Fall from grace of yellow Tories

How far the Lib Dems have sunk is debatable. Some say that they were pretty low on the food chain even before their distasteful deal with the Tories for a seat or two at the big boys' table. But the distance of their fall is measured in the fact that the yellow-blue coalition held its first Cabinet meeting yesterday, but Deputy Prime Minister and groveller-in-chief Nick Clegg is only going to his members to seek approval of the deal on Sunday. Tough luck if you happen to be a member whose last possible ambition was to climb into bed with the Tories, but that's the way it goes with these most undemocratic of democrats. Chairman of the party's federal conference committee Duncan Brack even had the brass neck to claim that, "in holding this special conference, we are demonstrating again that we are a democratic party which listens to and trusts its members." Stable doors and horses, Mr Brack. No harm in getting used to the doublethink that the Lib Dems have to keep working on if they are to keep even a vestige of self-respect, one supposes, but Mr Brack really ought not to be wasting the two-faced flannel on his own members. They can see as easily as him which way the wind's blowing. It remains to be seen if they have any more spine than their parliamentary colleagues demonstrated. And the wind's blowing in a very chilly direction as far as anyone who thought that the Lib Dems had any trace of progressive credentials is concerned.

Gone is the opposition to any "like-for-like" Trident replacement. In its stead is a commitment to the continuation of Britain's nuclear weapons status, with just the sop that Trident replacement will be judged on value for money. No matter how much the posh chaps at the top wriggle and writhe, that certainly wasn't the rank-and-file Lib Dem understanding of the position.  As far as civil liberties are concerned, ID cards are certainly going and good riddance to them, but new blue-yellow Home Secretary Theresa May's first utterance was "more police on the street and less paperwork for them to fill in." Suggestions of the old "sus" laws spring immediately to mind, with all that implies for black youth in the inner cities. In the new Cabinet, the cracks have started appearing even before the first week has ended. New Business Secretary and Lib Dem economics guru Vince Cable has taken a public slapping down by George Osborne. No sooner had rumours started circulating in the City that Mr Cable was to take responsibility for the reform of Britain's banks than the phone calls were made and Mr Osborne leaped in to quash the rumours. The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills had said that Mr Cable would jointly chair a Cabinet committee which is to determine the shape of the UK banking industry.

But Mr Osborne put an end to all that nonsense, briskly stating that the Treasury was going to remain in charge of banking policy and the financial services sector and that he would be chairing that key committee. That was a short old rise to glory, wasn't it Vince? To cap it all came the coalition's so-called accord on National Insurance. The deal worked out put paid to any pretensions that the Lib Dems might have had to positive policies. Under it, the bosses won't face Labour's proposed rise in National Insurance contributions, but the workers will. Progressive, it ain't. And it's all put into perspective by the suggestion that the coalition will legislate to raise the threshold for a successful no-confidence vote in Parliament from the traditional 50 per cent-plus-one level to a new 55 per cent mark. Not a lot of trust there between the so-called happy partners, it would appear. It's not difficult to discredit this lot. In fact it's rather like shooting fish in a barrel. But it remains to be seen if Labour can ditch its new Labour losers and reform itself into a fighting progressive force to oppose a new generation of warmongering, cutback-obsessed profiteers, this time outside their own ranks. We live in hope. So it would appear that the people have spoken and the Tories and Lib Dems have not listened to a single word they said - as is usual. For it is a completely and absolutely reactionary government that now holds the reins of power. The Lib Dems, who made such a play of being neither Tory nor Labour, but something completely different, have shed their protective coloration and come out in the open for what they are, at least in their national leadership, just plain old closet Tories.

The tens of thousands of people who voted Lib Dem in this, and indeed in many previous elections, just to keep the Tories out, have been discarded and their views ignored by a Lib Dem leadership which, sniffing at a couple of seats at the top table, jettisoned everything that they claimed to believe in to get a taste of it. And in country constituencies, many of which have seen resounding battles between Liberals and Tories and in which the Labour Party regularly comes a poor third, what choice now faces the Lib Dem voter? The answer is, precious little. They can now vote for the yellow Tory or the blue Tory and that isn't going to please them in the slightest. And what of the thousands who voted Lib Dem because that party's policy on Trident was better than anything else on offer? That particular policy hasn't been exactly prominent in the posh chaps coalition's utterances so far and merely including it in a spending review will convince no-one. Then there's Europe. Granted that Tory scepticism on Europe wasn't for the best of motives, how will William Hague sit with the Europhiles in the Lib Dem fold? Again the answer is brief. Not very well. All in all, it would seem that the Lib Dems have just committed a very public act of hara-kiri in the pursuit of a few seats in the second rank of a Tory government. Not that that need concern us very much.

They were always the acceptable face of Toryism anyway, and their pronounced anti-trade unionism will probably be a good fit with the Tories as they nestle into their new blue-yellow brotherhood. And brotherhood it most definitely is. The lack of little except white men in suits - with the exception of Theresa May, whose policies seem to be more anti-women than pro - is the most evident thing about the Cabinet line-up so far. So what does this mean for Labour? Well what it should mean is that the battle for the centre ground, which was always new Labour's flagship strategy, has failed dismally and that should mean the unmourned end of the dismal new Labour project. It should mean a return to policies to benefit working people and an end to the nonsense about being the "natural party of business" and all the class-collaborationist drivel that was spouted during the Blair-Brown era. But the new Labour clique don't give up that easily and there are already signs that they are regrouping and preparing to put up yet another set of candidates for the vacant leadership slot who will dance to the City's tune whenever the bell rings. This quite simply cannot be allowed to happen. With the new unity of declared and previously undeclared Tories that this improbable coalition represents, it would be unthinkable to to try to approach Parliament with anything other than a progressive platform of policies clearly differentiating Labour from the Libservatives.

New Labour has failed, even in its own limited terms, and it is time for the trade unions and the other organisations of the working class to flex their underused muscles and warn that only a radical and progressive opposition will succeed in toppling this government. It's time for Labour to remember its roots, to rebuild its relationship with the labour movement and to abandon the pale impersonation of a government for suburbia that it has adopted for so long. There is a huge fight on cuts and jobs coming and it has to be won. And if Labour hasn't the belly for that fight, it will be fought without, or in spite of, them.

Election egg on all faces

There was a great deal of egg on a few faces on Friday and it was on the faces of the three self-satisfied party leaders who so oleaginously greased their way across our TV screens over the last week or two in staged and rigged "debates" that were nothing of the sort. Tory toff David Cameron had the egg white all over his face after the electorate refused to back his party for a parliamentary majority even standing against Labour's attempt for a rare and difficult fourth term. No matter what gloss he tries to put upon it, his masters in the shires and the boardrooms will not be best pleased. He couldn't even beat a sitting government in the middle of a financial crisis. And the yolk was on media-manufactured Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg, whose "Clegg bounce" turned out to be nothing more than press hysteria motivated by a desire to do anything possible to block Labour survival and resulted in a reduced number of seats for his party. New Labour's Gordon Brown took the rest of the oeuf. His walking-on-eggshells attempt to be all things to all voters backfired on him hopelessly and he has found himself clinging to power by his disintegrating fingernails. The message that came across was loud and clear for anyone with the ears to hear it. There was so little difference between the "nice-party" Tories, the business-friendly new Labour and the "I-don't-know-quite-where-I-stand" Lib Dems that voters ended up with no clear motive for supporting any one of them. That message was underlined by the votes for the few Labour candidates who have had the courage and the pride to stand up and be counted as socialists.

Their votes ran hard against the national trend and increased. In Hayes and Harlington, John McDonnell polled 23,377 votes as against 19,009 in 2005. In Islington North, Jeremy Corbyn took his vote to 24,276 from 16,118 in 2005 and, in Luton North, Kelvin Hopkins lifted his vote from 19,062 to 21,192 in 2010. In Hackney and Stoke Newington, Diane Abbott has had a belting result, with a rise from 14,268 to 25,500. Progressive activity against the fascists also helped the Labour vote. In Barking, where anti-fascists have fought hard and long, Margaret Hodge's vote soared from 13,826 in 2005 to a spanking 24,628 in 2010, while the disgusting Nick Griffin foundered dismally. The Tories are banging on about their "right" to attempt to form the next government, while the pathetic Nick Clegg bleats on about their "right" as the party with the most seats to try to do so. Of course, no such right exists. Constitutionally, the initiative rests with the incumbent Prime Minister, in this case Mr Brown. But where grabbing power is concerned, the constitutional arrangements that exist can go hang as far as the Tories care. Mr Cameron is already manoeuvring to try and talk the Lib Dems into a coalition, although without proportional representation on offer, it would be an absolutely unprincipled and opportunist Lib Dem leader who went for the deal - so it might happen. Labour, on the other hand, has fewer objections to PR and a deal is possible there, if Mr Brown can overcome his reluctance to offer more than a referendum, which has not met Lib Dem expectations in the past.

There could even be progressive benefits to be found on a deal on PR, provided a suitable system could be agreed, so it is tempting to watch and hope that an accommodation can be agreed that provides for an anti-Tory alliance of some form. Because the overwhelming priority is to keep the Tories out of office and keep their avaricious hands off the public sector. But we must keep this in mind. The biggest loser in this election has not been a party, but a poisonous clique. New Labour is dead and it just remains to accord it a suitable burial. Then we can set about building a working-class force that will bury the Tories that Mr Brown has been so signally unable to defeat with his pallid and bloodless apology for a socialist platform.

