MELTDOWN


Cameron plans crackdown on strikes as one million public workers walk out Guardian 10.07.14




Cameron stands at the despatch box as the fumes from the early Thatcher years filter up from the basement, the corruption of police, the media and of course politicians slowly begins to fill the chamber. In this putrid stench he seeks once again to hit out at those who are fighting to be treated fairly, the trade Union members who have the effrontery to withdraw their labour. The most draconian anti-union laws in Europe it seems are not enough, he wants once and for all to cripple the trade union movement by imposing such stringent conditions on action that withdrawal of one’s labour ceases to be a weapon that can be used by working people.
In the face of this disgusting onslaught by the Bullingdon Bully and his partners in slime who, the hedge fund asset strippers and morally bankrupt tax dodgers, where is the Labour Party? Instead of standing up for workers fighting for a living wage they cower like frightened children hiding behind the sofa during a particularly scary episode of Dr Who.  
This is the speech Miliband should have made yesterday:-

“I am proud to stand behind the banner of the trade union movement who for over a hundred and fifty years has fought for justice and the rights of working people. What banner will he stand behind, the banner of the hedge fund spivs, the crooked Russian oligarchs, and Jersey Island tax dodgers?”

That Miliband felt unable to make a speech along these lines speaks volumes about the Labour Party.

But Cameron’s stale Thatcherite rhetoric no longer cuts it, recent polling has shown ‘that the public back the right to strike in this dispute by 61% to 31%, support a £1-an-hour increase in council workers' wages by 48% to 35%, and oppose public-sector real-terms pay cuts lasting to 2018 by 56% to 25%.’[1]

More importantly the Prime Ministers inflammatory rhetoric needs to be seen in the context of a disintegration in confidence in electoral politics and politicians and the key institutions of the British state, which, with the allegations emerging from the Dickens dossier threatens to become a meltdown.
In the face of the scale of this erosion in trust Cameron’s attempts at business as usual are like the Captain of the Titanic making changes to the duty roster. The ruling elite have lost legitimacy and they still don’t get it. Nothing it seems will shake them out of their lethargic slumber. If there is not some sort of popular revolt soon there never will be and consequently we had better get used to living in a banana republic.
  

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