Report: One-third of US counties are “maternity care deserts”

Kate Randall

Nearly 7 million women of childbearing age and 500,000 babies live in areas that have no obstetric hospitals or birth centers, and no obstetric providers. That is the sobering news from the 2022 March of Dimes report “Nowhere to go: Maternity care deserts across the US.”

A pregnant woman waits in line for groceries with hundreds during a food pantry, sponsored by Healthy Waltham for those in need due to the COVID-19 virus outbreak, at St. Mary's Church in Waltham, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)

The report by the maternal and infant health nonprofit found that over 2.8 million women of childbearing age and nearly 160,000 babies were impacted by reduced access to maternity care.
Five percent of US counties shifted to lower access in maternity care, while 3 percent of counties moved to higher access. Shifts in the number of obstetric providers was the primary driver for decreases in access, with 56 counties shifting to a lower level of access to maternity care due to a loss of obstetric providers.

March of Dimes describes quality maternal care as “providing safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and person-centered care.”

The report found that one in four Native American women (24.2 percent) and one in five black women (20.1 percent) did not receive adequate prenatal care in 2020, while the rate for white women was one in ten (9.9 percent).

Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander women were less likely to receive adequate prenatal care when compared to white women (17.3 and 11.3 percent less likely, respectively). In 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, nearly three times the rate for non-Hispanic white women.

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM), or unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term health consequences affects approximately 50,000 women in the US each year.

A JAMA Network Open research letter published in June found a staggering 18.4 percent increase in US maternal mortality between 2019 and 2020. These figures include deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of pregnancy.

The leading causes of death in pregnancy, the day of delivery and a year postpartum are hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, cardiovascular conditions, hemorrhage, amniotic fluid embolism, infection and cardiomyopathy. 

The March of Dimes report paints a slightly grimmer picture than the organization’s last report in 2020. It finds that 36 percent of counties nationwide, largely in the Midwest and South, are “maternity care deserts.” The latest report finds that nearly 16,000 women of childbearing age in more than 1,000 counties have no access to maternity hospitals, centers and providers.

In maternity deserts, the proportion of women living in counties below the national median household income is twice as high as it is in full access counties (90.1 percent versus 45.2 percent). Women with no access to maternity care are more likely to have asthma, hypertension and smoke tobacco. 

The bleak maternity care outlook for the nearly 7 million women in areas without birth centers, obstetric hospitals and providers is largely attributable to the diminishing profitability of hospitals and providers in mostly rural areas, along with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and burnout of hospital staff.

Since 2005, 181 hospitals in rural areas have closed across the US, with 138 closing in the last 12 years and 19 closing in 2020. “With hospital closures, inflation and COVID-19 limiting access to care, the compounding issues of our time are bearing down on families, forcing them to extend themselves in new ways to find the care they need and ways to afford it,” Stewart said.

Maternal care in the pandemic has seen significant deterioration during the pandemic. The report notes: “Staff shortages, restructuring of where and how care was delivered, shortage of personal protective equipment, caring for COVID-positive pregnant people and restriction of support during childbirth were all reported as challenges during pandemic care.”

In 2019, 48 percent of US counties did not have a single obstetrician (OB) and 55 percent did not have a certified nurse-midwife (CNM). OBs are far more likely to work in metropolitan areas, with fewer than 10 percent of obstetric providers practicing in rural areas. One is eight US babies is born in a county that has zero obstetric hospitals, centers or providers.

Infant mortality is defined as the death of an infant before his or her first birthday. CDC figures show the infant mortality rate in the US was 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2020. 

According to worldpopulationreview.com, the 10 countries with the lowest infant mortality rates are 29 to 40 percent of that in the US. These are Iceland (1.54 per 100,000), San Marino (1.56), Estonia (1.65), Slovenia (1.76), Norway (1.79), Japan (1.82), Singapore (1.85), Finland (1.88), Montenegro (1.95) and Sweden (2.150).

Eight US states—South Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, and North Carolina—had infant mortality rates ranging from 6.62 to more than 8 deaths per 100,000 babies born. In Mississippi, 288 infants born in 2020 died before their first birthday, for an infant mortality rate of 8.12 per 100,000—the worst of any US state.

In a country that spends more per capita on health care than any other industrialized nation, about 900 women died of pregnancy related causes in the US in 2020. The deaths of nearly two-thirds of these women were preventable and would not have taken place if they had access to quality maternity care.

With the delivery of health care subordinated to profit in the US, over 55 percent of all US counties had a greater than 10 percent proportion of women without health insurance. The March of Dimes notes: “Uninsured women often do not have adequate access, receive a lower quality of care and use fewer preventative services.” In the 12 states that have not adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, many women lose coverage 60 days after childbirth.

The period studied predates the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion legislation in mostly Southern and Midwestern states will exacerbate a deplorable situation in which access to maternity care is already virtually nonexistent, as clinics that provide abortion services as well as prenatal and other women’s health care shutter. One-third of US women now live in areas that lack access to abortion services.
The March of Dimes report follows an analysis of maternal death data released last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing that four out of five maternal deaths in the US are preventable.

“With an average of two women dying every day from complications of pregnancy and childbirth and two babies dying every hour, our country is facing a unique and critical moment as the infant and maternal health crisis continues intensifying,” March of Dimes President and CEO Stacey D. Stewart said in a statement announcing the report.