A better democratic alternative

What could be done with £18.9 million? It could help fund a local hospital or school. But that figure is the limit on political parties for national spending in this general election. Cameron, Clegg or Brown's face on billboards, with a ridiculous message, are funded from the £18.9 million. And this figure is before the individual constituencies spend their money on their candidates. A British general election is nowhere near as expensive - yet - as in America, where a billion dollar election took place in 2008. But all three big parties have tried to get donations from companies. When Blair became leader and later prime minister, New Labour got millions from big business. However, the capitalists no longer believe that discredited New Labour can carry out the size of cuts to services and living standards that they require to make ordinary people pay for their crisis. And although Alan Sugar gave £400,000 recently, most big business funding to New Labour has dried up. The capitalists' hopes that the Tories will be elected were shown by Cameron's party getting the lion's share of donations in the week ending 13 April. They received nearly £1.5 million in a week from just 33 individual 'gifts'! They have also had millions of pounds in recent years from self-declared 'non-domiciled' Lord Ashcroft to spend in marginal constituencies.

The Liberal Democrats only received £20,000 that week but that was before the media-inspired 'Cleggmania' took hold. Increased donations will probably be reflected in the next figures. However, the Lib Dems have been allowed to keep a donation of £2.4 million from convicted fraudster Michael Brown! With the backing from big business cooling, New Labour has relied more on the trade unions to fund their campaign. The government has given workers very little in exchange over 13 years and trade unions have an even more restricted right to strike than in 1997. Yet still the trade unions fund this pro-capitalist party. Recently, the building workers' union Ucatt gave £371,000 and shop workers' union Usdaw donated £266,000 of their members' money. Unite has donated £11 million to Labour since the merged union was founded in 2007. Likewise Unison has given Labour around £1.5 million each year. Socialists do not believe trade unions should be non-political but they should donate money to parties representing their interests. New Labour does not do that. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) has received donations from the RMT transport union but what effect could it have if trade unions funded genuine workers' candidates with millions of pounds? Trade unions must stop funding New Labour and put their resources into building a fighting alternative for workers.

Snog, marry, avoid election?

Just when you thought no-one could do any more damage to politics than politicians themselves, up steps the press. We are just days away from a general election in arguably the most critical decade in human history. So, what towering issue has the forensic scrutiny of the press homed in on? "Well, Mr Clegg, if push came to shove, who would you get into bed with?" I understand that there are over 30 permutations of what a (well) hung parliament might look like. Every press conference is dominated by questions about which position, in this political Kama Sutra, Nick Clegg is most drawn to for his next conquest. Does he prefer the cuddly self-inflatable Cameron or a bit of grumpy Brown bondage? I can't decide whether to weep, laugh or scream. We have passed the point at which serious climate damage can be avoided. What we do in the next five years will determine whether we manage our way through climate crises or slide inexorably towards climate chaos. To avoid global temperature rises of more than 2°C, annual carbon emissions have to peak by 2013 and reduce by at least 3 per cent a year thereafter. Britain's current reduction rate is 1 per cent. Even for climate sceptics, the alarm bells are ringing. Shell's 2009 annual report quietly states: "By 2015, growth in the production of easily accessible oil and gas will not match the projected rate of demand growth." Whether we face a single-dip or double-dip recession, there is an energy price spiral waiting at the end of it.

Peak oil will kick in at the same time that peak phosphate, peak soil and peak water do too. Energy security, food security, water and population migration will dominate the big picture politics of the next five years. Yet the press cannot get beyond asking Brown/Cameron/Clegg whose bum looks biggest in this picture. In all the kerfuffle about the volcanic disruption of air travel, the most important point was the least remarked on - Britain has become dependent on food imports to an extent that is as ludicrous as it is insecure. We store food in the air. Sixty-five per cent of the apples that we eat are flown in, along with 80 per cent of our apple juice, and all because we were stupid enough to tell British farmers to rip up their orchards because food was cheaper elsewhere. The volcano also brought about a mini-crisis in carnations (and roses and green beans) which could not be flown out of warehouses in Nairobi to adorn Britain's tables. No-one pointed out that this huge act of water sequestration from South to North goes on throughout a drought that leaves Kenyan tribes killing each other in pursuit of a trickle of water ... "but Mr Clegg, surely you must fancy one of them more than the other?" As each party finally gets round to unveiling their ecological agendas it is clear that the public choice is not one of change, but of small change.

Ed Miliband has brought the first fresh thinking Labour has had for years. Yet his best ideas have been scuppered or undermined by the infantile economics of the Treasury. On the occasions he escaped their clutches, the armlock of big energy and the drive of visionless officials turned any dash into a renewable energy future into little more than a shuffle. An energy crisis will hit us within five years. All the big transformations are being deferred until the decade after. Cameron seems to take the climate change issue more seriously than he is credited for. The hard question is whether the rest of his party gives a stuff. Radical decentralisation could turn Britain's towns and cities into the engine rooms of a new energy revolution, matching the leap into renewables you can already find in towns and cities across Europe. The trouble is that unless localities have the same duty as the country as a whole - ie meeting at least 15 per cent of their total energy needs from renewable sources by 2020 - none of this inventiveness will be unleashed. Devolution without duty is just hand-washing. And where is Clegg? Well, with Simon Hughes the Lib Dems have set off at a rare pace on energy and environmental transformation. He, and others, were willing to join Labour rebels and "boldly go" into seismic shifts that Downing Street recoiled from. The trouble was always in knowing whether their numbers would turn up to vote, making parliamentary votes a serious stand rather than a scouts and guides evening.

All parties talk about banking reform, but none will tell the financial sector that took Britain into the economic crisis, to pay the costs of bringing us out. Not one of the leaders promises that all future City bonuses must be matched by the same amount of bonds bought from the government's Green Infrastructure Bank. This would deliver at least £6bn a year as the City's contribution to direct ecological transformation. None of the leaders promise to end the scam of "trading" British carbon emissions, rather than reducing them ourselves. None are being challenged to do so. None will dump the delusion that Britain can offset its pollution by paying others to live a little more virtuously. None will change the rules of carbon accounting which claim that every transfer of production - and jobs - overseas pretends that Britain treads more lightly on the future. None will break the World Trade Organisation rules to prioritise British food security and more localised production. We live in a time where the central pillars in our economic system have become dysfunctional. They need to be broken and replaced, not because the British body politic needs a younger lover, but because we need a more meaningful and sustainable relationship with the future. Without this, the general election will resolve nothing. It will produce a parliament that is grumpy, fractious, introspective and short-lived. The dating game of leadership trysts will end in tears and recriminations. And the caravan of gossip columnists who used to be political correspondents will go off in search of a new romantic figure to take Britain out of the crises they currently choose to ignore. Without more fundamental change, the years ahead will spin Britain's economy round in a scarier way than any playground ride. No-one will have any doubt on which side the party leaders dress. They will all be pinned against the spinning wall of a ride that each remains wedded to. Britain's problems will not be addressed by a TV Snog, Marry, Avoid decision on May 6. If the press will not lift the debate onto a different level then the public - or ultimately the planet - will have to do so.

Breaking the bankers' hold

Gordon Brown is right to say that the last few days of the election campaign will be crucial, but Labour's tactics laid down by Peter Mandelson risk turning off already alienated working-class voters. Mandelson insisted that Brown would be lauded as tough and up for a fight and that party campaigners would put more emphasis on the tough decisions he has taken. The millions of working people who have edged away from Labour since 1997 are in no doubt that Brown is capable of showing how tough he can be against people like them. That's partly the reason why Labour Party membership has plummeted and why Labour's vote has continually declined in every election since those heady days 13 years ago. Billionaire media leader writers may well be impressed by the government's refusal to abolish anti-trade union legislation, its rejection of the case to jail bosses responsible for safety lapses that kill workers and its siding with employers in industrial disputes. But these people are not the bedrock of Labour's electorate. Its bedrock has always been the workforce in both private and public industry and the government has let the entire working class down. It has allowed 1.5 million jobs in manufacturing to haemorrhage since 1997 and it is now lining up civil servants and local authority staff, among other public-service workers, to bear the brunt of the crisis caused by the greed and adventurism of finance-sector fat cats.

Labour is being described by Tory-Liberal politicians and the City bankers as profligate for increasing public spending and running up a huge deficit, ignoring the fact that these were in direct response to a crisis of the bankers' making. Unfortunately, Labour remains in thrall to the finance industry, allowing it to rebuild its reserves and profit margins on the basis of readily available pump priming from the Treasury. Those parasites who gorge on the banking sector are never satisfied with the levels of their unearned wealth and have caused Barclays shares to dip by 6.4 per cent despite the bank announcing a 47 per cent rise in quarterly pre-tax profits of £1.82 billion. When Alistair Darling stepped in just over a year ago, he didn't simply bail out a number of banks. He rescued the entire finance system. The bankers took it as their due and are still dispensing not so much advice as orders, which the government is following rather than having taken the banking sector under public control. Such decisive action would have enthused much of the electorate and sent a message that bankers' gambling debts would not be met by low-paid workers and pensioners. Even now it is possible for Brown and Darling to mark a sharper distinction between the immediate and savage cuts proposed by the Tories' Bullingdon Club boys and Labour's approach. The resistance to the international bankers' agenda shown by workers in Greece, Portugal and Spain indicates that the current crisis will not be short-lived. If the Tories are returned to office, with or without the Liberal Democrats, they will not delay before laying waste public services and the welfare state. It is essential to prevent this happening and to then mobilise the entire labour movement to learn how Labour and the unions fell for the neoliberal line and how to chart another more progressive direction in future.

What planet are they on?

You could be forgiven for wandering around with a perplexed look on your face this morning. Not because you've spent the previous few days trying to work out which party leader was the real Tory in the so-called leaders' debates on TV, although that particular question is still up for grabs. But because it's getting harder and harder to work out the realities of the world we live in. On the one hand, we have a nation in a deep financial crisis, with the party leaders vying with each other as to who can propose the most horrendous cuts in public services and staff to rebalance an economy driven deep into debt by irresponsible bankers. The parties are so united on this that the only reason for voting Labour now appears to by that they don't want to do the hacking back right now. Schools, social services, public works, all are in danger because of the crisis and jobs are at risk by the hundreds of thousands. Credit rating agencies such as Moodys and Standard and Poor are watching like hawks to make certain that the government doesn't show any sign of sitting on the public debt, waving the implied threat of "doing a Greece" on it and reducing its AAA credit rating, with all the cost implications that that entails.

