With millions set to face devastating cuts to their incomes the Government, which has already messed up its response to the CV19 health crisis by waiting too long to act and not even testing health care workers, has yet to respond adequately. Offering loans to businesses is not going to be sufficient to keep them open and the £330 billion package announced to date will be a drop in the ocean once the suppliers to the major car plants, now mostly closed, are also forced to shut down, some almost certainly permanently.
Millions are going to be made unemployed or placed on short time work, which is already the norm for millions who work in precarious sectors anyway. The loss of wages will feed into other sectors of the economy.
Meanwhile, the Government is currently refusing to ensure anyone who needs to stay away from work due to the fear they have CV19 can afford to do so.
Meanwhile, the public is panicking over the possibility of food shortages, which are certainly very likely in an era where 46% of our food is imported. Supermarket shelves are empty in many parts of the UK, it may be a good while, if ever, before they are even half full again. Reports of spivs buying up supermarket products and then selling them at grossly inflated profits are circulating on estates. Of course, at some point people thrown out of work won’t be able to afford any price for food, which, as is shown by the rise of foodbanks, is the situation millions already face today.
In what seems like no time at all the well oiled capitalist system, which the British economy is compared to many others, is disintegrating. A system, a country that cannot provide food and jobs for the vast majority of its population is at some point going to face the wrath of those who have nothing to lose.
The question on my lips then is what might the ruling class do? The obvious and most sensible answer would be to move to a wartime, socialised system involving significant nationalisation of industries and services and the taking over of the commanding heights of the economy.
Johnson seems I would suggest that he is being pushed in this direction BUT it is by no means certain that he and his political advisors and, in some cases masters, will inevitably act in such a fashion. If it is true that legislation has been drawn up to give various state bodies supreme powers for the next few years then this must be opposed. The question is by whom as Johnson could easily ignore this unilaterally.
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