March of Dimes. Source: U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), Area Health Resources Files, 2021.

Five percent of US counties shifted to lower access in maternity care, while 3 percent of counties moved to higher access. Shifts in the number of obstetric providers was the primary driver for decreases in access, with 56 counties shifting to a lower level of access to maternity care due to a loss of obstetric providers.

March of Dimes describes quality maternal care as “providing safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable and person-centered care.”

The report found that one in four Native American women (24.2 percent) and one in five black women (20.1 percent) did not receive adequate prenatal care in 2020, while the rate for white women was one in ten (9.9 percent).

Hispanic and Asian/Pacific Islander women were less likely to receive adequate prenatal care when compared to white women (17.3 and 11.3 percent less likely, respectively). In 2020, the maternal mortality rate for non-Hispanic black women was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, nearly three times the rate for non-Hispanic white women.

Severe maternal morbidity (SMM), or unexpected outcomes of labor and delivery that result in significant short- or long-term health consequences affects approximately 50,000 women in the US each year.

A JAMA Network Open research letter published in June found a staggering 18.4 percent increase in US maternal mortality between 2019 and 2020. These figures include deaths during pregnancy or within 42 days of pregnancy.

The leading causes of death in pregnancy, the day of delivery and a year postpartum are hypertensive disorders of pregnancy, cardiovascular conditions, hemorrhage, amniotic fluid embolism, infection and cardiomyopathy. 

The March of Dimes report paints a slightly grimmer picture than the organization’s last report in 2020. It finds that 36 percent of counties nationwide, largely in the Midwest and South, are “maternity care deserts.” The latest report finds that nearly 16,000 women of childbearing age in more than 1,000 counties have no access to maternity hospitals, centers and providers.

In maternity deserts, the proportion of women living in counties below the national median household income is twice as high as it is in full access counties (90.1 percent versus 45.2 percent). Women with no access to maternity care are more likely to have asthma, hypertension and smoke tobacco. 

The bleak maternity care outlook for the nearly 7 million women in areas without birth centers, obstetric hospitals and providers is largely attributable to the diminishing profitability of hospitals and providers in mostly rural areas, along with the financial fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and burnout of hospital staff.

Since 2005, 181 hospitals in rural areas have closed across the US, with 138 closing in the last 12 years and 19 closing in 2020. “With hospital closures, inflation and COVID-19 limiting access to care, the compounding issues of our time are bearing down on families, forcing them to extend themselves in new ways to find the care they need and ways to afford it,” Stewart said.

Maternal care in the pandemic has seen significant deterioration during the pandemic. The report notes: “Staff shortages, restructuring of where and how care was delivered, shortage of personal protective equipment, caring for COVID-positive pregnant people and restriction of support during childbirth were all reported as challenges during pandemic care.”

In 2019, 48 percent of US counties did not have a single obstetrician (OB) and 55 percent did not have a certified nurse-midwife (CNM). OBs are far more likely to work in metropolitan areas, with fewer than 10 percent of obstetric providers practicing in rural areas. One is eight US babies is born in a county that has zero obstetric hospitals, centers or providers.

Infant mortality is defined as the death of an infant before his or her first birthday. CDC figures show the infant mortality rate in the US was 5.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2020. 

According to worldpopulationreview.com, the 10 countries with the lowest infant mortality rates are 29 to 40 percent of that in the US. These are Iceland (1.54 per 100,000), San Marino (1.56), Estonia (1.65), Slovenia (1.76), Norway (1.79), Japan (1.82), Singapore (1.85), Finland (1.88), Montenegro (1.95) and Sweden (2.150.

Eight US states—South Dakota, Kansas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia and North Carolina—had infant mortality rates ranging from 6.62 to more than 8 deaths per 100,000 babies born. In Mississippi, 288 infants born in 2020 died before their first birthday, for an infant mortality rate of 8.12 per 100,000—the worst of any US state.

In a country that spends more per capita on health care than any other industrialized nation, about 900 women died of pregnancy related causes in the US in 2020. The deaths of nearly two-thirds of these women were preventable and would not have taken place if they had access to quality maternity care.

With the delivery of health care subordinated to profit in the US, over 55 percent of all US counties had a greater than 10 percent proportion of women without health insurance. The March of Dimes notes: “Uninsured women often do not have adequate access, receive a lower quality of care and use fewer preventative services.” In the 12 states that have not adopted Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, many women lose coverage 60 days after childbirth.

The period studied predates the US Supreme Court’s overturning of the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade. Anti-abortion legislation in mostly Southern and Midwestern states will exacerbate a deplorable situation in which access to maternity care is already virtually nonexistent, as clinics that provide abortion services as well as prenatal and other women’s health care shutter. One-third of US women now live in areas that lack access to abortion services.

Spain’s Podemos adopts massive military budget amid war with Russia

Alice Summers

Last week, Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government approved its 2023 Budget. Hailed by the bourgeois press for “historic” social spending measures, the Budget in fact contains Spain’s largest increase in military spending in history. The budget is another devastating exposure of the imperialist militarism of the pseudo-left Podemos party.

Prime Minister of Spain Pedro Sanchez speaks to Spanish troops during his visit to Adazi Military base in Kadaga, Latvia, Tuesday, March. 8, 2022. (AP Photo/Roman Koksarov)

US President Joe Biden has admitted in discussions to private donors that the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine threatens to unleash a nuclear apocalypse, but Podemos is using the war to implement longstanding rearmament plans of the Spanish military.

