The last leg of the election campaign began last weekend, with the various parties launching their manifestos. With less than four weeks before E-day, it's finally dawned on them that they have to offer voters something to vote for, rather than just someone to vote against.
So, the main parties are now throwing "shopping lists" of promises at the electorate. All of a sudden they've realised that the working class makes up the majority and they're all branding themselves "the party of working people" - including Cameron's Eton boys' club!
As if whatever they might say or do, could make us forget their record in office - whether over the past five years for the ConDems, or during the previous 14 years of Labour governments. No, the working class doesn't have such a short memory!
Poisonous smoke and mirrors
In fact, some of their headline "promises" conceal traps into which the working class cannot afford to fall. For instance, if implemented, Cameron's pledge to extend Thatcher's "Right-to-Buy" scheme to housing associations and force councils to sell a larger share of their properties, will only increase the present catastrophic shortage of affordable homes for working class households to rent.
The real beneficiaries of this plan won't be working class tenants, but mortgage lenders, who will be offered a whole new slice of business to boost their already huge profits, and private landlords, who will be able to blackmail even longer queues of prospective tenants into paying even more extortionate rents! Ultimately, the large rebates promised by Cameron to those opting for the "Right-to-Buy" scheme, will only be disguised subsidies to capitalists - whether bankers or landlords - just as his "Help-to-Buy" scheme was a disguised subsidy to big bankers and builders.
Of course, what really exposes Cameron's lie when he claims to represent working people's interests, is his pledge to cut social security spending by £12bn by 2020, while, at the same time, promising to the bosses that they will no longer have to pay their share of NI contributions for workers under 21. In other words, the poorest and most vulnerable will pay, to boost the bosses' profits! So much for the "working people's party"!
But then, what does Labour have to offer on these issues? On the housing crisis, nothing - no pledge to cap private rents nor to launch the large-scale programme of public housing which would be necessary to meet the needs of the 4m currently on housing waiting lists. On welfare, nothing either - Labour has already said it will only repeal the bedroom tax, but that it won't reverse the other ConDem welfare cuts! And Miliband's insistence on "fiscal responsibility" is just another way of saying to the capitalist class that Labour will carry on with the ConDem agenda of making the working class pay for the crisis.
We need real change
And what about the more immediate issues affecting large sections of the working class, such as the minimum wage or under-employment? Both parties pledge to address these issues, but neither is willing to really do anything about them, because this would mean denting the profits of their capitalist masters - the one thing they will never do!
And this is why the working class cannot expect anything from the coming election. Whichever way we vote and whoever gets into Downing Street after May 7th, the men in government will still be there to serve the interests of the capitalist class - which means that they will still be there to make the working class pay for the capitalist crisis. Because for all Osborne's boasting about a recovery, the crisis has not gone away.
But after 8 years during which the bosses have got into the habit of having a free ride on our backs, by slashing our jobs and driving our wages and conditions down, we need real change. Not only do we need to stop the capitalists' offensive against the working class, but we need to start regaining some of the ground lost over these years.
We won't achieve that with a ballot paper. Parliamentary "democracy" is only a game of musical chairs between representatives of the capitalist class: faces can change in government, but the class interests they represent do not. This is a system designed for, and run by, the capitalist class, to defend its own interests.
So, if we, workers, want to see the real change we need, we will have to take matters into our own hands after May 7th. Lest anyone forget, nothing would work without our labour. It is high time we used our collective strength to remind the capitalists that this society is ours, not theirs!