But there's another world-view and it's remarkably different, given that it's the same old world being viewed. In this world, things are one hell of a lot rosier and decidedly looking up. Forget the fact that you haven't had a pay rise this year or, if you have, it's been a tiny one, while, if you drive to work to earn your pay, you are shelling out an astronomical record high price for your petrol. Rejoice, instead, in the fact that oil giant BP declared profits of £3.6 billion for the first three months of the year, more than doubling last year's efforts. And while you are rejoicing for the company, try to forget that it's responsible for the Deepwater Horizon oil rig which blew up recently, costing the lives of 11 rig workers and spreading a 2,000 square mile oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico. And you had better forget that no-one in the major parties is interested in a windfall tax on such ridiculous levels of profit. While you're forgetting, better spare a space for forgetting the banks' financial crisis as well. Because it will only make you upset when you see the news that Lloyds Bank, which was bailed out by the taxpayer to the tune of £66 billion ploughed into shareholdings to stop it collapsing, is back into making profits again. Its shares were up another 4 per cent as a result and we can all rejoice that the shareholders will be smiling happily - all except for the taxpayer, that is, because, although we're now showing a theoretical profit on the publicly owned shares, we can't realise it by selling the shares and paying off our borrowings that way.

Because, after all, that would plunge the bank back into crisis, wouldn't it? It's still dependent on loans and guarantees provided by taxpayers that hit about £157 billion last year. So you can't get your money back to clear the debt, but the government's intent on paying back at least half of it over an arbitrarily arrived-at four years. Which means that the banks are smiling, the share traders are smiling, BP is smiling, and everything in their garden is positively rosy. So, while you are going to work and sitting in a queue at the garage waiting to put half the mortgage money into the tank, eagerly awaiting arrival at work to hear of your pitifully small pay deal, or if you are one of several million just sitting at home filling in endless job applications for work that isn't materialising, relax, there's another world in which the banks and businesses are coining it in again. The sun is shining for the big battalions and will continue to do so until we say, finally, that enough is enough - and they are taking more than enough. When Gordon Brown warns that a vote for the Lib Dems means a vote for the Tories and David Cameron warns that backing the Lib Dems means backing Labour, you begin to wonder what planet politicians are on.

And when Nick Clegg starts to use the election campaign to lay down conditions for whatever form of post-poll coalition he might support, you can't help feeling that he's getting a little ahead of himself. The more bluster that emanates from the three main parties, the more evident it appears that a de facto coalition is already in place in Westminster. A majority of people oppose the war in Afghanistan and want Britain's troops brought home without delay, but none of the three front-runners proposes this solution. They each play up to the troops, praising their bravery and dedication, but they are all determined to leave them stewing in an unwinnable war as they and unnamed and uncounted Afghan civilians pay the price of British subservience to US military strategy. Sixteen years after the John Major Tory government privatised our railways and Labour pledged - deceitfully - to renationalise them, the overwhelming majority of electors would back the return of the industry to public ownership. But Labour, Tories and Lib Dems hold firmly to the idea, despite all experience to the contrary, that private ownership brings benefits in efficiency, reliability and finance. Brown warns voters that both Cameron and Clegg are hell-bent on hacking back spending on public services. But his own Chancellor Alistair Darling proclaimed that Labour, if returned, would inflict cuts in public spending that would be even sharper than those carried through by Margaret Thatcher's Tory government in the 1980s.

What are voters to make of a situation where "our" cuts are better than "their" cuts while no-one is saying that public-service staff did not cause this crisis and should not lose their jobs, pay and conditions to pay for it? The contrast between the bail-out of the banks and the treatment of 120,000 mainly low-income families who were left stranded by the collapse of Christmas hamper firm Farepak in October 2006 could not be more stark. The government put aside £1.3 trillion to spare avaricious and reckless bankers the consequences of their conduct, but it has ignored those at the other end of the social scale whose only crime was to pay money to Farepak agents to ensure a festive Christmas for their families. The former Farepak directors have agreed with the liquidator to pay these people just 15p for every pound that they were swindled out of. But it is a safe bet that none of these directors will find themselves on the breadline as a result of their commercial failure. Once again, it is the little people who shoulder the financial consequences of the incompetence or greed of the powerful and wealthy. The politicians squabble about real or perceived marginal differences in their policies and the Establishment media pontificates about issues of style and personality, leaving many voters cold in the wake of an expenses scandal that devalued Parliament. This situation cannot continue without creating a crisis of credibility for the entire democratic process in Britain. Politics cannot be reserved to the political elite. Popular intervention through trade unions and other progressive bodies is essential in future to project an alternative to the present outdated and discredited scenario.

Big business as usual for Clegg

In the space of a week the LibDems' prospects were apparently transformed, following the first television debate between the main party leaders. Nick Clegg gazed with doe eyes into a camera, and suddenly his chances had undergone a metamorphosis! A YouGov poll put them on 33%, one point ahead of the Tories and four ahead of Labour. The polls indicate how volatile this election has become, but this is partly because there is little difference between the programmes of the main parties. 75% of people polled by Populus said that there needs to be a change from Labour but only 34% said it is time to change to the Tories. It is this space that the LibDems are exploiting, with the mantra that they represent 'change'. They haven't been in government since Ramsay MacDonald's national government in 1931. However even for people who hope they might be a change, a major hurdle for the LibDems is to convince them that they could actually win and therefore are worth voting for. "We're different," Clegg has said time and time again. But at their last party conference Clegg and LibDem shadow chancellor Vince Cable called for savage cuts in public spending and argued that the public deficit should be repaid over five years rather than eight as Labour had proposed.

While Gordon Brown and David Cameron say that some parts of the public sector should be protected from the worst cuts, such as the NHS, Cable has said that there should be no ringfencing. Of course he is simply being a degree more open on this; there is no real political difference. Vince Cable has been hailed by right wing papers like the Daily Mail as the best candidate for prime minister and by the Guardian as "one of our classiest politicians". A former chief economist of oil multinational Shell, following the 2008 banking crisis he gained a reputation for his economic analysis but he himself endorsed the policy of 'light regulation' of financial services in 1999, which contributed to the crash. Clegg and Cable were two of the architects of the LibDems' 'orange' revolution, ending the party's image as the 'beer and sandals' brigade and implementing a right-wing, neoliberal programme. Clegg has been in Cable's shadow since becoming leader but the television debate has now enabled him to shine on the national media stage. But his policies differed only slightly from the Tories and New Labour. The LibDems would pay off the public deficit by cutting 'waste' and bureaucracy in the NHS, in education and in the army (the latter to pay for better equipment in Afghanistan).

They would cut tax credits and the child trust fund and cap pay rises at £400 for all public-sector workers for two years. In other words the same 'efficiency' savings (cuts) and other cuts. However Clegg has been able to mark a small difference by saying his party would scrap Trident and ID cards. One glance at the LibDems' record in local government shows that they are no different to the other two parties when in power. In opposition they pose as tireless campaigners, photographed outside local hospitals and standing next to potholes. They pledge to defend services, but time and time again when they take control of a local council or share power they carry out cuts and privatisation. For instance in Leeds City Council, the LibDem-Tory coalition is slashing council workers' jobs and pay. Will Clegg's popularity last? The Tories cite the example of Ross Perot, the maverick Dallas billionaire who ran as an independent in the 1992 US presidential election. He led the polls after the first television debate but subsequently declined to 19% by the time of the vote. Even if the LibDems maintain their current level of support, its geographical spread would result in a hung parliament and Clegg would be faced with his main dilemma.

If he forms a government with Labour then the party that pledged to be different is seen to keep the same party in power and he alienates the right wing of his party. If he goes into coalition with the Tories then he blows out of the water the idea that you can vote LibDem to keep the Tories out and he alienates the left wing of his party, which is likely to lead to a split with those who see the party as having a radical tradition. As a result, Clegg isn't committing himself to either scenario at the moment. The LibDems are for the time being moving onto the centre stage for the first time since the days of Lloyd George, mainly at the expense of the Tories. However, the policies of a future government which contains the LibDems will be 'big' business as usual.

Kicking a costly habit

Whenever the dust finally settles from the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull, there will be some stern lessons to absorb from the crisis which has seen Europe's skies fall silent. The most obvious is that no matter how much the airline lobby protests, we need to reduce our reliance on this fragile and vulnerable form of transport. From stranded passengers to the threat of empty supermarket shelves, the disruption caused by the giant ash cloud gave us a taste of what could happen in the event of, say, another major terrorist attack - and what will happen when the oil starts to run out. It would be plain foolhardy to pile more and more of our eggs into this increasingly rickety basket. And this crisis has led people to question every aspect of our addiction to aviation. Why do we have so many internal flights instead of a high-speed rail network? Does it make sense, when we desperately need to cut carbon emissions, to fly in fruit and veg from Africa? Do all these businesspeople really need to spend all their time jetting off to conferences when they could stay at home and hold a videoconference? Not to mention the values that won't pop up on a corporate balance sheet - like the fact that thousands living under flight paths can hear birdsong and breathe clean air for the first time in decades.

So the New Economics Foundation (NEF) showed faultless timing in picking yesterday to release its report warning that a third runway at Heathrow would hit Britain in the pocket to the tune of £5 billion or more. That's a bold claim when the government says Heathrow expansion would bring in £5.5bn. But ministers seem to have plucked their figure from the air - while the NEF's study has, crucially, put a price on issues like noise pollution and air quality. As a result it's the strongest argument yet against Heathrow expansion, which New Labour stubbornly continues to champion in the face of mounting opposition.  So unpopular is airport expansion that even the other two big parties have been forced to oppose it - sort of. Tory and Lib Dem policy amounts to "no new runways in areas where people might vote for us." But neither party convinces on the other pressing issues - modernising our transport infrastructure and maintaining public spending to ward off a double-dip recession. The fallout from the Iceland eruption has brought that prospect a little bit closer, too. Thousands of airline workers could join Britain's ever-growing dole queues, threatening to tip us into a second recession.