Podemos’ budget offers workers minor hikes in social spending on items such as unemployment benefits, childcare grants, train travel and health care, for example—with €266.7 billion allotted to “social” issues. These rises are, however, largely overtaken by the over 10 percent surge of inflation in Spain and across Europe. By far the most significant measure in the 2023 budget is the increase in military spending, by a staggering 25.8 percent.

Military spending will total over €12.8 billion next year, up from around €10 billion in 2022. This plan is in line with Madrid’s commitment to NATO to increase its defence budget to 2 percent of GDP by 2029. Military expenditure will reach 1.2 percent of GDP next year under this Budget. The rest of the increase comes from €4.9 billion of investment in “special modernisation programmes,” most of which will go to Spanish armament companies. This represents a 72 percent increase on the roughly €2.9 billion allotted to these plans in 2022.

In an attempt to render these reactionary and dangerous measures palatable to the Spanish working class, which holds deep-seated anti-war sentiments, the PSOE-Podemos government has championed the “special modernisation programmes” as positive developments for job creation. According to a statement from the Ministry of Defence, these schemes “will contribute to creating 22,667 new jobs either directly or indirectly.”

According to data from the pacifist institute Delàs Center for Peace Studies, Madrid’s real military spending—which includes, besides the Ministry of Defense budget, the rest of the items of a military nature distributed in other portfolios—will be 27 billion euros, the equivalent of 75.7 million euros per day. In its report posted on Tuesday, it stated that 'If these budgets are approved, Spain will already exceed NATO’s spending target by 2023, dedicating 2.17% of its GDP to military spending.” According to this calculation, “for every ten euros that the state invests in 2023, three will be for weapons.”

The massive hike in military expenditure comes amidst NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, to which the Spanish government has already allocated millions of euros in arms, ammunition and training for Ukrainian troops. With this new Budget, the PSOE-Podemos coalition government is doubling down on its commitment to the warmongering of the NATO alliance in Ukraine, even as this conflict threatens to escalate into a nuclear confrontation.

In addition to the military expenditure increases, the Budget also includes increases in social spending, that will be eaten by inflation. Year-on-year inflation reached 10.5 percent in August, dropping only slightly to 9 percent in September. The Budget includes:

• An increase of the IPREM rate—a measure used to determine the level of various welfare benefits—from its current €579 to €600 a month. This equates to an uptick of only 3.6 percent.

• A monthly €100 tax rebate given to working mothers with children up to three years of age. This tiny sum will do little to help either working or non-working mothers, many of whom are already struggling to feed, clothe and house their children as the cost of living soars. As of August this year, the prices of core food items had risen 13.8 percent as compared to the same time in 2021; clothing costs had increased by 5.6 percent; and housing expenses had grown by an enormous 24.8 percent.

• Minor increase in unemployment benefits. Currently, an unemployed worker receives 70 percent of their salary (what they were earning in the 180 days before losing their job) in benefits for the first six months of their unemployment, a sum which drops to 50 percent from the seventh month. Under the new budget, this will rise to 60 percent, affecting around 300,000 people.

• Pensions and the minimum wage will remain stagnant, as they will be pegged to the inflation rate, leading to no improvement in real terms for millions of workers.

• The health care budget will also go up by 6.7 percent, a rise which is well below the current inflation rate and will leave already struggling health systems starved of funds. The same as with Education, increasing by 6.6 percent.

The fact that this year’s Budget includes “record” social spending measures is not due to any genuine commitment by the PSOE-Podemos government to ensuring decent living conditions for the Spanish working class. Instead, the budget effectively slashes the real, inflation-adjusted value of social benefits while funneling massive resources into the military.

Podemos, the PSOE’s junior partner in government, has responded to the Budget by celebrating the social spending measures, all while falsely attempting to present itself as an opponent of the military spending increase. In a statement on Twitter last Tuesday, Podemos spokesperson Pablo Echenique claimed that his party had somehow been tricked into passing the Budget, without knowing that defence expenditure had been raised.

Echenique stated: “We are not going to break apart the government because of the PSOE’s disloyalty, because it would be very irresponsible when we have [right-wing PP leader Alberto Núñez] Feijóo and [far-right Vox party leader Santiago] Abascal sharpening the knives. But I want to say clearly that they [the PSOE] have hidden this unilateral increase in defence spending from us and that it is a disgrace.”

Similarly, Podemos party leader and Minister for Social Rights Ione Belarra claimed that her party had “opposed head-on in this negotiation any increase in military spending.” But as Podemos does not constitute the “majority in government,” she asserted, it is difficult to turn this “stubbornness” into a “reality.”

The narrative that military spending increases had somehow been snuck into the Budget behind the backs of innocent Podemos ministers quickly imploded, however. On Wednesday, it was revealed that Yolanda Díaz, Podemos Minister of Labour and Spain’s Second Deputy Prime Minister, had agreed with PSOE Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez that Podemos would not oppose the increase in military spending. Podemos sources involved in negotiations with the PSOE also told El Diario that they had informed the party’s leadership about the Budget’s defence spending increases.

In reality, Podemos’ protestations are nothing more than empty words, seeking to obscure the party’s real role as a member of an imperialist government committed to policies of war abroad and austerity and repression at home. Terrified at mounting social opposition, Podemos is forced to put forward political stunts, while reassuring its commitments to Spanish imperialism.

