Our economic system is broken – and unless we break with the government’s obsession with short-termist private profit, things are destined to get worse, warns Mercedes Villalba
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Behind the Budget smoke and mirrors, there is only more austerity
Comparing Budget measures to fictional Tory plans rather than actual spending levels conceals continued austerity, argues DIANE ABBOTT MP, as workers face stealth tax increases to bear the cost of economic stagnation
(L to R) Rachel Reeves with the ministerial red box; Songi cartoon after Edvard Munch's The Scream
Following the resignation of Nepali Prime Minister KP Oli amid mass youth-driven protests, different narratives have circulated which simplify and misrepresent the complexities and reality on the ground in Nepal at the roots of this crisis, argue VIJAY PRASHAD and ATUL CHANDRA
The US is desperate to stop Honduras’s process of social and democratic change, writes TIM YOUNG
But the beneath the racism and misogyny of the far right lies a shared grievance with the left — Starmer’s complete betrayal of working people, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
Climate justice and workers’ rights movements are uniting to make the rich pay for our transition to a green economy, writes assistant general secretary of PCS JOHN MOLONEY, ahead of a major demonstration on September 20
Lucy Powell may not exactly be the left’s choice, but her bid for the deputy leadership is certainly not the Labour right’s choice — and if she wins, that could mean the ascendancy of Andy Burnham and the end of Keir Starmer, writes VINCE MILLS
BUDGETS are accompanied by a blizzard of documentation designed to illuminate the detail of the big fiscal events. But the real effect can be to obscure what the real thrust of policy is and what its impact is.
The confusion surrounding the October 2024 Budget is even greater than usual. Essentially, what is being discussed as a huge tax-and-spend Budget is in reality, a Budget which not only extends austerity but actually deepens it.
First, let us highlight some of the things that have happened (or not) that give the lie to the idea that this is a big tax-and-spend Budget. One striking development is that the IMF has welcomed the Budget. The IMF has never supported what might be called “Keynesian” increases in taxes and public spending; it is an institution gripped by neoliberalism. But it specifically welcomes the central aim to “reduce the deficit by raising revenues.” As we shall see, the burden of that deficit reduction will be taxes on ordinary people.
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