The government can't afford not to come to their aid. But any bail-out for the airlines should come with strings attached - like a measure of democratic control over the industry and a clear understanding that the future lies away from air travel, just as soon as we can wean Britain off aviation without destroying thousands of jobs. We can't expect new Labour to impose conditions like that, not when it had the chance and failed to do something similar with the banks. Nor can we be sure it will make good on the limited pledges it has made of investment in high-speed rail. Nor is it likely to pay the slightest bit of notice to the NEF's study - unless we send a loud and clear message at the ballot box on May 6. In some constituencies that will mean voting Labour, where there's a principled candidate. In some constituencies it will mean voting Communist, or Green - both of which have promised to rein in aviation - or whichever other party is standing up and fighting on the issue. But in every constituency it means telling the big three parties that they're just not good enough - that we want more radical action on transport than they're prepared to give us. We can't afford to wait for catastrophic climate change, or another massive natural disaster, to take that action.

Last push for real change

"It sends a shiver down my spine - the idea that George Osborne will turn up at the House of Commons in a few days if a Conservative government is elected and just slash £6 billion out of our public services." So said Prime Minister Gordon Brown, sounding a cautionary note over the Tory spending plans. It is to be hoped that his fear of slash-and-burn policies in the public sector is extended to the policies of his own party as well as to Tory schemes. Because, at this time, with a shallow and unconvincing recovery from the bankers' crisis just about hanging on by its fingernails, any programme of public-sector cuts, by whichever party, could spark a dramatic drop into recession. Labour is being far too equivocal about this issue, warning against Tory cuts and, at the same time, signalling impending Labour cutbacks that would make Margaret Thatcher look like the good fairy. It really is time that Mr Brown makes up his mind about this issue and sets Labour on a course to defend public services, not just in the short term, but as a real and necessary part of the economy in the medium and long term as well. Mr Brown is not alone in his concern. It is shared by all the public-sector trade unions, although their concerns are far more wide-ranging that those of the Labour leader, certainly in terms of timetabling.

And those concerns are brought into sharp focus by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, which has warned that the jobs cull contemplated by all the big parties could lead to a 10 per cent reduction in the 5.8 million public-sector workforce, "dwarfing" anything in the election manifestos. It warns that more than 500,000 public-sector jobs could be axed in the next five years under a post-election squeeze on spending and cautions that it is "misleading" to suggest that the pain of job losses could be eased by pay cuts or short-time working. Which is pretty unequivocal and ties in firmly with warnings that the unions have been making throughout the present crisis. Coming from what is essentially a bosses' organisation, it heavily underlines the unions' case and should give Mr Brown at least a pause for thought over the consequences of the culling that Chancellor Alistair Darling and others have been trailing. Half a million job losses over the life of the next government would be a hammer-blow that no economy could easily ride out and such a prospect should never be carelessly contemplated by a Labour government. The polls are not giving Mr Brown any real cause for joy at the moment. In fact, Labour is only keeping its head above water because the public knows instinctively that the jobs butchery contemplated by the Tories and the Lib Dems would be disastrous.

Labour has, to some extent at least, saved its electoral bacon so far because of the concerns that millions of public-sector workers have over their employment and it is the only party that has shown even the slightest concern about them. In the face of an artificially induced blind panic over the level of public debt, the Tories and Lib Dems have responded as you might expect, with heavy-handed threats about swingeing cutbacks on the horizon. If Labour is to win the coming election, and it still has a slim chance to do so, it will only manage by emerging as the defender of jobs and services, not as merely hanging back to batter the sector into submission if and when the economy is a little steadier. It's not too late for a change of emphasis, but it must be done quickly if it is to have any effect. However, that would need a degree of courage and a lack of dogmatism by new Labour's leaders that is difficult to imagine without intense pressure from a trade union movement which seems to have lost the inclination to use its power against Labour's obdurate and reactionary right-wing leadership.

Faultlines deepen in Brown's Britain

We're moving into a new phase of the struggle. Over the last couple of years we have gone through several distinct stages. First was the onset of the recession in 2008 which effectively knocked sideways the pay revolt in the public sector. Secondly, after a series of horrible defeats like the job losses at Woolworths and Cowley, we saw the development of a movement of working class resistance. While the bulk of disputes were still dominated by the role of the trade union bureaucracy and its loyalty to Labour there was also a new willingness to fight, which at times got out of the hands of the officials. The unofficial action in construction, the occupations at Visteon and Vestas, and the all-out strikes at Superdrug, Leeds bins and Tower Hamlets College all represented a new militancy. The tactics used by the workers had been pretty much unheard of for a generation. But recent months have been dominated by new factors. First, there are the plans for a huge assault on the public sector and secondly an increasing number of private sector employers are using the recession to drive through job losses and attacks on conditions. So while we are still seeing day-to-day warfare in workplaces up and down the country, we are also seeing the development of bigger set-piece struggles.

We have seen three days of national strike action from PCS members in the civil service. Network Rail workers have voted to strike, and there is a growing wave of industrial action in higher education. This level of struggle in the run-up to a general election hasn't been seen for a long time. The "spring of discontent" may be being played up by the Tories and the right wing media, but it does reflect the reality of a growing number of disputes. Just before an election we would expect the trade union bureaucracy to be closing down any fight. But at British Airways (BA), for example, Unite general secretaries Tony Woodley and Derek Simpson, having done all they could to avoid a strike, then took over the running of the dispute. They clearly saw a conflict of interest between the needs of the dispute and the needs of Gordon Brown just weeks before the election. The combination of the employer's arrogance and rank and file anger has meant cabin crew went on the picket line despite the wishes of the union bureaucracy. Some of the non-aligned unions are clearly using the pre-election period, correctly, to heighten the political pressure on the bosses and the government. The PCS strike on Budget Day, the RMT surge for action on Network Rail and the tube, and the push by UCU for action on 5 May against job losses in education are all attempts to place the fight against cuts in the middle of the pre-election debate.

Precisely because these struggles have taken place in the run-up to an election they are enormously politicised. For example, the right wing press and the Tories have tried to use Unite's links with the Labour Party to create a witch-hunt, with Unite being declared as a new Militant Tendency. There has also been a queue of Labour ministers wanting to attack the strikers; and as a consequence of this, thousands of Unite members in BA have withdrawn from the political fund over the course of the dispute.The assaults workers are facing are of a scale and depth we have not seen in a long time. These are precursors to what are likely to be much bigger attacks - Alistair Darling is talking about 25 percent cuts in public spending over the next two parliaments. Today's struggles are likely to shape the kind of resistance people put up once the real attacks kick in. The only debate among the political parties is how quickly you make the cuts. Employers want to use the recession as an opportunity to reshape workers' terms and conditions and jobs. It's very clear in BA that Willie Walsh is out to break the union to provide him with very long-term gains of profitability. He has ignored the possibility of wage cuts given to him on a plate by the trade union leadership and instead wants to steamroller the union entirely. Network Rail is seeking to use the recession to cut 1,500 jobs - a very serious attack on the workforce.

In the universities and colleges many employers, such as the vice-chancellor at Leeds University, are moving to make cuts now because they know the scale of the attack that is coming. In the civil service the abolition of the compensation scheme is about clearing the way for tens of thousands of job losses. Of course union leaders have also closed struggles down - just look at Royal Mail. Leaders in the CWU are recommending a deal which emerged after the strikes of last year, even though it may mean 24,000 job losses and pay cuts for many workers. They are pushing it because they don't have confidence in workers to fight, but also because they don't want to have struggle in this period. So even when the impact of very serious attacks forces trade union leaders to respond, in the majority of cases they are not carrying that struggle through to the full. They don't think about spreading the strikes successfully, they don't think about all-out action and they don't think about a confident defence of workers' interests. Instead they offer concessions. So we are in a situation where all of these struggles feel on a knife-edge. There is a political struggle currently taking place between an old layer holding resistance back and a new layer trying to emerge. You can have the immense, vibrant feeling of the workforce on a BA picket line or among the politicised activists of the PCS, but the danger is that they can go down to defeat unless the new wins out over the old.

The need to recreate rank and file organisation and initiative from below, however modest it may begin, is more important than ever. For example, what BA strikers needed was a link between the brilliant people in the cabin crew section and the ground staff, the check-in staff, the engineers and the baggage handlers. If they had those links they could close Heathrow in an instant. The dispute would have been won in 48 hours. But the links don't exist and therefore we have to fight hard to try and create them wherever we are. There is an understanding from a layer of workers that this is a generalised assault and any talk about unity or a united response is popular. The most common discussion on the PCS picket lines on Budget Day was, "Why are we doing this on our own?" It's just common sense to people. Workers like the argument that we should not be fighting one by one, but that it is all part of one fight. People talk about what has happened in places like Greece, Portugal, France and Spain. The fightback across Europe has been a real boost to people here because there are concrete examples of people reacting in a coordinated, united way against cuts. It's the sort of resistance many would like to see in Britain. Greek workers are seen as being in the same trench as us and fighting back in a very effective manner. The divisions between workers are partly weakened by a time of crisis. That feeling that we are all in it together strengthens the sense of unity.

The deal that was done by Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and the other European Union leaders over Greece at the end of March boosted the markets but in no way represent the end of the crisis for Greek workers. In fact, if anything, it means an intensification of the crisis because the decision was to give funds to Greece, if necessary as a final resort. Two thirds of the money is to come from the EU and one third from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - on the basis of enforcing very deep cuts. These would be deeper cuts than those that have already been agreed, with the IMF acting as the policeman of the deal. The IMF is seeking to replicate what was done to countries like Latvia - an EU state which has already had IMF intervention. In Latvia that meant a 45 percent cut in public sector pay and 23 percent unemployment. What would we do in Britain if we were facing those levels of cuts? How do you prepare for the need for action like general strikes, mass strikes and so on? You cannot defeat a government decision to knock 5 to 10 percent out of local government spending year after year, simply by having a strike in Lambeth council or Glasgow council. It has to be bigger than that. We are not on the verge of a general strike in Britain, but the sort of slogans we raise now about unity and coordination point towards the response we need.

