Related Articles
Link to this page: https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/issue/1051/29400
From The Socialist newspaper, 31 July 2019
New Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson, photo by David Spender/CC (Click to enlarge)
James Ivens, East London Socialist Party
The Liberal Democrats, Britain’s most shopworn and undeservingly smug little bosses’ party, have elected a new leader. Jo Swinson is a management graduate, sworn enemy of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity promise, and former minister in Tory David Cameron’s coalition government.
As an MP, Swinson has eagerly put her hand up for austerity across the public sector. This includes benefit cuts, the pay cap, council cuts, the bedroom tax, raising VAT, hiking train fares, cutting corporate tax, protecting bankers’ bonuses, tripling tuition fees, and abolishing Education Maintenance Allowance.
She has also supported privatisation of Royal Mail, NHS services, schools and forests, and backed fracking and overseas military interventions. As an employment minister, she supported zero-hour contracts and cautioned against meaningful increases to the minimum wage.
At times in the past, the Lib Dems feinted to the left on some issues. They hoped to capture the votes of young people and workers disenchanted with Blairite Labour’s pro-capitalist politics.
Today, the Liberals pin their electoral hopes singly on defending their beloved, neoliberal European Union. They hope that understandable public anxieties about the chaos of the Tories’ exit ‘plans’ will be enough to make up for the vicious anti-worker politics they share with the bosses’ EU.
What it all shows is that Tories, Liberals and the EU are just three cheeks of the same rear end: politics for the super-rich, not the working class. The answer to Swinson, Johnson and the rest is to create a mass party for workers. Booting the Blairites out of Labour and fighting for it to adopt socialist policies would be a great start.
Why not click here to join the Socialist Party, or click here to donate to the Socialist Party.
In The Socialist 31 July 2019:
What we think
Boris, Brexit and British capitalism
CWI refounded with determination and confidence
Special feature
“The longest, darkest days of my life”: fighting Universal Credit
Socialist Party news and analysis
Build a working-class movement to force an election
Labour promises to end council privatisation: councils must do that now!
Tories look in wrong place for climate solutions
Lib Dems: little bosses’ party elects eager pro-austerity leader
Aristocrats are rich after all… and getting richer
International socialist news and analysis
Mass movement topples governor of Puerto Rico
Hong Kong: the struggle for democratic rights escalates
Workplace news and analysis
Lobby the TUC for workers’ action to defeat Johnson
Northern Ireland: Harland and Wolff shipyard workers enter occupation
“Enough is enough”: 20,000 Northern Ireland civil servants strike against pay restraint
Plymouth posties deliver defiant message to bullying bosses
“BEIS: stop pISSing about and give outsourcing the boot!”
Hackney transport strike – blockade foils employers
Sainsbury’s distribution workers’ second 24-hour strike against cuts to sick pay
Nottingham Deliveroo riders strike against unfair algorithm
Bromley library workers strike against running down
Socialist Party reports and campaigns
Enfield: 100% council homes at Meridian Water!
Walthamstow shopping centre fire: people’s plan – not disaster capitalism
Tolpuddle festival 2019: socialist policies to end Tory rule and austerity
Barking: campaigning over housing safety
July climate strikes: link up with the workers’ movement
Ilford: parents and teachers unite against school cuts
Boris Johnson ‘coronation’ – demos say: boot him out!
The Socialist Party has moved!
Opinion
The Socialist inbox
Huge workload, low pay and unpaid hours – a day in the life of a teaching assistant
Home
|
Subscribe
| Donate
| Audio | PDF | ebook
