Labour's "Tough choices"

Rachel Reeves is banging on about "tough choices" again, but we all know who those tough choices are going to fall on.

Labour’s austerity-obsessed shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has been banging on about needing to make "tough choices" again, and justifying it by saying the economy is apparently in a worse state for any incoming government since 1945. But we all know what politicians mean when they invoke the spectre of "tough choices".

They mean they’re going to choose to do things that make life tougher for the vast majority of ordinary people, while avoiding choices that make it tougher for the tiny mega-rich minority to keep up their exploitation, profiteering, and wealth-stashing.

We know this for a fact because Starmer’s shockingly right-wing Labour leadership have already been laying out their policy positions.

⚪ They’re not going to scrap the Tories’ despicable eugenicist two-child policy that’s driving hundreds of thousands of families into destitution.

⚪ They’re going to continue the Tories’ ruinous agenda of economically illiterate austerity penny-pinching, rather than kick-starting the economy investing in the drivers of future economic prosperity.

⚪ They’re vehemently opposed to rent controls to limit the idle profiteering of the buy-to-let slumlord brigade.

⚪ They’re not going to raise taxes on the mega-rich, cap bankers’ bonuses, or make life a tiny bit fairer by equalising taxes on money that’s actually earned (Income) and money that’s not (Capital Gains).

⚪ They’ve not come up with anything to repatriate any of the estimated £570 billion in wealth stashed overseas by the greedy rich, or bring in controls to prevent this kind of obscene wealth-hoarding.

⚪ They’re not going to get rid of Britain’s debilitating infestation of profiteering private companies and foreign governments feeding off our crucial infrastructure and public services, they’re actually going to make things worse by carving open the NHS for the benefit of economic parasites.

⚪ They’ve got no plans to cut off subsidies and tax breaks to exploitative companies that pay their workers poverty wages, leaving horrifying numbers of full-time workers dependent on public funds (social security) and charity (food banks) to make up the shortfall.

⚪ They’ve gleefully binned their pledge to scrap the obscene university tuition debts that force students into paying rip-off inflation-busting "Aspiration Taxes" for the "crime" of wanting to improve their knowledge and skills.

⚪ They’re not going to replace the Tories’ shambolic and unfair Universal Credit and Work Capacity Assessment regimes with a social security system that actually protects people who need help, rather than systematically abusing and humiliating them.

⚪ They’re not going to ban the use of dodgy overseas shell companies to buy up British property, and neither are they going to legislate to compel banks to offer the most favourable mortgage rates to buyers of single family homes, rather than slumlords and speculators.

⚪ They’ve repeatedly demonstrated their hostility to workers who want inflation-matched pay rises.

You only have to look at the massive drop in Labour Party revenues from ordinary people (via membership fees, trade union subs, and small donations), and the influx of huge donations from rich influence-buyers to see why Labour is now set on serving the interests of the mega-rich minority above the interests of the ordinary majority.

And perhaps the most infuriating thing about it is Reeves invocation of 1945 to justify her dreadful "more of the same" agenda.

Anyone who knows their Labour Party history understands that the incoming Attlee government inherited a war-shattered economy and an unprecedented mountain of debt, but worked wonders by investing in the economy, nationalising services and core industries, founding the NHS, bolstering the social security system, and introducing Legal Aid to give ordinary people access to the justice system.

And the evidence is absolutely clear that this investment worked, because instead of tripling the national debt like the Tories have through the austerity years, Attlee’s transformative post-war government dramatically reduced the national debt as a percentage of GDP.

It’s an obscene bastardisation of Labour Party history to invoke 1945 to explain why Labour is going to refuse to invest in Britain and its people and continue with "more of the same" toxic austerity rubbish that stagnated the economy and dramatically increased poverty and inequality in the first place.