Huge rise in UK COVID infections amid threat of flu “twindemic” and new immune-evading variants

Paul Bond

As winter approaches, and with new immune-evasive variants emerging around the world, Britain is already facing a surge in COVID infections and hospitalisations.

Official figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed a 25 percent rise in infection rate over one week, with 1.7 million people testing positive in the week ending October 3, a huge rise from the 1.3 million the previous week. 

Clinical staff care for a patient with coronavirus in the intensive care unit at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, May 5, 2020 [AP Photo/Neil Hall Pool via AP]

Scientists are warning of a potentially “devastating” new wave of the pandemic over the autumn, combining with a massive rise in flu cases in a “twindemic” that will wreak havoc in an already overloaded National Health Service (NHS).

The situation exposes again the criminal indifference of the ruling class to the threat posed by the pandemic to public health and lives. Government policies and downscaling of testing have created a lethal situation, described by virologist Professor Lawrence Young of Warwick University as “a perfect storm… of inadequate surveillance, people not coming forward for vaccination and the economic situation.”

COVID infections have significantly increased to one in 35 people in England (2.8 percent of the population), one in 40 in Wales and Northern Ireland, and one in 50 in Scotland. Data from the ZOE Symptom Tracker app show a 34 percent rise in the last two weeks alone. The data currently show an estimated 235,829 new daily symptomatic cases, up from 176,090 two weeks ago.

Hospitalisations are also on the rise. On October 12, NHS England reported a total of 10,608 hospital beds occupied by confirmed COVID-19 patients. This was 10 percent up on the previous week’s 9,631, and roughly double the total a month ago. It is the highest figure since July 29. Hospitals around the country are reporting their highest level of COVID patients in months.

Increasing infections are resulting in a surge of deaths. In the week to October 8, there were 793 deaths recorded, a nearly 39 percent increase on the previous seven days. Even with revisions of the criteria for recording deaths aimed at restricting the numbers, the official figures record a total of more than 190,000 (191,681) dead with COVID. The more accurate fatality figure (recording the number of people who died with COVID mentioned on the birth certificate) is 207,948.

Dr Mary Ramsay, Director of Public Health Programmes at the UK Health Security Agency, downplayed the impact, saying that “deaths with Covid-19 have also started to rise. Whilst this is concerning, it is too early to say whether these are deaths due to Covid-19…” 

The longer-term effects of the virus are becoming ever more apparent. ONS figures from early September report 2.3 million people in the UK living with Long COVID, up 300,000 on the previous reporting period. This is around 3.5 percent of the population, one in every 28 people. Of these, nearly half (1.1 million) say they were first infected more than a year ago, while 514,000 say they were first infected at least two years ago. 

The COVID surge is exacerbating the crisis in the systematically underfunded NHS. This can be seen acutely in a small hospital, St Mary’s on the Isle of Wight, which has just declared its fourth critical incident in as many months. A major contributory factor has been the sharp rise in COVID hospitalisations, up from 12 at the end of September to 41. 

Professor Tim Spector, co-founder of the ZOE app, said that the UK is already at the start of its next wave of coronavirus, which is affecting older people earlier than the last wave. He told the Independent that one problem was out-of-date official information. “Many people are still using the government guidelines about symptoms which are wrong. At the moment, COVID starts in two-thirds of people with a sore throat. Fever and loss of smell are really rare now—so many old people may not think they’ve got COVID. They’d say it’s a cold and not be tested.”

These are the results of the government’s policy of malign neglect in pursuit of profit. Their determination to downplay or disregard the health implications of the pandemic in order to keep the economy open has led to continued resurgences of the virus.

The ditching of all testing and surveillance has not only led to under-reporting of infection, it has prevented the elimination of the virus which was both medically possible and socially necessary. Instead, the policy of “living with the virus” has resulted in the government welcoming the supposed “mild” character of new variants, with more cold or flu-like symptoms. 

The virus has been allowed to develop and mutate, resulting in more variations that will resist or evade vaccines and immunity. Scientists are now reporting convergent mutations, where variants are different but share the same mutations, making them more effective at evading immune responses. 

Yunlong Cao, whose co-authored research paper on this is in pre-print, told New Atlas, “Seeing this convergent evolution pattern would mean that SARS-CoV-2 would evolve immune-evasive mutations much more frequently than before, and the resulting new variants would be much more immune-evasive.”

This means patients are less able to fight off the infection. Virologist Marc Johnson said the result is that “the virus, because there’s no bottlenecks from spreading from person to person, it just hits the evolutionary fast forward button.”

This is the direct result of the “let it rip” policies adopted by the ruling class internationally. While the British government continues to boast of its vaccination programme, the effect of such policies is to threaten the vaccination immunity achieved so far.

The variant Omicron BA.2.75.2, which was gaining ground in the UK, was described by scientist Eric Topol as “the most immune evasive variant to date,” although at present it does not yet account for a majority of cases. It emerged from the BA.2.75 variant, which is responsible for 88 percent of infections in India.

However, Topol warned, even this has been surpassed by the XBB variant, first detected in Cyprus. Some have called this a “super strain,” emerging from a combination of two forms of Omicron. Although not relatively widespread yet, there is concern that if XBB is as transmissible as other forms of Omicron, it will sweep through health systems like wildfire. 

