continent.
US billionaires are trying to establish a libertarian city-state in Honduras to evade democratic constraints. As progressive president Xiomara Castro resists their efforts, the Peter Thiel–backed firm Próspera is suing the country for constraining its profits.
As UK prime minister, David Cameron unleashed disastrous austerity policies, and his subsequent career in the private sector was plagued by scandal in his dealings with the state. Now he has a cabinet position: yet another example of the elite failing up.
In recent days, Palestinian trade unions have called on workers across the world to demand an “end to all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes.” Trade unionists in the UK, the US, and elsewhere should meet their call.
The only way to curb the current inflation in the UK without imposing unbearable costs on workers is to tax corporate profits and wealth and incomes derived from those profits. Keir Starmer’s Labour Party refuses to do so.
Decades of austerity have undermined Britain’s National Health Service, leading to staffing shortages and longer wait times. It’s a pretext for handing off more and more of the system to profiteering corporations.
The world is now experiencing some of the hottest temperatures ever recorded, thanks to profiteering fossil fuel corporations. They owe us hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for the havoc they’ve unleashed.
It’s no surprise that Tories are fine with keeping kids in poverty. But if the Labour Party refuses to oppose such a heartless policy, Labour doesn’t deserve to be in power.
In the past two decades, a succession of crises has led to the rise of authoritarian states, acutely showing how capitalism and democracy were never compatible to begin with.
Amid a brutal cost-of-living crisis after decades of austerity, popular support for progressive economic policy is the highest it’s been in years. Yet Keir Starmer’s Labour Party refuses to deliver — because it’s afraid of empowering workers.
Policymakers in the Global North have mostly responded to rising inflation by raising interest rates. That’s bad for their own workers — and it’s creating a debt crisis for many countries in the Global South.
Developmentalist nationalism is a poor substitute for socialism.
When oil prices plummeted during the pandemic, fossil fuel companies made vague efforts to invest in clean energy. Now pulling in bumper profits, Big Oil is discarding those initiatives to maintain their business model: capital over climate.