“There is an alternative, and we must continue to fight for it.”
Diane Abbott MP discusses the various crises we must address.
We are facing four grave and interrelated crises: war and the threat of war, austerity, racism, and climate change. They affect the whole of society, but they affect the working class and Black people the most. Yet although the immediate perspective looks bleak, there are still grounds for optimism. As political attacks continue on all fronts, so the resistance to them will grow. We know this from history.
So our task is to stick to our principles. We must not get deflected by rigged claims of unpopularity. We need to explain how these crises are linked, and why ordinary people are suffering while arms manufacturers, energy companies, landlords, and speculators are doing just fine. And the role of CLPD, as part of the left organising within the Labour Party, has never been more important.
War is not the answer
The most immediate threat is war. For purely selfish reasons of his own and what he calls the threat from China, Trump wants out of Ukraine. Yet there is a sense of crisis and chaos in European capitals, including London, because of the possibility of peace in Ukraine. It is clear that the Anglo-French policy is to continue the war. But they demand that Trump give them what he refuses to: a security guarantee. He won’t, precisely because that continues the war, with a huge financial cost.
So, the Starmer/Macron Plan A is a complete non-starter. And it is not clear that there is a Plan B. This is posturing, play-acting as strategy. Yet there has been wild talk of boots on the ground to fight Russia, even though it’s a nuclear power. How anyone expects to defeat Russia without US help, when they couldn’t do so with it, remains a mystery. European leaders are all agreed on the need for much higher military spending, Starmer amongst them. At a time of general budget constraints in Germany, pension cuts in France, and austerity in Britain, it is clear that increasing the military budget can only be achieved by cuts elsewhere. Playing games with fiscal rules still means that military budgets will rise, other budgets will be cut, and we will all have to pay interest on new debt whose sole benefit is to make arms manufacturers rich.
Military spending means cuts elsewhere
One of the first casualties of this war drive has already been the poor in other countries, with cuts to the international aid budget. This is disgraceful. It is the opposite of Labour values, and was too much for Anneliese Dodds, who resigned as International Development Minister.
The next target is the welfare budget. Ministers have been busy briefing that the welfare budget is too high and that there are too many people claiming sickness benefits. This was even before the latest developments on Ukraine or the election of Trump. But now they have an excuse to do what was long-intended. A government which has already implemented one austerity Budget is now preparing to slash welfare payments too, as shown by March’s Spring Statement.
We now know that the cuts in welfare will largely fall on the disabled. Nobody who voted for Starmer in last year’s General Election could ever have guessed he would cut welfare and public sector spending to spend money on warfare.
And it’s a myth that military spending will boost GDP or provide good jobs. The government’s own figures for its impact on employment show military spending is technologically advanced, equipment-heavy, and creates very few manufacturing jobs. It’s something which no one benefits from.
Cuts to welfare spending to fund increased military spending are morally indefensible as well as electorally ruinous for the Labour Party. And Black people will once again bear the brunt of austerity. If we want to create jobs, we should nationalise UK steel, water, and rail – and invest heavily. And we should end the staff shortages in education and the NHS too.
Racist immigration, policing, and climate policies
The crisis of increasing racism is also adversely affecting immigration policy and policing. For instance, Baroness Casey’s recent review exposed the Met, Britain’s largest police force, as institutionally racist, misogynistic, and homophobic. And if anyone dares to complain or revolt, an increasingly authoritarian government clamps down on them hard.
There were already stupid and unworkable campaigns on ‘stopping the boats’, which even Rishi Sunak admits was a stupid slogan. Worse than that, it’s racist. It demonises all asylum seekers and all migrants. We have crass and racist publicity campaigns on deportations, while our asylum policy is already subordinate to foreign policy priorities. Ukrainians and Hong Kongers can all come here, but not Afghans or Iraqis. Meanwhile, cutting the aid budget will only increase asylum applicants, and the government will respond even more harshly to them.
The issues of racism and climate change are clearly linked. Rich countries like the US, Australia, and Canada have per capita CO2 emissions massively higher than the global average, while India and countries in Africa and the Caribbean have far lower than the per capita average. Yet they are told they are not doing enough to cut emissions. You can see the double standard.
We cannot go forward on Starmerite policies. We’ve come through a difficult time, but even on the right, people are becoming sceptical of Starmer. There is an alternative, and we must continue to fight for it. We need to come together, we need to organise, we need to mobilise.
- This article is from CLPD’s annual briefing, which you can read here.
- Diane Abbott is the Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington: you can follow her on Facebook, Twitter/X and Instagram.
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