THIS weekend’s demonstrations against the Tory government should unite everybody on them around the slogan “End austerity now!”

It is important now to escalate the campaigning that has given cuts in public services and social and welfare spending a deservedly bad name — such a bad name, indeed, that nobody wants to defend austerity in public any longer, even while continuing to support it.

Ex-chancellor Philip Hammond first announced that austerity was coming to end when unveiling his Budget in October last year. 

He then appeared to read its last rites in his Spring Statement — provided the Westminster Parliament passed his and Theresa May’s Brexit withdrawal package.

That package, it may be recalled, aimed to align the British economy and government with EU pro-big business single market and fiscal austerity rules, while paying the EU a divorce settlement of £36 billion in today’s terms. Hammond was faithfully pursuing the “Babysoft” Brexit favoured — if Brexit could not be halted completely — by his business advisory council, the Bank of England and the CBI. 

Hammond’s “end to austerity” turned out to be as bogus as Frank Sinatra’s many final farewell concerts between 1971 and 1995. 

At the beginning of this month, new Chancellor Sajid Javid announced real public spending increases for the 2020-21 financial year. 

But he hid behind preparations for Brexit instead of outlining any plans for the succeeding four years as would normally be the case.

Clearly, this was a Spending Review produced with both eyes on the next general election. 

It promised £15bn extra for education, social care and policing this year and next, in addition to May’s five-year pledge of £21bn more for the NHS.

There is no guarantee that most of this money will ever be spent. In any event, it does not restore public expenditure to its pre-austerity, pre-2009 levels. 

As the Office for Budget Responsibility points out, spending will still be significantly lower in real terms (after accounting for inflation) and as a share of Britain’s national income and output (GDP). 

In short, at least one-third of the cuts will continue, except in health and social care and a few smaller areas. 

Welfare spending is still set to fall as a share of GDP from 10.6 per cent in 2017 to 10.2 per cent by 2022, with universal credit and personal independence payment (PIP) being misused to deny or cut benefits to some of the unemployed, low-paid and people with disabilities. 

Public spending as a whole is still scheduled to drop from 38.5 to 37.7 per cent over the same period.

This is before we consider the gap between spending levels and what is actually needed and affordable. 

For example, bodies such as the King’s Fund, Nuffield Trust and Health Foundation point out that, even if the extra spending materialises, the NHS will still be £20bn short by 2022. 

What can be done to kill off austerity and put the final nail in its coffin?

The immediate priority must be a general election and the replacement of the Tories by a genuinely anti-austerity government.

Britain’s distorting first-past-the-post voting system means that the only clear, realistic alternative to the Johnson regime is a Labour government. 

At the moment, Labour has a leader in Jeremy Corbyn who has long campaigned inside and outside Parliament against austerity. 

Likewise, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and other shadow cabinet members are committed to boosting investment in our public services, pensions, benefits, economic infrastructure, energy and the environment, backed up by extensions of public ownership and democratic control.

The Liberal Democrats collaborated in all the deep cuts and privatisations carried out by their coalition with Cameron’s Conservatives between 2010 and 2015.

Most Green and Plaid Cymru votes will do nothing more than undermine Labour’s chances of forming a majority anti-austerity government.

The SNP is obsessed with keeping the peoples of England and Wales inside the EU against their referendum preference, before taking Scotland out of Britain and deserting any left-led Labour government that might be in office in London.

That’s why the Communist Party will be calling for a Labour vote everywhere, demonstrating its commitment by not putting forward candidates of its own for only the second or third time since 1924.

As a non-party movement, the People’s Assembly has a valuable role to play in the forthcoming general election by pushing austerity and privatisation up the political agenda. 

The assembly’s manifesto In Place of Austerity puts forward the kind of policies that should be used to challenge the candidates of every party.

This brings us to the elephant in the living room which the ruling class would love to shoot.

Unless Brexit is resolved before the next general election, with Britain on its way out of the EU in accordance with the 2016 referendum, Labour’s chances of winning could drain away.

Johnson will be delighted to fight that election on unfinished Brexit business. He undoubtedly welcomes the determination of Labour’s hard-line anti-Brexit MPs to turn Labour into an unequivocally Remain party which refuses to honour the EU referendum result. 

Their stance is likely to drive many past Labour supporters to abstain or vote for the Brexit Party. 

To win, Corbyn’s Labour needs the election campaign to focus on its positive alternatives to austerity. 

The Labour leader’s enemies in the parliamentary Labour Party have a different priority. 

Their loyalty to the EU far outweighs any commitment to the victory of a left-led Labour government on an anti-austerity platform.

After all, many of these MPs obediently trotted along behind New Labour and Tory-Lib Dem austerity policies. 

Their dog-like devotion to the EU has never been shaken by the vicious punishment beatings handed out by the EU Commission-European Central Bank-IMF “Troika” to the peoples of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland, imposing sweeping spending cuts, tax rises, privatisations and curbs on workers’ rights.

Now, like the anti-Labour opposition parties, they want to stop Brexit, whether by parliamentary machinations, action in the courts or in a second referendum.

The EU is no friend of people who resist the power of the banks and big business. 

Most communist and workers’ parties across Europe understand this, from Portugal, Ireland and Denmark to France, Cyprus and the Czech Republic.

We don’t want to win a left-led government in Britain only to see its policies blocked and undermined by the neoliberal treaties, rules and directives of the European Union — or by the newly acquired powers of Britain’s Supreme Court. 

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party.