The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
Week commencing 30th October 2026
The Weekly paper of the New Communist Party of Britain
A MEDIOCRE Budget. A few crumbs for the poor. A few pennies more on the minimum wage. Scrapping import taxes on token products like gherkins and marmalade. Ten billion pounds-worth of economic and military support for the puppet regime in Ukraine. Is this what the Burnham bounce is all about?
Sure – no one’s going to complain about scrap ping standing charges for gas or the £100 rebate to help those on lower council tax bands cope with the cost of heating. The removal of standing charges from household gas bills and the extension of the cut in VAT to July 2027 was welcome news but at the end of the day it will barely off set the energy price hikes that we can expect this winter as the crisis in the Persian Gulf continues with no perceivable end in sight.
Some say we should be thankful for small mercies. We got nothing out of Starmer. And it would be much worse under the Tories or the Faragists. All indeed true. But it’s still crumbs from the rich man’s table and Burnham needs to do much, much more if he wants to see Labour stay in power at the next election.
That will only happen if there’s mass pressure from the labour movement to build the fight-back to make the rich pay for the crisis of their own creation. Yes, the union bureaucrats speak out now and then against austerity but they’re never going to lead a mass movement for real change unless they’re forced to by the rank-and-file. They talk about pay scales and minimum wages but the only way to get social justice on the pay front is to abolish all the repressive anti-union laws imposed on the labour movement since 1979 and restore the free collective bargaining we once enjoyed in the 1970s.
They talk about public control – but we must campaign for public ownership – the renationalisation of the entire public sector Britain once had in the post-war era – so that we can maintain and expand the health service and the benefits system and restore the welfare state.
They even talk about rebuilding the country’s manufacturing base – a laudable aim but an immense task that can only be undertaken through central planning and massive state intervention. But, of course it can be done in a country as wealthy as the United Kingdom.
As for costs – well the rich can pay. They can afford it. They’ve had plenty of tax breaks since 1979. Restoring tax rates to the levels set in the 1970s would be a start...