There also has to be a notion of an alternative, a different set of politics, to challenge the politics of the government. We need to be putting the question, "Why should we pay for the crisis?" and saying, "Look at the things they waste money on; see how the bankers and bosses get away with it." All of this is crucial. Successful struggle is tremendously boosted by such a political approach. One of the best arguments for civil service workers is when they explain that the government could collect another £130 billion in tax if it employed more tax collectors rather than sacking them. That is not actually what the dispute is about, but it helps to spread it to a much larger group of workers. Whether or not a long-haul flight has a purser on board may not be the most important issue over which to win solidarity for BA strikers among other workers - the question of why they should pay for the crisis, on the other hand, is. Network Rail workers have done best when they talk about the threats to safety as well as the number of jobs that are going. The college lecturers do best when they talk about the threat to education - not simply about jobs and their own terms and conditions. The more workers can politicise their struggles like that, the stronger their fights and the more determined their own members will be when they fight over these issues. There is a sense that these struggles are shaping the ground for after the election, and it's very important for our side that we get the politics and the solidarity right now as a precursor of that.

Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times just after the budget on 26 March that, however much Labour may wish to hide the fact, if it wins the election it will take a torch to public spending. This was on the same day that Darling was reported to have conceded that if Labour is re-elected the cuts will be tougher and deeper than those carried out by Margaret Thatcher. So that is if Labour wins the general election! The Budget figures are extraordinary. Labour plan to flatline public spending for the four years after 2010/11. Taking into account inflation and other factors that would mean that public spending on services and administration would have to fall by an average of 3 percent a year over those four years, accumulating 11.9 percent, or £46 billion of cuts. That is the sort of situation we have seen in Greece, Spain and Portugal, and that is the challenge to the working class movement in Britain - and that is with Labour in charge. If the Tories get in they will try to carry this through quicker or deeper, although we may have doubts about whether they are capable of doing that. Even if they sign up to the same programme as Labour this will either be a period of a very sharp fall in living standards, to an extent we have not seen since the end of the Labour government of the 1970s, or we are going to see stormy class struggles. Or a combination of those two things. What will be the key factors in such struggles, particularly in the public sector? In many cases success will not rest solely or even mainly on sectional organisation.

It would be wrong to judge the possibilities of success by simply comparing the level of organisation in a given industry with the sectional strength of workers on London Underground or construction workers like those at Lindsey oil refinery. Workplace organisation may be weak in many areas that will face attacks but among such workers there exists extraordinary bitterness about the impact of the crisis. If people believe that we are fighting for the fundamentals of the welfare state - everything we gained after the Second World War - that can inspire them to fight both to defend their own living standards and also to defend something wider. In turn this can feed back into how you can create sectional strength. For example, King's College London hasn't exactly been the centre of the class struggle historically. But over the course of a battle to defend jobs, very much run as a political campaign to defend education, a layer of departmental reps has developed for the first time. At Tower Hamlets College the same process of a political campaign to defend education created a tight union organisation capable of winning a four-week all-out strike. Sectional strength was rebuilt through a political strategy. We have to be the people raising the question of unity, taking the leaflets round for the protests, collecting money and trying to get strikers or campaign representatives into our workplaces and colleges.

We constantly have to try to cross-fertilise the process at the bottom when people are moving in the direction of struggling together. That's why the Right to Work campaign (RtW) is so important. It offers the possibility of creating a permanent network of activists. Everyone says the same thing when you go onto a demonstration or a picket line: "We're all here today, it's really great, but what about after this?" In many areas there are no basic connections between groups of workers or campaigns. If there is a trades council it might pull some trade unionists together. But often it doesn't connect with students, or anti-racist campaigners, or anti-war activists, or people campaigning at a community level, or the unemployed. Without permanent networks in place you are reinventing the wheel every time there is a protest, strike or campaign. If we do not create such networks we are not grasping the opportunity - and we will not be ready to face the kind of attacks we can expect. Last month at Heathrow RtW put out a call to get delegations down to the BA pickets. A serious delegation of trade unionists with over £1,000 worth of collections came on the Saturday morning. It is a small thing, but it is an attempt to recreate conditions of solidarity inside our class that have been broken for decades.

These things are being rebuilt slowly but socialists have to be the people who are driving the process forward. In every area we want to be the people who are cementing the relationships between militants and activists in different campaigns and bringing them into RtW. These things are being rebuilt slowly but socialists have to be the people who are driving the process forward. In every area we want to be the people who are cementing the relationships between militants and activists in different campaigns and bringing them into RtW. The emergency conference RtW is planning for 22 May, after the election, can be a way to pull together people from the different campaigns and disputes. It can also play a part in shaping the kind of resistance that develops. British society today there is the growth of resistance but also the rise of such scapegoating, whipped up by the media and by mainstream politicians. But we are not the only people to recognise the danger of the growth of the fascists. Many workers understand that the Nazi British National Party (BNP) and English Defence League (EDL) are growing off the despair that people feel in relation to job losses and the impact of the recession and wish to mobilise against them. Last month Weyman Bennett, joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism, was one of the main speakers at Unite's London bus workers' conference. The meeting discussed organising anti-fascist activity among workers, trying to get them over to Barking to campaign against the election of Nick Griffin and launching a "Transport Workers Against the Nazis" badge.

In Harrow, London, on the anti-EDL demo, Unite officials made a big push to get workers with banners onto the protest. We have many disagreements about the approach of Unite's leadership to the BA strike, but every worker is threatened by the growth of the far-right. We have to fight to win the big battalions of the working class movement to the anti-fascist struggle. The way we take on the BNP or EDL is not simply about mobilising people on protests - it is also about offering an alternative. The agency of class struggle is not simply about defending particular terms and conditions; it can also act as a beacon of hope to much wider layers of society. Fightbacks at BA and beyond show that you do not have to turn upon one another - it is possible to direct your anger at the people who are really to blame, people at the top of society. At the same time, our answer to workers who are angry about the crisis and the betrayals of the Labour government can't simply be, "You're right, we just need more struggle." We do need more struggle, of course, and the struggle comes before everything else, but there is also the need for a political response. Therefore, although it is modest, the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition, the attempt to put forward some sort of left alternative at the general election, is important. It is the raising of the flag of socialist politics at the election, a stepping stone towards broader realignment and a strengthening of forces to the left of Labour after the election.

It is vital that we do not simply restrict our response to the crisis to economic struggles. We have to look to strengthen socialist forces more broadly to take up all these issues - racism, the Nazis, the attacks on workers' conditions, the drive towards war and the danger of climate change. There has to be a stronger socialist force at the centre of all these battles. Last year the role of a few socialists made a huge difference in a number of pivotal disputes, both in terms of the strategy they put forward and the wider political arguments. Today a whole layer of new militants are coming through in the movement, often with very different political ideas and political traditions. They are asking very big questions about the nature of the system and what a possible alternative could look like. If we do not grasp the opportunity to win the best of this layer of activists to revolutionary socialist ideas other approaches will come to dominate. Many in the movement are arguing that the failure of New Labour opens up the possibility of "reclaiming Labour". This argument is very strong in unions like Unite. A layer of militants who were won to revolutionary socialist ideas in the late 1960s and early 1970s were at the centre of key battles over the following decades. We need more socialists in the workplaces putting the argument for a political approach to trade unionism, building networks of solidarity and resistance, rebuilding the confidence of the rank and file and organising for a socialist solution to the crisis. There are huge battles to come. Socialists have to rise to the challenge and place themselves at the centre of the fight not just to defend public services but for a better world.

We must battle slash & burn politics

This is the first general election for eighteen years where the outcome is impossible to predict. Yet, far from being gripped by the drama, millions of voters are already fed up to the back teeth with the election. Even some Guardian commentators reflect this mood. Geoffrey Wheatcroft, for example, expressed his happiness that he will be out of the country for the course of the election campaign.He described the plea of Guardian advocates for New Labour as being: "Yes, all right, the Labour government presided over a spurious economic miracle that was really no more than an explosion of household debt combined with criminal recklessness in the financial sector, it has created the most intrusive surveillance state in Europe, and it took us into a needless, illegal and disastrous war - but, hey, the Tories might be even worse." The "alternative slogan", Wheatcroft suggested, is equally "uninspiring": "Even if the Tories are pretty dodgy, anything to get rid of the present lot." In the last two general elections, turnout has been an historical low of around 60%. No doubt this time as well, many millions will abstain from voting in protest at three establishment parties who offer almost identical pro-capitalist policies. Others will vote for socialist candidates, particularly in the 42 seats where the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is offering a militant anti-cuts alternative. Unfortunately, in some areas, the lack of a genuine workers' party will mean that a layer of people will express their anger with the capitalist politicians by voting for the far-right, racist BNP.

However, there will also be workers, including some that did not vote New Labour in the last general election, who will, through gritted teeth, put a cross on their ballot paper next to New Labour. In most cases this will not represent one iota of enthusiasm for Gordon Brown and his cohorts, but stems from desperation to prevent a Tory government. The Socialist Party's predecessor, Militant, led some of the most important battles against the Tory Thatcher government - including the struggle of Liverpool City Council and the eighteen million strong anti-poll tax movement which brought down both the tax and Thatcher herself. We fully understand why workers rightly fear a Tory government, which will attempt to implement brutal anti-working class policies. However, the policies pursued by a fourth New Labour government would not be fundamentally different. Whoever wins the election will demand that the economic crisis and the bailout of the banks be paid for by cuts in public services and working-class people's living conditions. New Labour's manifesto yet again reiterated that they will halve the public sector deficit by 2014. This will not come from greater taxation of big business - in fact the manifesto emphasised that tax on big business would be "kept as low as possible". Instead we face £78 billion worth of cuts and tax rises for working and middle class people over four years. This vast amount of money is almost equal to cutting the entire NHS annual budget in the course of one parliament.

