LIZ TRUSS’S Tory government continues to totter as the so-called cost-of-living crisis hurts working people across Britain.

Fresh from a humiliating U-turn on the top rate of tax, under pressure, Truss and her Cabinet look set for another backtrack, this time on their intention to allow benefit increases to fall behind the rate of inflation.

These reversals must be an encouragement to the left and the labour movement. This government can be beaten and forced into retreat.

The Tories might be on the run and one of the weakest governments since they returned to power in 2010, but they’re not done.

Truss proudly declared that she isn’t afraid to be unpopular, which is just as well.

But what this means for working people in practice is a government unashamedly setting out to smash workers’ rights and living standards and directly transfer wealth to ruling class and the monopolies, building on the legacy of David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson — with even less pretence.

The Tories are continuing to pursue these objectives across the board and big employers have been emboldened to do the same, including through the introduction of new scab laws.

Working people face a crisis of spiralling costs, particularly in terms of energy and food.  

Wages are stagnant. At the same time as lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses, the Tories have called for and fought to enforce “wage restraint” in the public sector.  

The breadth and depth of the Tory attacks that are under way have drawn wider sections of working people and different strata into the fight against this government, from their cruel and inhumane Rwanda scheme to the cuts to criminal legal aid.  

Recent national strike action, despite a concerted onslaught by the state and monopoly media, has largely galvanised public opinion among working people who are also experiencing the same real-terms pay cuts under grinding inflation.  

Keir Starmer might appear to be the most immediate winner from the Tories’ plummeting popularity, but he can’t be allowed to position himself and his meek right-wing politics as the force that will beat the Tories.

Nor can he be allowed to claim that it was only his attacks on Jeremy Corbyn, the left and progressive forces during his lurch to the right which “re-established Labour as a credible party of government.”

Having served as leader of the opposition through the Johnson premiership, perhaps only Starmer could have failed to have amassed an insurmountable poll lead before now. Starmer is one of the few people to have gained from Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng crashing the economy.

A Starmer victory in any future election would be a largely hollow one for working people in the absence of any radical or redistributive policies aimed at addressing the crisis facing working people. Tory-lite policies won’t cut it.

The labour movement and the left have led — and are continuing to lead — the real resistance to this Tory government.  

The struggle carries on, not just to resist its current attacks and keep the Tories on the run, but to remove them from power and win a radical redistributive economic programme and a strengthening of workers’ collective and individual rights, as a first step.

All readers and supporters will join the Morning Star in sending solidarity to the striking Arriva bus drivers in Hull, the GMB ambulance drivers and the nurses balloting for strike action and the Environment Agency workers voting on strike action for the first time in their history.  

Workers on the front line are leading the way — and the Morning Star is the only paper that’s always with them.