Lawrence Young noted the convergent mutations of BA.2.75.2 and BQ1.1: “although they’re slightly different in how they’ve come about they’ve come up with the same changes to get around the body’s immune system. 

“What we’re finding is the virus is evolving around the immunity that’s been built up through vaccines and countless infections people have had.” 

Discontinuing comprehensive testing and surveillance—including ending free testing, closing research labs and ending funding to the ZOE Health Study in March—has meant an under-reporting of infection rates and a corresponding inability to respond to new variants.

Young pointed to the downscaling of testing following the government’s “Living with Covid” plan. “We’ve really taken our eye off the ball with Covid tests. We can only detect variants or know what’s coming by doing sequencing from PCR testing, and it’s not going on anywhere near the extent it was a year ago. People are going to get various infections over the winter but won’t know what they are because free tests aren’t available—it’s going to be a problem.” 

He pointed too to the economic situation, where “if people do feel poorly they’re not likely to take time off work.” This will only encourage further the spread and mutation of the virus.

UK: Truss sacks chancellor, U-turns on corporation tax as Tories prepare another palace coup

Thomas Scripps

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss has U-turned on a flagship policy of her mini-budget, abandoning plans to scrap the scheduled increase in corporation tax from 19 to 25 percent from April 2023, which will now go ahead. Her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, has been sacked.

With Truss’s government less than 40 days old, Kwarteng becomes the second shortest-serving chancellor in UK history, narrowly outstripping Iain Macleod who died in office in 1970.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss holds a press conference at No. 9 Downing Street announcing Jeremy Hunt as her new Chancellor of the Exchequer. [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Truss’s government is collapsing amid a raging crisis threatening world capitalism, with interest rates rising sharply around the world to suppress wages amid the economic fallout of the pandemic and NATO’s war and sanctions against Russia.

Truss’s hand was forced by an open rebellion in her ruling Conservative Party. Political journalist John Sopel tweeted yesterday, “A cabinet minister until a few weeks ago has just told me [Liz Truss] ‘has unleashed hell on this country.’ The language being used by senior Conservatives, the incredulity, the cold fury is like nothing I’ve seen in decades of covering UK politics.”

A meeting between Truss and backbench Tory MPs Wednesdaywas described as “sulphurous”, “funereal”, “bleak” and “horrendous,” with one MP commenting, “I was shocked at how brutal it was.” Another called Truss’s cabinet, “libertarian Jihadists who are wrecking the party.” Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee, accused her of “trashing” the last ten years of Conservative government.

This came in response to a crash in market confidence in the UK after Truss and Kwarteng’s September 23 mini-budget of unfunded tax giveaways to the corporations and the highest earners, with the value of the pound and UK government bonds tanking. Truss’s announcement today was timed to pre-empt the Bank of England’s planned cut-off for billions of pounds’ worth of emergency support begun in the wake of the budget.

Investors feared the limping British economy could not possibly underwrite a £60 billion hit to public debt. They were making clear that public spending must be cut even if this means provoking a broader social explosion and declaring no confidence not only in the economy but directly in her.

The sell-off of British bonds and fall in the pound prompted the Bank of England to raise interest rates more quickly than planned, with a broad expectation that they would reach 6 percent by early next year. This sent mortgages soaring. Meanwhile, discussions began in government over how to find tens of billions of pounds of cuts in just three weeks.

The fallout has left the Tories facing an unprecedented electoral rout. Analysis by Electoral Calculus shows the party reduced to just 85 seats—down from 356 and their worst ever result by far—if current polling figures were reflected at the ballot box.

There have been calls for a U-turn for weeks to avert a Tory catastrophe. Former chancellor George Osborne tweeted Wednesday, “Given the pain being caused to the real economy by the financial turbulence, it’s not clear why it is in anyone’s interests to wait 18 more days before the inevitable U-turn on the mini budget.”

By sacking Kwarteng, Truss hopes to save herself. But there is little chance this will succeed. Appointing Jeremy Hunt as replacement chancellor is an attempt to reach out to other sections of the party, but her government is dead in the water. Hunt, a prominent Rishi Sunak supporter who was at the centre of plans to stop Truss becoming Tory leader, will be as keen as anyone for the axe to fall on her neck—whatever he says in public.

UK Prime Minister Liz Truss appoints Jeremy Hunt as her new Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Cabinet Room of No10 Downing Street. October 14, 2022 [Photo by Andrew Parsons/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

A group of senior party MPs told BBC Newsnight’s Nicholas Watt that Kwarteng’s sacking will “prompt them to come out publicly next week and call on Liz Truss to resign.” One said, “These are serious people. The PM will find it difficult to survive.”

Influential editor of the ConservativeHome website Tim Montgomerie tweeted pointedly, “If I was Liz Truss I wouldn’t wait to be thrown out of office by my party. I hope I’d resign. The country and markets have resoundingly rejected my signature agenda.”

Plans are far-advanced for yet another palace coup, delivering the fifth Tory prime minister in six years. The Times reports, “Senior Conservatives are holding talks about replacing Liz Truss with a joint ticket of Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt as part of a ‘coronation’ by MPs.”

There are, the newspaper writes, “Around ‘20 to 30’ former ministers and senior backbenchers are attempting to find a way for a ‘council of elders’ to tell Truss to quit.”