It would not be true to say that there are no differences between New Labour and the Tories. For example New Labour's manifesto includes a pledge to raise the minimum wage in line with average earnings which is designed to emphasise the 'difference' between them and the Tories. The Tories are planning £6 billion more in 'savings' (ie cuts) in the first year to pay for their reversal of the National Insurance increase planned by New Labour. However, compared to the scale of the cuts planned, the differences are small. Ludicrously the Financial Times dedicated an editorial to attcking New Labour's manifesto for failing to cut the size of the state. In fact New Labour proposes to accelerate the privatisation policies pursued over 13 years in office. The fat cats are to be invited to make profits from ever greater swathes of our public services. Every hospital would become a 'foundation trust', a significant step towards privatisation. Even the shiny new hospital where the manifesto launch took place was built on the basis of private finance at huge cost to the taxpayer. It is worth around £627 million but, because it was built using the Private Finance Initiative, taxpayers have been left with a bill for £2.58 billion.New Labour clearly wanted to highlight the hospital's new treatment centre for soldiers wounded in Afghanistan. While this facility will be welcomed by soldiers and their families, it is no compensation for the government's occupation of Afghanistan in the first place!

The differences are equally small on other issues. The Tories stand for total privatisation of Royal Mail, but both New Labour and the LibDems call for part privatisation. At the same time the previous Labour commitment to freeze university tuition fees has been dropped, an indication that New Labour, just like the Tories, would lift the present cap on fees beyond the general election. It is clear that a Tory government would move to increase the amount of repressive anti-trade union legislation. New Labour, however, has not only left the previous Tory government's anti-trade union laws overwhelmingly intact, but has allowed them to be used in a brutal manner against the British Airways cabin crew and railway workers' union - effectively taking away the right to strike.The Socialist Party, like millions of workers, is not willing to accept a choice between a 'greater' and a 'lesser' evil. Neither is abstaining from elections a way forward. What is needed is the creation of a mass party that stands in workers' interests. TUSC, by standing in these elections, can be a step towards such a party. It is also standing to argue the case for socialism and to help prepare working class people for the mass struggle against cuts which will be needed beyond the general election.

LibDem leader Nick Clegg was right when he warned that "Greek-style unrest" would take place in Britain if a government with a small majority attempts to carry out "slash and burn" policies. However, any party that accepts the logic of the capitalist markets, as all three establishment parties do, will attempt to "slash and burn" our public services. The next government - regardless of its political stripe - will be a weak government with a shallow basis of social support, attempting to carry out deeply unpopular policies. As a result, at a certain stage, Greece will come to Britain as workers are forced to defend their living conditions against the brutal reality of 21st century capitalism. In the course of such movements there will be opportunities to build mass support for socialist ideas - as a real alternative to the three big parties of the bankers and the billionaires.

Far from a classic affair

Despite the efforts of Labour supporters in the trade union movement to play up the party's general election manifesto as a social justice classic, the facts indicate otherwise. New Labour remains committed to big business and the banks and to making working people continue to bear a disproportionate burden of taxation. The main case to vote Labour remains the negative realisation that the Tories would, difficult though it may be for some to credit it, be far worse than Gordon Brown and Chancellor Alistair Darling. Though Darling has boasted that he will cut public spending even more deeply than Margaret Thatcher in her Tory government heyday, George Osborne has outdone him, insisting that he will cut more quickly and more savagely. The implosion of the banking system just over a year ago was prevented by the government setting aside £1.3 trillion to bail out the banks, driving up the national debt to do so. The Bank of England has made state finance - our money - available to the banks at 0.5 per cent, but, despite this, the finance sector has refused to lend sympathetically to small businesses and home-buyers, preferring to drive up their own profits by imposing swingeing interest rates on loans. The Treasury has effectively allowed the banks to transform public money into private profits through methods that reek of usury.

When the government boasts in Labour's manifesto that it will realise stakes in publicly controlled banks, it means that the banks will repay some of what was invested by government in the banks without any share of the profits windfall. The banks will return to business as usual, ripping off personal customers and small businesses and lecturing ministers on the need to slash government debt even though it was their own greed and recklessness that drove up public borrowing in the first place. Brown has made much of his determination to continue the Blairite "reform" agenda for public services. This involves facilitating private contractors to loot the public purse through PFI contracts and taking over supposedly "failed" state schools and hospitals in England, where new Labour's obsession with foundation trusts and city academies blazes undimmed. Given the scale of the finance-sector meltdown and government investment that was needed to counter it, there was an excellent case to be made for the public sector to take over the banks and run them in the interests of the people not the shareholders and directors. Brown pledges to reduce the public debt caused by the banks, not by taxing those whose conduct created the crisis - the banking speculators and super-rich - but by raising £11 billion through public-sector efficiency savings, £4 billion by trimming public-sector pay and pensions and £5 billion from what he calls non-priority public-sector areas.

In other words, public services and their staff, which bear no responsibility for the crisis, will be clobbered to allow the banks to carry on ripping us off. Even the much-vaunted "Robin Hood" tax on financial transaction will be dependent on global agreement, which effectively punts it into the long grass. Labour's manifesto is marginally less toxic than what the Tories have in store, but it indicates that, whichever party wins the election, working people will still have to fight on a number of fronts to defend their jobs, pay, conditions and our public services.

Election fever bad for your health

Gordon Brown has fired the starting gun for a race that was already in full flow. In four weeks we will know who has won the 2010 general election. Many angry activists, frustrated at new Labour's adherence to Thatcher's anti-union laws and continuation of her privatisation offensive, have argued that there is "no choice" between the main parties. But one area this is clearly not true is the NHS. While 18 years of Tory rule saw the NHS face cuts, the privatisation of hospital support services, Thatcher's mad, costly and wasteful "internal market" reforms, more cuts, soaring waiting lists and a growing gulf between the quality of British health care and much of Europe, 13 years of Labour rule has brought a real transformation. Huge new resources have been pumped in to the NHS. Spending has risen at the fastest rate in 60 years, with the health budget almost trebled since 1997, with generous above-inflation year-on-year increases since 2001, and the share of national wealth spent on health has increased towards the European average. Waiting times are down and with the 18-week maximum wait they are now among the best in Europe. And staff numbers are up - even if too many of these are managers. There are new hospitals, too, far more than since the late 1960s - although almost all of these have been funded through the controversial private finance initiative, the most expensive possible way to secure the money. PFI is just one of many weaknesses in Labour's record, of which we are all aware.

Another fundamental problem is that instead of sticking to his promise to sweep away Thatcher's costly and wasteful market system, Blair, and now Brown, have hung on to it, made it more complex and bureaucratic and brought in far more private-sector involvement than the Tories ever dreamed of. Overhead costs have mushroomed, while the talk of "efficiency" has never been louder. With the market has come today's indecipherable and pointless jargon of "world-class commissioning," swarms of private-sector management consultants, and the relentless drive to draw in private providers to deliver clinical services and even community and mental health services through the Transforming Community Services policy. With the market has come the establishment of a biased Co-operation and Competition Panel as a platform for whingeing private entrepreneurs to complain at their failure to win contracts, the positioning of Richard Branson's Virgin group and Care UK to exploit the current fad for expensive new "polyclinics" and privatisation of primary care, and the expensive irrelevance of independent-sector treatment centres creaming off the simplest and most profitable elective services at higher cost - and often delivering far fewer than the contracted numbers of operations.

The market system has also brought the "patient's choice" initiative encouraging NHS patients to seek simple elective treatment in private hospitals, leaving their local NHS hospitals facing financial losses and, of course, the costly folly of the billions squandered on a complex computer system that still doesn't work. But while Labour could obviously have spent much of the extra money more wisely - and even now could save billions painlessly by changing course on some of these policies - we know from their previous 18 years in office that the Tories wouldn't have spent the extra money at all. Left to them, the waiting list would still be with us, with tens of thousands of people still waiting 18 months or more for treatment in crumbling and poorly cleaned hospitals. And while Labour has stupidly rolled out the red carpet for private providers, the Tories would be even more eager to please any of their big business friends, like Sir Peter Gershon, who fancy a slice of the NHS £105 billion budget. So let's use the election period to keep the pressure on all the main parties to halt the £20 billion of cuts in the next few years, which threaten to devastate many local services, close hospitals, axe tens of thousands of beds and NHS jobs, and throw more qualified staff on the dole queue. Both parties threaten that, and these cuts must be fought, no matter what the result of the election.

But let's not forget that in 62 years of the NHS only one party has had the courage to pump much-needed resources into health care and create a service that gives us so much to defend. Ignore that difference and we could have years to regret a Cameron government. The pace and scale of planned cutbacks in health care and hospital services has been gathering pace up to the "purdah" period between now and May 6. Top of the cutters seems to be Southampton University Hospital Trust, which is seeking to axe a staggering £100m and 1,400 jobs over four years. Salford Royal - once known quite ironically as Hope Hospital - is to axe 750 jobs over three years, cutting its budget by 15 per cent. The most hurried cuts seem to be in Leicestershire, where the hospitals trust announced plans to cut £58m of spending in just one year with the loss of 700 jobs. But jobs and spending are being hacked back in Oxford, Cambridge, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby, Gateshead, Wirral, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Basildon and Slough. The NHS is Europe's biggest employer. The loss of these jobs, with a knock-on impact on local suppliers and businesses in each area, seems certain to contribute much more to a double-dip recession than Labour's plan to add 1 per cent to national insurance. As soon as "normal" politics resumes on May 7, each of these and many more cuts will need to be challenged by local campaigners and health unions.

