It’s Groundhog Day: the party may change but even under Labour, the script remains stubbornly the same
It is time to resuscitate Margaret Thatcher’s catchphrase: “There is no alternative.” With a twist, of course. Back then, “Tina” was deployed in favour of an economic model that gave us badly distributed low growth, shambolic rip-off privatised utilities, a housing crisis and social insecurity. It is now devastatingly clear that there is no alternative to discarding this failed experiment.
Yet this week, our supposedly Labour chancellor, Rachel Reeves, will take a scalpel to departmental budgets already devastated by 15 years of austerity. Our government has robbed most pensioners of the winter fuel payment, and announced £5bn worth of cuts to disability benefits, which strip support from citizens unable to independently clothe themselves, or who need an aide to use the toilet. By the time of the next election, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, all households will have suffered a fall in living standards, but the poorest will be clobbered twice as hard. This, under the rule of a party founded to represent the interests of ordinary people.
Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist
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