Osborne announces four more years of austerity: SNP and Labour must refuse to make Tory cuts

The threat of a mass revolt against the Tory tax credits robbery has forced George Osborne into a major U-turn. While the cut in tax credits will not go ahead immediately, the Tories still plan to rob low-paid workers of billions as the credits are phased out and replaced with Universal Credit. Indeed the target of cutting £12 billion from the welfare budget by 2020 remains on the table.

However, this weak Tory government, elected with only 24% of the population – have been pushed back and this should give confidence to trade unionists, anti-austerity campaigners and working-class people generally. It proves that the threat of mass opposition can force them into a retreat. The huge 98% strike vote among Junior Doctors in England is another example, which has forced Jeremy Hunt to the table for talks over their contracts.

The mouthpiece of the capitalist class in Britain warned Osborne that his retreat over tax credits could embolden anti-austerity opposition. “This was a climbdown in broad daylight…the message he may have just sent to opponents of cuts: if you push us hard enough, we will relent…it will encourage every sectional public-sector interest group to try its luck”

The trade union movement should begin a mass mobilisation against the cuts, including preparing urgent coordinated strike action to force the Tories to retreat even further.

Osborne’s concessions do not represent the end or even a slowing down of the cuts agenda. Indeed his spending plan involves driving public spending down to 36.5% of GDP, down from 45% in 2010 when the Tories came to power. Columnist Iain MacWhirter writing in the Herald newspaper described this: “the most severe retrenchment in public spending since the Second World War.”

There has been no austerity for the budget for war . £178 billion will be spent on the UK’s military budget. The Tories want to launch a bombing campaign in Syria costing hundreds of millions more. The cost of Trident gets higher by the month and £4 billion was found in the days following the horrific Paris attacks for the security state in Britain.

In contrast, for public services in Scotland, as well as England, Wales and Northern Ireland, the onslaught will continue. A planned £1.3 billion will be axed from the Scottish Government budget by 2020, a 6% cut. The next two years alone will see £1 billion slashed from local government jobs and services in Scotland and this was before the new round of cuts were announced.

The Labour local government finance spokesperson commented: “We are talking of severe cuts in vital jobs and services and job losses…there are no soft targets left.” There is no longer any hiding place for SNP and Labour politicians. They are to be the main delivery mechanism for Tory cuts in Scotland. They can and must defy austerity, refuse to implement the cuts and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the workers and communities whose lives will be devastated if they do not fight.

Scottish budget

Over the next weeks the SNP will prepare a budget for Scotland. Scottish councils are already drawing up plans for unprecedented cuts. A line must be drawn and not a penny more of Tory austerity should be voted through.

Local government trade unions in Glasgow and Dundee are calling for no more cuts and demanding that MSPs and councillors stand up to the Tories. Socialist Party Scotland and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) completely share this approach. By using their powers over borrowing, reserves, and other measures, legal, no cuts budgets could be set by the Scottish Government and councils. If this was linked to a mass campaign to demand a return of the billions stolen from the working class by the Tories, the tide could be turned against the cuts politicians.

Indeed the SNP and Labour – with an anti-austerity leader in Jeremy Corbyn – have a huge public mandate to fight. The 1.6 million who voted Yes in the indyref last year did so as part of a working-class revolt against austerity. The huge electoral surge to the SNP in the general election in May was an expression of the same. They should and must use that mandate to fight. Jeremy Corbyn should be calling on all Labour councillors and MSPs to back a no cuts policy.

If, as seems likely, the Scottish Government draw up a business-as-usual cuts budget they will be betraying those who joined and voted SNP seeking a fighting alternative to the pro-austerity political establishment. Unfortunately, the SNP leadership are committed to capitalism and the inevitable attacks on the working class that this means. Only far-reaching socialist measures – a refusal to make cuts, building a mass movement against cuts and for public ownership of the economy – can end the planned poverty that the capitalists and their politicians want to inflict.

Scottish TUSC will be standing on a 100% anti-austerity and socialist manifesto in May 2016 for the Scottish elections. We are writing to all SNP and Labour candidates calling on them to do the same. At the same time it is vital that the public sector trade unions in Scotland prepare a council of war and draw up plans for sustained and coordinated industrial action, linked to local communities, to defend jobs and public services. Central to this is the need to build a new mass working class party to represent the working-class majority in Scotland.