From the February issue of The Respect PaperInvestment - not cuts!Chancellor Alistair Darling has refused to say just exactly what he would cut if Gordon Brown were to win the general election. But he has made it very obvious that no department or public service could be protected.
The Tories have already dropped clear hints that they would tear up Darling's 2010-11 spending plans as soon as David Cameron stepped into Number 10, and inflict big and immediate cuts from the outset.The main parties agree on the need for drastic public spending cuts: all seem to be agreed that the victims need to be working class, and preferably employed in the public sector ... and there need to be a lot of them. Big employers of public sector workers include local government, education, the NHS and the civil service: Alistair Darling has already made it clear that all of these sectors will face the axe.
Right wing think tank Reform has demanded the axing of a million public sector jobs (one in six), to cut the public sector wage bill by 15%, ignoring the fact boosting unemployment on this scale would not contribute to economic growth so much as drag the economy down into a new wave of recession.
Another right wing think tank, "Localis", published a report in November suggesting a 20% cut in council spending through "doing less, outsourcing and becoming more financially innovative". "Outsourcing" is of course the new word for privatisation, is seen above all as way to save money - at the expense of their workforce.
But it doesn't have to be this way. Ministers could raise more money from taxing the rich, big business and the bankers who caused the crisis, rather than make cuts. Gordon Brown has floated the idea of a tax on city speculators that could easily raise £45 billion a year - enough to reduce the deficit and keep public services intact - while not costing working people anything at all.
Respect is not part of the consensus for axing jobs: we say we should invest in public services and the education of young people, rather than cut. Make the bankers pay for the crisis they and their wretched system created.
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