One MP told its reporters, “It’s either Rishi as prime minister with Penny as his deputy and foreign secretary, or Penny as prime minister with Rishi as chancellor. They would promise to lead a government of all the talents and most MPs would fall in behind that.”

The Tory Party’s latest planned palace coup is being determined directly by the world’s banks and asset managers. Krishna Guha, an economist at Investec, commented to the Financial Times that this was the first time in decades “that the financial markets have forced the government of a big, developed economy with its own central bank to capitulate on core fiscal ambitions”.

Truss’s replacement will be expected to restore confidence in the UK economy by savaging the working class. And if the Tories cannot fix their mess to the satisfaction of the financial oligarchy, the Labour Party promises to step in.

After months of refusing to do so during the crisis wracking the Tory Party, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer finally called for a general election “for the good of the country” in the Guardian. This was “regardless of whether Liz Truss is ousted by the Conservatives, saying the government is ‘completely at the end of the road’ and Labour is preparing for power.” Truss had driven the economy “into a wall” while “trashing our institutions”, he said, and changing the prime minister again without allowing the country to vote would not be acceptable.

Starmer has made absolutely clear that he will continue the Tory party’s offensive against the working class, relying on the trade union apparatus to do so. Workers must be able to assert their political voice and to decide what must be done to resolve this crisis on their terms and their interest, not on those of the global speculators and corporate boardrooms.

Royal Mail announces plans to axe 10,000 UK jobs

Tony Robson

Royal Mail announced today that it will axe 10,000 full time jobs, over 6 percent of its 150,000-strong workforce across the UK. The jobs massacre was unveiled by parent group International Services Distribution and will be realised in two tranches, with 5,000 redundancies by March and a total of 10,000 by August 2023.

The company’s plans were announced less than 12 hours after Thursday’s strike by 115,000 postal workers at 1,500 workplaces. It was the sixth national strike since August and the first of 19 more one-day stoppages in the lead up to Christmas.

Pickets at Crieff Delivery Office, October 13, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

Today’s announcement by Royal Mail is a clear attempt to intimidate postal workers from taking further strike action. The company sought to justify its brutal measure by blaming strikers, saying it expected end of year losses of £350 million, which included “the direct impact of eight days of industrial action.”

Postal workers are fighting Royal Mail plans to turn them into a super-exploited workforce to compete with Amazon and other rivals in the parcel delivery market. The company’s agenda is proceeding under the mantra of ending “legacy benefits”, meaning the terms and conditions won by postal workers in decades of struggle.

Royal Mail is proceeding with its agenda through executive action. But the press release from the Communication Workers Union (CWU) underlines it will not mobilise postal workers against Royal Mail’s declaration of class warfare.

It pays lips service to opposing the carve-up and asset stripping by the company’s financial investors stating, “The announcement is the result of gross mismanagement and a failed business agenda of ending daily deliveries, a wholesale levelling-down of the terms, pay and conditions of postal workers, and turning Royal Mail into a gig economy style parcel courier.”

But the centrepiece of the statement is an appeal for the Board to meet and discuss the union’s “alternative business plan”, framed as one offering greater profitability based on “utilising the competitive edge it has already in its deliveries to 32 million addresses across the country.”

The company’s jobs massacre announcement blows out of the water the empty claims by CWU General Secretary Dave Ward about progress in this week’s reconvened talks with Royal Mail executives. In a CWU video update on Monday’s company talks, Ward had announced, “Things are shifting” and claimed there was “a different feeling in the room.” 

CWU leader Dave Ward speaking at the Enough is Enough rally in London, October 1, 2022 [Photo: WSWS]

The suspicions aired by postal workers on social media about the talks have been fully confirmed. Workers warned they were a ruse by Royal Mail as it seeks to end strikes over the profitable Christmas period, buying time while the Truss government readies new anti-strike legislation to be used against them.

Royal Mail is acting as a corporate dictator on behalf of the financial oligarchy. It cites losses from industrial action, but the company has been on a non-stop looting spree on behalf of shareholders. This includes £400 million in dividends paid out in 2021 and £130 million this year. Profits quadrupled last year to £726 million, fueled by a surge in online buying during the pandemic. After a dip in these record profits by 8 percent this year, to £662 million, Royal Mail chair Keith Williams callously declared that the “pandemic boom” was over.

The response by these pandemic profiteers is that workplace “modernisation”, i.e., the gutting of workers’ terms and conditions, as envisaged in the Pathway to Change (PtC) agreed last year with the CWU, must be accelerated.

Things to get much, much worse for UK workers

Robert Stevens

Rising interest rates, high inflation, and declining wages and welfare benefits will plunge vast numbers of UK workers into desperate poverty.

Thousands are set to lose their homes as due to crushing rises in mortgage rates and resulting rent increases. Close to five million homeowners face staggering increases in their mortgage payments over the next two years. For the first time since 2008, the average two-year fixed mortgage rate soared above 6 percent this month, with a further rise to 6.46 percent this week. UK Finance predicts that a rise in the Bank of England’s own interest rate to 6 percent would add an estimated £445 a month to repayments on a typical £200,000 loan—a staggering £5,340 a year.

Two million people already on variable rate deals will see an immediate increase. Over the next six months around 600,000 mortgages will renewed, resulting in nearly 3,300 households a day being forced to taking on hundreds of pounds a month in extra repayments of face repossessions. Around 2 million mortgages holders coming to the end of a fixed rate deal will have to do the same in the next year.

