THE whole world is quite rightly focused on the assault on Gaza. It is also the main issue in British politics.

But under cover of war, the British government is engaged in a series of attacks on working people, their rights and their living standards. These attacks must not go unanswered.

In short succession we had the King’s Speech which was notable for ditching the means to meet commitments on net zero. There were also threats to widen minimum service level agreements, with the aim of making public-sector strikes almost impossible.

This was then followed by an Autumn Statement that combines a pre-election bribe with even more austerity. And when the commentators and the public saw through the Chancellor’s spin, the Tories returned to their permanent campaign against migrants and migration. This is nothing more than whipping up racism as a distraction from the terrible effects of the Tories’ own policies.

It is well-known that the rolling set of strike waves in this country have largely taken place in the public sector. This is both because the public sector is more unionised, but also because government picked a fight with public-sector and other workers (such as rail and post) to try to set a general “going rate” for pay rises below inflation. 

Ministers hoped this would benefit private-sector employers too, who were struggling to keep wages down against the market forces of rising prices and labour shortages. The government has been unable to completely defeat those unions. 

So now, in measures that breach long-standing human rights and for which they have no mandate, government is effectively attempting to outlaw strikes in the public sector. There are even farcical proposals, calling on unions in dispute to encourage their members to break strikes. 

Many unions and the TUC are justifiably up in arms over these proposals. Labour should commit to repealing any such measures in the first acts of a Labour government. There should be no consideration of “walking into a Tory trap.” These seem to be the latest buzzwords to justify not opposing reactionary Tory policies. In this case, they are a complete nonsense, especially considering how popular the strikes have been with the general public.

The ditching of any commitment on net zero is no less reprehensible. It amounts to this government abandoning the environment, the good jobs to be created in a just transition and a real commitment to lower household energy bills just to please its financial backers in the fossil fuel industries.

The following Autumn Statement was billed by Jeremy Hunt as a statement for growth. The governor of the Bank of England was not fooled by the labelling, saying this is the worst outlook for the British economy he has ever seen.

It was a statement of intent for further vicious austerity. The Office for Budget Responsibility warned that the tax giveaway measures would lead to cuts in departmental spending of just over £19 billion per year, almost exactly equal to the two key tax giveaways in the run-up to the next election.

Those tax giveaways were fairly equally shared between a cut in employees’ National Insurance, which mainly benefits those on well above-average salaries, and tax cuts for big business to boost investment.

However, the benefits of this policy are all in the Treasury economic model of the economy. There is no evidence that it will boost investment, especially when government, which is by far the single largest investor in the economy, is slashing its own investment, as is the case now.

Therefore, tax giveaways that benefit mainly big business and the higher paid are going to be funded by cutting public services even further, which is the long-term theme of the austerity policy. 

Even worse, there was a quite nasty and gratuitous attack on benefits for the sick or disabled. This is not really designed to save money at all, as the Treasury’s own documentation shows. Instead, it is a platform for the Tories to campaign against the “scroungers and shirkers,” which we now know is how Boris Johnson referred to any sick worker.

This ought to be easy for Labour to deal with. Yet instead the real opposition to Hunt’s plans came from the forecasters and analysts. The Labour front bench has in effect no public, substantive criticism of the Autumn Statement, with more nonsense that actively opposing it was another “Tory trap.”

In the event the public saw through the government’s spin. There was no poll boost, just lots of criticism of the government.

Their next move was as predictable as it was despicable. Once again, they returned to bashing migration and migrants, which is always an attempt to whip up racism. These attacks seem disparate, but in truth they are all intricately connected.

The government’s economic policy has failed. Next year will be the 14th year of austerity. The level of government debt has not come down and we now face an eye-watering debt interest payments. Speculators are laughing all the way to the bank while living standards are in an unprecedented freefall. 

Yet the government’s answer is to double down on a failed economic strategy. This is the character of austerity, which means workers and the poor pay for a crisis they did not cause.  

It seems incredible, but unavoidably clear that this is now the new cross-party policy consensus, based on bogus claims that ever more subsidies to business and deregulation will rescue the economy.

We know this is not true because it has been tried before and failed. Meanwhile public services will be decimated once more and living standards will fall. The plan is that resistance will be blocked by curbs on the rights of workers and unions.

This is also where racism plays a vital part in the overall political strategy of the supporters of austerity. They have literally nothing to offer voters except more of the same. Whipping up racism, to deflect criticism and act as a distraction is their sole alternative, possibly supplemented by attacks on those who need benefits.

Rather than go along with any of this, it is in the fundamental interests of the entire labour movement to oppose this entire agenda in every aspect.
 
Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.