UK inflation has risen to 10.1% on CPI, as against estimates of 10.0%, whilst RPI now stands at 12.6%. At the same time we have Quantitative Confusion from the Bank of England, as it was forced to do additional QE to respond to financial instability in the Gilt Market, when it should have been doing QT, and at the same time it has been raising its policy rates, which is an ineffective means of dealing with inflation. The Brexitory government adds to the problem, but Starmer's reactionary, petty-bourgeois, English Nationalist Party has no answer either. Its part of the problem not the solution.
As inflation continues to soar, increasing workers' cost of living, we have Starmer's Blue Labour Party sacking its Shadow Ministers for having supported workers on picket lines, and we have the right-wing, pro-capitalist Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves telling workers that the answer is not for them to demand higher wages, but for them to wait until they get a Labour Government!!! Not only does that do nothing to resolve workers problems here and now, but experience shows it does not resolve them in the future either. On the contrary, its the reactionary policies pursued by Starmer and co., as much as those pursued by the Brexitories that are to blame for the situation workers find themselves in today.
Its the failure of Labour, during all of the Blair/Brown years, to reverse Thathcer's anti-union laws that contributed to the weakness of workers organisations in being able to defend them, and their living standards; it is the idea that wealth was created by inflating asset prices, rather than by labour, and the production of goods and services that led to the idea that you could just keep borrowing against the future, using those inflated asset prices as collateral that led to repeated bubbles and crashes, and that led to the 2008 financial crash, and the QE to inflate asset prices once more, and the requirement for austerity; the same mentality lay behind the idea that you could stop production via lockdowns for two years after 2020, and instead print confetti money to hand out to people to spend on goods and services you had prevented being produced; it is Starmer and co. that have advocated the imposition of boycotts of Russian energy and grain supplies that has massively pushed up global energy and food prices.
As the new inflation data was released this morning, Lisa Nandy appeared on TV, and again showed that Blue Labour has no clue in response. She proposed levying a windfall tax on energy companies. That does nothing to reduce energy prices, or increase energy supplies. If anything it does the opposite, encouraging capital to move to other areas, reducing supply further. She proposed higher taxes on other people, but again that does nothing to reduce energy or other prices. If anything it does the opposite. This is just populist rhetoric, and opportunist politics that may win a few more votes, but as seen in Italy recently, when the reality becomes that what you actually do when in government does not resolve workers problems, it just fuels even greater anger, and tends to push people towards the far right. That far right is more than ready to step in and fill that gap, as large sections of the Left have trailed behind the Starmer's, Reeves and Nandys too, and now find they have no independent political position to present, as they have tied themselves into a popular frontist alliance with a rapidly rightward moving centre.
Nandy couldn't put forward a solution to the inflation that a Labour government might adopt, because it would require recanting on all of the positions that Labour has been arguing. It would mean accepting that all of the printing of money tokens to fund asset price inflation, as well as to finance the idiotic lockdowns, had been a disastrous error; it would mean supporting workers on picket lines, here and now, as they demand wage rises to keep pace with inflation; it would mean arguing for the current sanctions against Russian energy and grain to be lifted, but Labour has been an ardent proponent of them; it might even mean proposing to nationalise energy production and supply, but that would mean adopting the social-democratic position of Corbyn, which is anathema to the reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist position of Blue Labour.
The reality is they can offer no solution, because Blue Labour as a pale imitation of the Brexitories, even more than the conservative social-democracy of Blairism, has been, and continues to be a part of the problem itself. A Blue Labour government would be as much a disaster for workers, currently, as the Brexitories. It would inevitably attempt to use any honeymoon period, along with its relationship to sections of the Trades Union bureaucracy to impose the kinds of austerity the Tories will never be able to inflict, in current conditions. Talk of higher taxes on energy companies and so on, whilst being no answer to workers actual problems, will simply be a cover for the real measures of austerity inflicted on workers to try to resolve that problem
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