According to the Royal Bank of Canada, passing on these costs to tenants could lift already record-high rents by £280 a month.

The working class is already under siege. With inflation at a 40-year high of nearly 12.5 percent, grocery inflation is even higher—surging to a record high of 13.9 percent in September. Research by Kantar found that households face an increase of £643 in their annual supermarket spend (an extra £12 a week), taking an annual grocery bill to £5,265 if they continue to buy the same items.

A shopper enters a supermarket in London, January 12, 2021 [AP Photo/Alastair Grant]

Even with the energy bills support announced by the government, the cap for a typical annual household bill still rose from £1,971 to £2,500—double the figure last winter.

Since Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled his disastrous mini-budget on September 23, consisting of £45 billion in tax cuts for the richest—based on increased government borrowing—the pound has been threatened with collapse and UK bond prices have tanked as the global money markets moved against the Truss government.

The demands of the financial markets were that any tax-cutting measures had to be paid with deepening austerity, not government borrowing. The run on the pound forced the government to pull one of its tax cuts, the proposed abolishing of the 45 percent highest rate of tax, but this still left a £43 billion black hole.

The markets demanded that Kwarteng immediately spell out what austerity measures he intends to carry out to prevent UK public debt growing ever-larger. He responded by moving forward his “medium-term fiscal plan” statement from November 23 to October 31.

UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng (front right) meets with other G7 finance ministers during the IMF Annual Meetings in Washington, October 12, 2022 [Photo / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

On Tuesday the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) issued a report concluding that the chancellor would be required make £62 billion pounds of spending cuts or tax rises. It said the cost of the energy cap support package was the main factor in increasing government borrowing to almost £200 billion this year.

The Financial Times noted, “But the IFS estimated that even in 2026-27, after this support has ended, government borrowing will amount to £103 bn — about £71bn more than official forecasts showed in March — with the increase largely owing to the tax cuts Kwarteng announced last month.”

The IFS outlines various “big and painful” scenarios in which the £62 billion could be clawed back, including indexing working-age benefits to earnings rather than inflation for two years (£13 billion), an 8 percent cut in all day-to-day spending on public services (£35 billion), and reducing investment spending to 2 percent of GDP (£14 billion). The FT notes IFS calculations that if the entire £62 billion is to come from public spending savings, this would require cuts of 15 percent in every department if defence and the National Health Service were not ringfenced, and of more than quarter (27 percent) if they were.

IFS director Paul Johnson advised, “The specifics of the UK government’s fiscal strategy are under more scrutiny by financial markets than at any point in the recent past... The chancellor should not rely on over-optimistic growth forecasts or promises of unspecified spending cuts.”

Bullying the working class to accept de facto pay cuts, the IFS warns that inflation-matching pay rises in the public sector, costing the public purse an additional £25 billion, would necessitate 500,000 job cuts by 2024−25. This is 8.6 percent of the public sector workforce.

The IFS warns that continuing with below-inflation deals will trigger further working-class resistance. Bee Boileau, an IFS Research Economist, said, “Not offering higher pay awards risks a wave of strikes and ongoing challenges with recruitment and retention.”

Millions of workers have suffered massive shocks to their incomes due to a litany of well below-inflation pay rises agreed by the trade union bureaucracy and the employers throughout the private and public sectors. Union leaders have sought to palm these off as “victories” on the basis that they are the best deals that can be won, and that inflation will start to fall soon.

Such lies are torn apart by an International Monetary Fund (IMF) survey published this week warning that high inflation will persist longer in the UK than similar economies. It predicts that the Consumer Price Index measure of inflation will remain high at 6.3 percent by the end of 2023. This is higher than that forecast for every member of the eurozone apart from Slovakia. CPI, currently at 9.9 percent, is usually 2 to 3 percent lower than the more accurate Retail Prices Index (RPI) measure of inflation, so the IMF prediction means a forecast of inflation at 9 or even 10 percent in a year’s time. Even this could be optimistic given the growing threat of a global economic catastrophe.

The IMF intervened Wednesday to insist that there could be no alternative to the Truss government, or any other, carrying out austerity as the main remedy for high inflation. Its Fiscal Monitor report states that austerity was required and “necessary to help tackle inflation and address debt vulnerabilities”. Once again, austerity demands are directed against the working class, with the insistence that restraining public sector pay “could help contain overall wage and price pressures”.

Other research published this week by the Legatum thinktank shows that a real-terms cut in welfare benefits would increase the number of people in Britain living in poverty to 16 million. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that the poorest tenth of the population would see earnings fall as a result of the measure by £214 a year once personal tax changes are factored in. Research published by the Child Poverty Action Group found that raising benefits in line with the average increase in workers’ pay (about 5 percent) rather than in line with inflation would push 200,000 more children into poverty.

Germany’s gas price cap: A gift for large corporations and the rich

Peter Schwarz

The Gas Price Commission set up by the German government presented a proposal on Monday for cushioning high natural gas and energy prices with government money. It envisions lavish cash gifts for large corporations and the wealthy, while the poor, ordinary earners and small businesses will still be unable to absorb the skyrocketing costs despite government aid.

24 million private households and small businesses are expected to bear the full brunt of higher gas prices in the heating-intensive winter months of January, February and possibly March. The tariff has risen from around 7 cents per kilowatt hour before the sanctions against Russia were imposed to between 20 and 30 cents.

