By Steve McKenzie, member of UNITE Community branch, Lewisham
A kleptocracy is probably the most accurate description of the ruling elite in Britain today. They have been, and are engaged in brazen embezzlement, and corrupt looting of the economy. It is a process that has been and is taking place on an almost unimaginable scale.
The particular capitalist economic model that has facilitated this theft has been in operation for the last fifty years. The billionaires, and their bought and paid for sycophants in the establishment, refer to it as neo-liberalism. It is the economic model that has been capitalism’s modus operandi since the last quarter of the twentieth century.
The mid-nineteen seventies saw the beginning of the end of the post-war consensus, and the demise of social democratic reformism. The neo-liberal looting of state assets started then and has been getting progressively worse over the years.
Economic neo-liberalism is an approach that involves reductions in state expenditure and the privatisation of every public service from which the parasitic elite think they can squeeze a profit. Public services are taken over by private companies and run for profit. They always impose staff cuts and workers’ wages and conditions are relentlessly driven down, so inevitably there is an intensification of labour for those who are left, and for new employees who are taken on at lower rates of pay and with poorer conditions.
Slashing wages and conditions
Costs are held down: from zero hours contracts to bogus self-employment, to avoid paying sickness and holiday pay, to suppressing earnings by paying wage rises below the rate of inflation and slashing any wage enhancements for overtime and unsocial hours.
This reduction in staffing levels, and suppression of wages and conditions, in turn leads to a dramatic deterioration in the levels of service provided. There are always and inevitably, dramatic cuts in the levels of service, cuts felt particularly by the most vulnerable in society who rely on them.
In this way, the NHS, council housing, education, and virtually every other local authority and public service, that had previously been taken for granted, has been, and is in the process of being, absolutely decimated.
On top of this plundering of public sector assets through privatisation, there are the hundreds of billions of pounds that have always been, and still are, siphoned out of the economy, through servicing debt, in other words interest payments on government bonds. The payments to the finance sector from the public purse are absolutely phenomenal, running into hundreds of billions.
PFI, the ‘Private Finance Initiative’
On top of this, there is also the criminal looting of the NHS, education and many other public services, rail, roads, bridges, the sewage system, when a service needs capital spending on infrastructure projects.
The particular form of legalised theft in relation to this, was perpetrated through a scheme known as the Private Finance Initiative, or PFI. It was a scheme first introduced in the last years of the Major government but adopted on a much grander scale by Blair’s so called New Labour government. Almost every new school, hospital, road, or public building of any kind that was built in the New Labour years was built through PFI. A company would fund the building of a clinic, hospital or a school and it was then rented back – never owned outright – back by the public authority.
The payments for PFI contracts were spread over decades – as much as thirty or thirty five years, with substantial payments each year. As a consequence, there were school and hospital builds where the original cost of building was covered ten times over. No wonder there was a ‘secondary’ market in PFI shares as the holders could sell on their ‘share’ to someone else guaranteed money for nothing for years to come.
PFI has ensured that billions are siphoned out of the NHS every year. This is money that should be spent on more beds, more and better paid staff and improved services.
On top of this looting of the public purse, through privatisation, PFI and interest payments to the finance industry, we have had Brexit, the Covid pandemic, the war in the Ukraine, and the sheer incompetence of successive Tory governments, all contributing to bringing the NHS to a state of collapse.
On top of the tens, if not hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths as a result of the Covid crisis being turned into a catastrophe, by Johnson’s inept and corrupt government, we now have as many as 500 unnecessary deaths a week as a result of the horrific state of disrepair of the NHS.
There are also record levels of homelessness and a cost of living crisis, with energy costs going through the roof. There are people dying as a result of fuel poverty and homelessness. The obvious question in every thinking person’s mind must be, ‘how much longer are we going to allow them to get away with this?‘
Stand up and fight back
It is clearly way past time to stand up and fight back. An industrial and political movement is needed to resist and reverse this entire process.
Joining a union, getting active and supporting the fight for wage rises above the rate of inflation is clearly the first step. However, it is absolutely clear that the whole process of cuts and privatisation needs to be reversed. Services that have been hived off to the private sector need to be renationalised and brought back in house.
The billions paid to the parasitic elite in the finance industry through interest payments needs to stop. Debt cancellation is imperative if the NHS and other public services are going to be saved and rebuilt. A fundamental change in outlook and approach is needed. Provision of services must be based on human need, and not on the basis of profit.
Economic liberalism has brought our country to its knees, and all but destroyed the gains of the post war years. Our public services need to be rebuilt. Privatisation and private ownership of the basic services, that make life bearable, needs to be condemned to the dustbin of history.
Only with a planned economy based on human need will we turn this situation around. Only a socialist society can offer any hope for the future.
The unnecessary deaths, the misery and suffering that we are now experiencing, is merely a foretaste of the horrors to come, if we continue to allow the ruling elite and their establishment to get away with it.
Stand up and fightback! There is no other way.
