A perfect storm ahead

There is a global power elite that owe no loyalty to nation states. They owe no loyalty to our health service, our education system or even our industrial heartlands.

They don’t use them and they certainly don’t think they need to pay their taxes for society to benefit.  It’s a ruling class out with the power elites in Downing Street, Whitehall and Westminster who do their bidding to protect their financial interests.

Publication of the Panama Papers that showed how the wealthy can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes has sent the Prime Minister and his government into a tail spin.

At first No 10 insisted Cameron’s tax affairs were a private matter. Then as each day passed information dribbled out until finally the pressure was such that he had to go to the House to make a statement in a last throw of the dice to try and close the story down.

In won’t work.  There may well be a short term rallying in his support but the Panama Papers are about more than Cameron’s tax. There is a perfect storm ahead.
 

Angry

As Jeremy Corbyn said in his response the government benches have no idea how angry people are at the sheer injustice of one rule for the super-rich and another for the rest.

“For six years we have had crushing austerity, families lining up at food banks and disabled people having cuts in benefits.  This could have been avoided if our country hadn’t been ripped off by the super-rich.”

Imagine what sort of society we could be living in if taxes had been paid for the good of society and we hadn’t as Jeremy said been ‘ripped off by the super-rich’.

We are days away from important elections in London, Wales, Scotland and local authorities and a few weeks from the European Union Referendum.
Jeremy Corbyn since his election as leader has been undermined by those MPs who couldn’t stand the thought that none of their favoured candidates won.  They couldn’t accept that it was the membership that gave him a landslide victory.

Well this week and Monday’s response (April 11) to the Prime Minister should have demonstrated that they put aside their plotting and scheming and start pulling together behind the leadership.

Despite having to operate in a malign atmosphere the Labour leadership had already scored hits.

Osborne’s Budget began to unravel from the moment he sat down.  His ditching of his own plan to abolish Personal Independent Payment (Pips) was the swiftest ever.  Campaigns run by disability rights groups paid off so too did the response to the budget by Jeremy Corbyn, one of the best I’ve seen, made possible by the clear economic position of his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell.

That was not enough however for one Labour MP who aimed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory when he spitefully claimed that the Labour leadership hadn’t had an impact on Osborne’s U-turn.

 
Perhaps he had forgotten that during John Major’s premiership the Labour leadership, along with the Eurosceptic whip-less wonders, defeated the government on a plan to increase VAT from 8 per cent to 17.5 on fuel and power.   Back then Labour MPs put aside any political differences and shared in the success hungry for election victory.

Trust

Europe is still the Tories fault line.  David Cameron already weakened by his appeasement to his euro-sceptic back-benchers demanding an in/out referendum may well have run out of political capital and the trust that he needs for Remain to win.

While there are some on the left who want out the majority of those in the Labour Movement support staying within the EU.  That is not a vote for the status quo as Len McCluskey wrote previously in Tribune: “I will not be voting for David Cameron’s renegotiation package – a deal designed to protect the financial interests in the City of London which control the Conservative party and to pander to anti-migrant and anti-welfare sentiment.”

Euro-scepticism has become a poison spreading through swathes of the public.  Yet even when the EU wanted to introduce tariffs on Chinese steel they were rebuffed by the government. Laissez-faire capitalism trumped protection of Britain’s steel industry.

After Iain Duncan Smith resigned Jeremy was condemned for not going for him during his response to the Prime Minister from the Despatch Box. Jeremy’s opposition was targeted at the Chancellor.  He was right.
Duncan-Smith had gone.  Cameron is a lame duck premier.  That leaves the Chancellor.

Despite the theatre of Monday’s statement and the publication of the PM’s and the Chancellor’s tax statements their approach to the economy won’t change. There will still be austerity.  There will still be a bid to shrink the state.  And there will still be massive inequality.

This alone should lead the PLP to aim their fire at those who deserve it.  And as for those whose egos get the better of them they should stop masquerading as shadow cabinet members in exile.  Otherwise exile could be permanent.

Views expressed are Joy Johnson’s own. This item first appeared in Tribune, April 15