For all the media fanfare surrounding Gordon Brown's announcement of the 6 May general election, its outcome is just as much a foregone conclusion as its date was an open secret.
Whichever party gets into office, the working class will be faced with more austerity measures from the government and more attacks on jobs and wages from the bosses - while the same capitalists whose greed caused the present crisis will be invited by politicians to carry on milking public funds in order to boost their profits on our backs.
Similar packaging, same content
In this period before the election, while they still need to woo our votes, politicians have not even bothered to conceal their austerity agenda. So it is not hard to imagine what their actual policies will be like once they no longer need our votes, after election day.
Last month's budget already contained a barrage of attacks against the working class. Of course, Darling was careful to avoid spelling out what his £22bn cuts in public spending would really involve - using instead, innocuous-sounding words, such as "efficiencies" and "savings".
But the devil is in the detail. The fact is that these cuts will primarily affect health, local government and education. And what they will inevitably mean is tens of thousands of job cuts - in addition to those already cut over the past year - and, therefore, cuts in services which the wealthy can do without, but which are vital for the vast majority of the population.
The TV "debate" between Darling and his opposite numbers from the other 2 main parties, exposed how little difference there is between them. They had no disagreement whatsoever over the "need" to cut public sector jobs and services. Since government must fill the black hole created by the bank bail-out, they consider it perfectly "normal" that the working class, which has already paid for the banks' profiteering in so many ways, should pay yet more, through these cuts!
Even the so-called "controversy" over the issue of the 1% increase in NI contributions is nothing but a demagogic ploy, on both sides. Of course, it would be different if Labour proposed to increase the funding of welfare provision by the wealthy - not just by increasing employers' NI contributions, but also by taxing all profits and dividends. But this is not what Labour plans. They won't touch company profits nor financial gains, but they want us, workers, to "share" the burden by increasing our contributions - as if we had not already paid far more than our share! The only point on which the Tories differ, is that, like the CBI, they would not touch employers' contributions at all!
Accounts still to settle
There are no differences either, between the main parties over yesterday's plundering of public funds to bail out the banks, nor over the helping hand they plan to extend to big business tomorrow.
The noises they made about reforming the finance industry, "cutting down to size" bankers' bonuses, etc.., have long been forgotten by all politicians. Today, a flurry of cow-boy banks (Branson, Tesco, Cahoot, Smile, Sainsbury, etc..) is emerging out of the chaos, promising fat gains on the same "good old" risky basis. Company bonuses are exploding again and dividends are rising. Market operators, including the large British banks (state-owned or not), make rich pickings by betting billions on the bankruptcy of the least solid countries - today, Ireland and Greece, tomorrow, maybe, Britain!
The same crisis factors are being reproduced today by the same capitalists who precipitated yesterday's catastrophe. And far from proposing measures to counter their devastating greed, all politicians fall over themselves to attract their favours, promote fairy tales about their "vital role in creating jobs" (when bosses are actually cutting jobs left, right and centre) and generally justify yet more handouts to the capitalist class.
So, in the coming election, the small capitalist layer which parasitises our labour, will be, once again, over-represented by all of the main parties. However, we, the working class majority which produces all the wealth, will have no voice whatsoever. At least, not in the ballot box.
But we have other ways to make ourselves heard, whatever the outcome of this election, in our workplaces and in the streets. The bosses' crisis has already done too much damage for us to allow them to get away with it. Bringing them to account in the coming period, does not depend on this election. But it does depend on our determination to make them pay for a crisis for which they bear every responsibility.