So Rishi Sunak is “straining every sinew” to deliver his 5 pledges? Sadly, it’s unlikely that all that straining is going to cause him to snap - not yet, anyway. And not even after he sees the results of this week’s 3 parliamentary by-elections.
Everyone knows that the Tories will do badly. Especially in Johnson’s seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, where the party has the slimmest of margins.
But so what? It will change nothing. Politicians just recycle themselves - while the 2 main parties alternate in power, in the pretence that “democracy works”: new boss just like the old boss, while today “Rome burns”, literally.
Starmer confirms this every time he opens his mouth. When (if) he wins the general election next time round, he’ll “act responsibly”. He won’t rock the boat and promises not to reintroduce anti-poverty measures like benefit for a second child.
Meanwhile, the critical situation in the world gets worse as each day passes. There is news of burning temperatures across the Mediterranean and the USA’s southern states - 52 degrees and fires everywhere. This in itself should be enough to expose the utter idiocy of sustaining this capitalist, profit-first system which operates throughout this poor, overheated globe, which we’re all obliged to live on!
The looming threat of climate change was already identified in the 1970s. If it wasn’t for the “cost” to the corporations and the rich layer of parasites who feed off their dividends - or the political establishment which they designed in order to protect their interests above all - humanity would not be trapped in this catastrophe today.
Profit first, humanity last
Yet instead of society becoming more rational and sane as time passes, it becomes even more crazy. Who would have thought that any government anywhere, let alone here in Britain, would propose to deport asylum seekers by plane to a distant African country like Rwanda, to be “cared for” by a notoriously murderous regime?
In fact it sounded like a joke (albeit in bad taste) when it first came out Priti Patel’s mouth, two years ago. And now not just Braverman, but also the Tory Lords, suitably packed into their upper chamber, are telling us that the “Illegal Migration Bill” is “what the British people want”!
They obviously didn’t watch “Question Time” two weeks ago, when not one member of the majority conservative audience put up a hand when Fiona Bruce asked who was in favour of the Rwanda plan.
This Bill has now ping-ponged back from the Lords to the Commons to be voted into law, cheers to the large Tory majority which still remains, despite the multiple resignations and expulsions... and lost seats.
They must pay!
However, even when the politicians shoot themselves and the bosses in the foot - it’s the working class which gets full of bullet holes, metaphorically speaking, of course! But there are very real bullets killing resistance fighters and civilians alike, in Palestine, Myanmar, Sudan and the Horn of Africa - and not a word is said about this by Sunak et al, who happily shake hands with some of the perpetrators.
For now, it’s only the Ukraine war which the government wants to mention: it serves its political and economic purpose. And so its policy towards the refugees it has helped to create, is shaped accordingly: flee from Africa, Asia, or the Middle East and you’ll land up on the Bibby Stockholm barge to be branded for deportation; but if Ukrainian, you may even be welcomed into an MP’s home.
Last, but not least, when it comes to crazy and irrational behaviour, is the government-employer’s total silence over the ongoing strikes over pay, among railway workers and the just-ended, but not resolved, junior doctor’s strike - the longest in the NHS’s 75-year history. But even that has failed to bring these lunatic rulers down to earth!
Apparently they suffer from the same illusion which small children have - “ignore them and they might go away”. In this case it’s not just childish, but craven, given that it’s these very workers who provide the public with vital services - and in the doctors’ case, who are the key to Sunak meeting his fourth pledge, “to cut NHS waiting lists”...
This madness pandemic certainly needs an urgent cure - whether the madness of politicians themselves, or the madness of the profiteers they represent and the deadly destruction they preside over.
For once they need to feel the combined force of striking workers on the ground, demanding change, “or else”! And that’s why the fight cannot be left to doctors or railway workers on their own. Nor can it remain just a question of a pay rise. Because it’s the whole system which has to be overturned. And that is the task of all of us - the working class as a whole.