Tories are no economic geniuses

"It's not talking about people losing their jobs, it's talking about not filling vacancies as they arise." So said economics genius David Cameron on Friday. The consequences, he didn't look at - the 40,000 job losses which would result from such a drastic cutback in the public sector weren't even worthy of a mention. And, as for the implications for service delivery, well they didn't enter amateur Dave's head. It's this amateurishness which is most striking about the Conservatives' frankly absurd attempts to cobble together an economic policy. Cameron can't possibly be silly enough to believe that not filling vacancies is in some way different to cutting back jobs, but he clearly believes that we, the public, are silly enough to swallow this nonsense. Gordon Brown alleges that the Tory cuts plans are "built on a myth." He's certainly right about that. But, unfortunately, it's a myth that he and the other luminaries of new Labour have been instrumental in perpetuating. It's the myth that you can cut back on the public sector without damaging the services that it supplies. And it's that myth which has propelled the incessant attacks on public services, on the town halls and the Civil Service by Alistair Darling and his mates in the Treasury. It's hardly surprising that the Tories have latched onto this illusory pot of gold; Labour has been digging into it for years, causing damage with every shovelful of "savings" that they have dug out. Which has encouraged the Tories no end. "If Labour can do it, so can we, but twice as hard," runs the thinking. But twice as hard means twice the damage.

However, it's entertaining, on a basic level, to see just how warped the Tory world-view has become. If there was an award for the most idiotic statement of the election, Mr Cameron has put in an early bid for it and, if there isn't, there certainly should be. His statement to the BBC that the Tories would stop the highest-paid public-sector bosses from earning more than 20 times what their lowest paid staff got, which would save money and tackle "inequality in pay," must be worthy of an Oscar. Posing the idea that no local authority chief employing people earning, say, £15,000 a year would be allowed to earn more than £300,000 over the same year is contributing to closing the pay gap in any significant manner would be laughable if it wasn't for the fact that it's coming from a man with ambitions to be the next prime minister. God help us all. And then we come to IT cutbacks. With no plan and no justification Tory adviser Sir Peter Gershon insists that savings of between £2 billion and £4 billion can be made simply by cutting back on expenditure. Well, sorry, Sir Peter, IT simply doesn't work that way. Put off buying today and you'll simply have to buy tomorrow. Computers wear out, operating systems change, software continually updates and chewing gum doesn't hold dodgy hard drives together. You wouldn't economise in a carpentry workshop by not buying the tools to do the job, so why would you try to do the same thing to administrators?

Once again it's damage to services and an increase in inefficiency. But perhaps that's a bit low down on Sir Peter's list of priorities. It's clearly not an item that concerns his political masters too much. And as far as cuts to "discretionary" spending, such as consultants and staff expenses, which he thinks should yield a further £2.5 billion in 2010-11, well, he really needs to grow up. Consultants are nobody's favourite, it's true, but they are now used more than ever because successive rounds of cutbacks have succeeded in removing whole areas of expertise. It's the natural logic of cutting a service. You don't just lose the staff, you lose their specialist knowledge. But there's one consultant who might usefully be cut back. How does it feel, Sir Peter?

Blueprint for NHS sell-off

What will the Tories do to the NHS? I am returning to this question because it says a lot about where the two parties stand in the forthcoming election. It tells us Cameron is standing on policies as airbrushed as his face. And Labour is sitting on its hands because a proper punch at Cameron might also biff some of its chums on the chin. Both Labour and the Tories know the NHS is sensitive for Cameron - the Tory leader works hard to shake off popular suspicions that his party is anti-NHS. This is why he plastered up posters promising not to cut the health service. It is why he was desperate to distance himself from MEP Dan Hannan when the latter called the NHS a "mistake." And it is why Labour MPs have highlighted Cameron's pre-Christmas meeting with a group called Nurses for Reform. Nurses for Reform is a hard-right group which argues that the "NHS is no longer a dearly loved British institution. It is a Stalinist nationalised embarrassment that should now be quietly and deftly consigned to the dustbin of history." So Cameron was keen to play down the significance of the time he spent with it. I am going to agree with Cameron - slightly.

Nurses for Reform does not represent his most significant adviser. It is a bit more libertarian than purely Tory and more ultra in the free-market freakiness than he is. But a group called Doctors for Reform is much closer to the Tory centre. It is part of a think tank called Reform which has many strong Conservative connections. Tory shadow minister Ed Vaizey sits on the Reform advisory board. So does Christopher Gent, the ex-Lehman Brothers banker who funds the Tories and sits on Cameron's "recovery committee." Adrian Bull, boss of NHS privatisation firm Carillion Health, also sits on Reform's "advisory council." Doctors for Reform's policies are bound to please the think tank's advisers. They square the circle between "backing" the NHS and wanting to let free-market dogma and private health profiteering run riot in the health service. Doctors for Reform says that if "the founding principles of the NHS are to be preserved the following changes need to be adopted and implemented." Its changes preserve the NHS in the same way a butcher preserves a pig. They include: "Supply competition. Patients should be allowed to exercise real, informed choice about where, how and by whom they are treated." Instead of NHS hospitals treating NHS patients, the health service would dole out cash to private companies like Carillion. The health service would stop being a system of hospitals and clinics and become a big money tap pouring cash into the mouths of contractors.

The second change is "Topping up the basic level of care. The NHS should allow patients to spend their own money on treatment provided by either the independent sector or the NHS, where it might make a charge for treatments not normally available." So posh people could take their NHS money out of the health service, add a bit of their own cash and spend it at luxury hospitals. The third change is "Universal coverage with an insurance element. Our current system provides universal coverage but would benefit from having an insurance element." By raising NHS money through insurance schemes rather than tax, the burden of payment would be shifted away from the better off. This would lay the ground to opening up the NHS to the insurance industry. Now, I have gone to the trouble of looking at Doctors for Reform's proposals to dig out this plan to cut the NHS as a provider and shift it towards a voucher system funding the private health sector. But are these plans really secret? No - most of them are already in or compatible with the Tory draft health manifesto. In his manifesto Cameron promises to "open up the NHS to include new independent and voluntary sector providers." So when his billboards say that he will not cut the NHS, he means that he will.

He won't cut government spending on health, but he won't give the money to the NHS hospitals and clinics. Instead he will give the cash to his private health firm pals. Cameron's promise not to cut the NHS rests on a division between the NHS as a funder and as a provider. This arbitrary division is quite common in the minds of MPs, ministers, policy wonks and other Westminster folk, even though it is pretty much unknown in the wider world. And this will be done through a great big marketing drive, because Cameron says: "The next step is to create an NHS where patients are in the driving seat. We will give everyone the power to choose any health-care provider that meets NHS standards." So Carillion Health, for example, could grab the NHS cash from as many patients as it could persuade through its doors. It could use advertising drives, loss leaders and other tricks to starve local NHS hospitals. This would open the door to non-NHS health firms taking both NHS "voucher" payments and extra top-up fees for a little luxury. The only element of the Doctors for Reform plan not in Cameron's draft is the top-up insurance funding. So there is a lot of room to attack Cameron as wanting to take cash from the NHS and give it to his business pals. But Labour will not launch this attack because it did it first.

After years of campaigning by unions and activists, Health Secretary Andy Burnham finally stalled the handover of NHS money to private contractors. Because Labour has its own friends in the private health industry you get the feeling that it would want to restart the scheme as soon as possible if it was re-elected anyway. Essentially Labour is slow to attack Cameron's unpopular policies because they are too popular among its own team.

Alienated Britain for our children

A United Nations report provided a devastating indictment recently of life for young people in new Labour's Britain. When it comes to children's well-being, Britain ranks 21st in a list of 21 economically advanced countries. The US is 20th. The scope of the United Nations committee on the rights of the child report ranges from concrete statistics to hard-to-measure indicators of well-being. It makes disturbing reading. British children are more likely to grow up in poverty than children in any of the other countries studied. They are relatively poorly educated, with 30 per cent of 15 to 19-year-olds not in education or training and with no aspirations beyond low-skilled workers. British children feel alienated from their parents and from their peers. They smoke, drink, take drugs and have unprotected sex in higher numbers than their counterparts in other rich countries. They are demonised more. New Labour's attacks on children started in 1998 with the introduction of anti-social behaviour orders and child curfews. Modern ultrasound devices used to disperse groups treat children like dogs. School exclusions have become a first rather than a last resort. The British media participates in and promotes "a general climate of intolerance and negative public attitude towards children." TV reality shows come in for special criticism for potentially violating the rights of children who participate. Corporal punishment inflicted on children, which is legal in Britain when carried out in the home, should be criminalised, says the UN, as it has been in 18 of the other 20 countries surveyed. British children face the sanctions of criminal law at a younger age than children elsewhere - the British age for criminal responsibility is eight in Scotland and 10 in England and Wales. Children's campaigners have called for it to be raised to 12.

England and Wales imprison more children than any other country in western Europe. The Howard League for Penal Reform reports that there were 2,440 children in prison in England and Wales in 2006 compared to 646 in France, 244 in Germany, 10 in Norway and none in Spain. Children represent 3.1 per cent of the prison population in England and Wales, again the highest proportion in western Europe. Just under half of the children sentenced to imprisonment in 2008 had committed non-violent offences. Between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of children appearing in the criminal justice system do not receive legal representation. Life is pretty bleak once a child is in the criminal justice system. As the Howard League says, prison is not safe. Thirty children have died in custody since 1990 - 29 suicides and one as a result of restraint by staff. Self-harming by children in prison is common. There were over 1,000 incidents in 2007. Physical restraint is often used and children are strip-searched on their arrival in prison - forcibly if they refuse to comply. Prison is also ineffective. Seventy-nine per cent of boys and 57 per cent of girls aged 15-17 reoffend within two years of their release from custody. Our government imprisons children who are not accused of having committed any crime.

More than 2,000 children are detained in the UK every year while their parents' asylum claims are considered. If their parents are deported forcibly, so are the children in immensely distressing circumstances. Asylum-seeking children who arrive in the UK on their own can be X-rayed before social services will provide accommodation and support, because it's assumed that they are lying about their age. Even the government doesn't dispute that its treatment of asylum-seeking children breaches the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. But the government has not sought to raise standards. Instead, it has insisted for the last 17 years on a British opt-out from that part of the convention. If we, as a society, treat asylum-seeking children as not entitled to internationally agreed basic rights, is it any wonder that those failings start to apply to British children as well? Gordon Brown was supposed to be the man who, for all his other faults, understood child poverty; over a decade ago he committed the government to halving child poverty by 2010. Two weeks ago, in his speech to Labour Party conference, he announced that he would legislate to eliminate child poverty entirely by 2020. On the government's current form, nobody who campaigns on child poverty believes that these targets will be met.

Citizens' Advice reports that one in three children in Britain lives below the poverty line, defined as weekly household income of £226 - most significantly, the figure is rising by around 100,000 a year. As fuel and food costs and debt rise, more and more children will fall beneath that poverty line. Brown's fiendishly complex system of tax credits has resulted in more than £10 billion a year going unclaimed by households who are entitled to that help. And households living on benefit are still subject to the poverty trap. High housing costs are the chief problem, along with the loss of "passported" benefits such as free school meals. In Scotland, the SNP is doing something more than talking about child poverty. All children aged five to seven in Scottish schools are to receive free, nutritious school meals. Among other benefits, this removes some of the intricacies of the poverty trap for their parents. Credit lies with the Scottish Socialist Party for initiating the demand for universal free school meals in the Scottish Parliament. The SSP Free School Meals Bill proposed free nutritious school meals for all pupils. Free school meals for all five to seven-year-olds isn't enough, but it's a good start and something that Brown seems unable even to contemplate. The idea of lowering the voting age to 16 trickled out of the Labour national policy forum last July. It was one of those new Labour ideas designed to give a progressive veneer but with no possibility of finding its way onto the statute book. The question is, would any young person vote Labour under Brown?

No real choice for British electorate

In the least surprising item of news for many years, Gordon Brown announced on Wednesday that there will be a general election on May 6. And the announcement has sent the national news media into its usual flap, with commentators on the TV standing outside any conceivable public building talking about the nation's time to make a decision, the public's opportunity to take a new course and suchlike drivel. "Real change," "fresh start," "clear and straightforward mandate," all the old cliches are being dusted down and dragged out of the cupboard for a few more weeks of use before being packed tidily away for another five years or so, and then it will be back to business as usual. But, as usual, no-one's talking about the elephant in the room. The three biggest parties will be making the case frenetically for their particular political positions and their entitlement to our vote. But most of their work will be in attempting to manufacture differences with the other parties when those differences, for the most part, barely exist. Off we will go to the polls on May 6 as if it doesn't matter that you would have to walk a country mile to find an anti-Afghanistan war candidate in those three parties worth voting for.

They will plead for our votes, but they won't present an alternative to hacking back public sector jobs, pensions and wages to pay for the bankers' profligacy. They will cajole pensioners for the grey vote while competing with each other to keep the elderly in poverty. They will beg for the student vote while racing to see who can cut most out of the education budget. They will cry freedom while collaborating in developing the most repressive legal system in the Western world, with workers' rights, refugees' rights and the rights of minorities their chosen targets. They will, whichever party wins the election, preside over the biggest gap between rich and poor for generations. And they will do all this in the battered and abused name of democracy. The electorate will face the prospect of selecting a government, of whichever colour, dedicated to inequality, privilege and exploitation. So where does this newspaper go when talking to socialists and democrats? It's not an easy position and there isn't a glib, easy answer, but here goes anyway.

It would be easy to say "don't vote war criminal," but considering that almost the entire House of Commons was pro-war and voted time and again to back the Iraq killing, that doesn't take us very far. But we certainly will understand if people feel unable to vote for members of the wartime Cabinet. However, in most cases, we will still call for a Labour vote, not simply because there are a few in that party still worthy of the name, but also because its depredations on working people are generally less vicious that the Tories' and the chances of influencing it in a progessive direction are better. But it's not as simple as that. Labour, without any pressure for progressive change, finds it all too easy to backslide and there must be progressive electoral alternatives posed to maintain that pressure. There will be perhaps a double handful of progressive non-Labour candidates which this paper feels worthy of support, and we will highlight them during the course of the campaign. You will be fortunate if one of them is standing in your constituency. Elsewhere, it's not an easy thing for any socialist to do, to vote for the collection of fools and knaves that Labour seems to think worthy of candidacy. But the alternative is far worse and the fight to win the labour movement for progressive policies will continue whatever the election result.

Importantly, it will continue outside Parliament as well as inside. Parliamentary politics are not the be-all and end-all of the march of progress. And the Labour Party should mark this well. Post-election,that march will continue. Either with or without the party. The papers and the Tory Party are convinced that the current set of industrial disputes are a key election issue that may decisively influence the outcome. This is probably overstating the case. Whether a significant proportion of people will be swayed in their vote one way or the other because of the mini-strike wave is highly debatable. However, it is worth looking at what the official positions of the parties are towards the strikes as it draws out something fundamental about the parties we may be voting for on May 6. The Conservatives are clear. They are against these strikes, just as they are against all instances of working people having a say over their working lives. I doubt anyone was shocked to hear David Cameron encouraging people to cross the picket line and denouncing anyone who did not condemn the strikes in the most strident terms. He's the enemy, that's his job.

What about the Liberal Democrats though? Sometimes seen as a left-leaning alternative to Labour, perhaps they've come out with some moderate position trying to please both sides? Sadly, no. Lib Dem deputy leader Vince Cable said on Radio Four's Any Questions that he wanted to bring in new anti-union laws to "curb" rail workers being able to go on strike. It's true the Lib Dems have been attempting to appear reasonable - they denounce both management and unions equally - but the only practical action they discuss is calling off the strike action and bringing in legislation to stop it happening again. Certainly when Cable's boss Nick Clegg went out of his way to compare the tax-dodger Lord Ashcroft with the Unite union he wasn't trying to make friends among those fighting to protect workers' rights and conditions. Comparing the exploited with the exploiters while condemning any instance of workers making their voice heard is ultimately an extremely reactionary position. Labour is more contradictory. It may be taking money from the unions but, sadly, the Conservative rhetoric that the party is "a wholly owned subsidiary of the unions" is very far from the truth. Labour's rhetoric has been less confrontational than the Tories, but it still denounces the strike action rather than offering solidarity and support. There are honourable exceptions to this.

We know their names well. These are the same Labour MPs who are always on the right side of every struggle, but outside this ever-diminishing golden circle, the majority of Labour candidates standing at this election are opposed to the industrial action and are more than reluctant to offer any support to trade unionists fighting for a decent deal. It seems that "a future fair for all" doesn't include trade unionists. The number of Labour members who celebrated the ruling against the RMT's strike action was extremely distressing. The rail workers' struggle was seen as at best bad timing and at worst an irresponsible attempt to derail Labour's election chances - hardly a voice was raised to support their demands, and certainly none from the leadership. Darren Johnson of the Greens made his position clear on the ruling when he said that "the ability to strike is a fundamental democratic right and much of what we take for granted today has been won from exercising that right. It was deeply troubling when the law courts intervened in the RMT strike and it calls their neutrality into question." He went on to say that "likewise the reaction from the press and three largest parliamentary parties over the recent spate of industrial actions from the RMT, Unite and PCS among others has been very disappointing. "Far from endorsing these democratic decisions and examining the issues coolly they have simply sided with the employers, ignoring the extremely strong cases put by union members."

How about Plaid Cymru and the Scottish National Party? It's undoubtedly true that both parties have taken votes from traditional Labour base, so do they reflect those traditional Labour values towards trade unions? Well, yes and no. Yes for Plaid and no for the SNP, to be exact. Plaid Cymru Assembly Members refused to cross the picket line during the recent PCS strike and Leanne Wood AM joined the pickets and spoke at their rallies. She denounced Labour, saying that it seems "hell-bent on doing the Tories' dirty work for them by making it cheap to sack civil servants ahead of the anticipated post-general election cull of public services.
"As an example of a party losing touch with its core support, this is up there with the abolition of the lower rate of income tax. Casino capitalism and greed has led us to this position, yet it will be those who use public services who will be made to pay for the mistakes of the bankers yet again. "The poor are being robbed to pay the rich - a reversal of the Robin Hood principle. The PCS dispute is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a sustained all-out attack on the public sector and the thousands of loyal workers that keep our services running smoothly and efficiently, often for little more that the minimum wage."

However Plaid's Scottish friends were less exemplary. Angus SNP MP Mike Weir welcomed the cancellation of the rail strikes, although in fairness he did sound a note of caution saying: "The use of the courts to ban strikes is inflammatory as far as the union is concerned." When it came to the PCS strike the SNP members crossed the picket lines and showed no solidarity for PCS workers. Who else is there? Well, there will of course be a handful of left candidates from the Scottish Socialist Party, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), Respect and others whose support and solidarity for the strike action was 100 per cent consistent. Mick Tosh, who is standing for TUSC in Portsmouth North, responded to the decision on the RMT strike ballot by saying: "This is simply undemocratic. The right to strike is every worker's most basic right and it is a right which needs to be defended. "The pending action by rail workers was not only about defending jobs but about defending public safety. This undemocratic intervention is another clear example of the need to repeal the anti-trade union laws established by Thatcher. I am standing to repeal these draconian laws and give workers their rights back." It's difficult to be much clearer than that. There are many other issues to vote on in this election, and nobody should simply use the attitude towards industrial action as their sole deciding factor. However, when it comes to this election and strike action we need to look outside of the three parties of the political centre to see even the ABCs of solidarity and support for workers' struggles.