For December, the Commission proposes a one-time payment equal to this September’s monthly bill. This is a highly arbitrary value, as the September bill for many households was still based on the old prices. The main beneficiaries are wealthy villa owners with high gas consumption, who are treated in the same way as tenants of small apartments.

A certain “watering can subsidy” was unfortunately unavoidable, commented the chairmen of the commission, “economic expert” Veronika Grimm, the president of the BDI industry association, Siegfried Russwurm, and the chairman of the IG BCE chemical workers union, Michael Vassiliadis, with a shrug.

It will not be until March or April that private customers and small and medium-sized enterprises will be able to purchase 80 percent of their previous year’s consumption at its government-subsidized price of 12 cents. That is still almost twice as much as before the Ukraine war. For anything above that, they will have to pay the full market price.

In total, this is expected to cost the state around €66 billion by the end of April 2024. A further €30 billion is earmarked for subsidizing around 25,000 large companies with an annual consumption of over 1.5 megawatt hours, which will start benefiting from subsidized prices as early as January 1.

They will be guaranteed a gas price of 7 cents per kilowatt hour for 70 percent of the previous year’s consumption. BDI President Russwurm claims that this is roughly equivalent to the 12 cents for private consumers, since it is a pure procurement price and not the gross tariff including taxes and fees, as is the case for private customers. But it is obvious that large corporations are being favoured. Here, too, the Commission is acting according to the watering-can principle. Highly profitable corporations benefit from the state money just as much as those threatened with bankruptcy.

The €96 billion for the gas price cap does not include the €50 billion the government is using to rescue intermediaries like Uniper, which have run into difficulties due to the lack of supplies of cheap gas from Russia. This money then ends up directly in the bank accounts of the big energy companies, which are making record profits because of the high prices.

The gas price cap and the bailout of the middlemen will require around three-quarters of the “double whammy” package of €200 billion announced by the German government in September. This does not even take into account rising electricity and oil prices. Indeed, the massive rise in electricity prices is only partly due to the high price of gas, which economists generally believe will never return to pre-war levels. And a new price explosion is looming on the oil market.

The reason is the EU Commission’s effort to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports to all countries in the world. It is to be enforced by punitive measures against shipping companies that transport Russian oil and against insurance companies that insure the shipments. If Russia defies these measures, it faces a massive shortage of oil and diesel and a corresponding price explosion.

Efforts to get Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries to increase production have failed. Instead, OPEC countries, fearing international price dictates, have cut production by two million barrels per day. To prevent a further price increase before the November mid-term elections, the US is now discussing an oil export ban, which would additionally hit Europe.

The huge sum of €200 billion for lowering the price of gas will not be financed directly from the federal budget so as not to jeopardize the debt ceiling, to which the Social Democrat-Liberal Democrat-Green coalition continues to adhere. Instead, the government has reactivated the Economic Stability Fund, which was set up in 2008 to rescue banks during the financial crisis and relaunched in 2020 to protect corporations such as Lufthansa and TUI from the consequences of the coronavirus crisis.

But unlike then, when at least some of this money flowed back after the crisis subsided, the €200 billion (and what will follow) will have to be fully financed from the national budget, which will inevitably come at the expense of social spending due to rapidly rising arms expenditures. With the war against Russia, which NATO has systematically provoked and continues to escalate despite the danger of nuclear war, the German government has also declared war on the working class.

All representatives of the ruling class are moving together in this: The establishment parties, from the Greens, the SPD and the Left Party to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), the business associations and the trade unions. As in World War I, when the unions and corporations agreed to an “industrial truce,” and in World War II, when the Nazis united them in the corporatist German Labour Front, they are again conspiring against the working class.

The Gas Price Commission set up by the German government embodies this fusion of state, corporations and unions. It consists of 21 representatives from business, science, social associations and unions and is headed by the boss of the largest business association, Siegfried Russwurm, and the chairman of the chemical workers union, Michael Vassiliadis. The latter is also the partner of Yasmin Fahimi, chairwomen of the German Union Confederation (DGB) and a leading SPD politician.

The aggressive actions of the German government and its allies are exacerbating not only social antagonisms in Germany and across Europe, but also national tensions within the EU. Leading European politicians have strongly protested the €200 billion package because, in their view, it constitutes a trade war measure.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán called it “the beginning of the EU’s self-laceration” and scolded: “The rich are helping their companies with huge sums, while the poor can’t.” Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi warned it undermined “the logic of the [European] Union at its roots.”

In a newspaper article, EU Commissioners Thierry Breton (France) and Paolo Gentiloni (Italy) complained about the consequences for member states “that do not have the same budgetary leeway as Germany to provide comparable support to their companies and households.” They warned that what was ultimately at stake was “the success of our European project.”

US-instigated tensions around Korean Peninsula intensify

Ben McGrath

The United States is continuing to ramp up tensions with North Korea following a series of North Korean missile tests even as Washington intensifies its confrontation with China. The US is exploiting these missile launches as the pretext for its military build-up against China, particularly in North East Asia alongside its military allies—Japan and South Korea.

North Korea has conducted a number of missile tests between September 25 and October 9. The latest launch took place shortly before 2 a.m. Sunday morning when Pyongyang fired two, short-range ballistic missiles (SRMB) into the Sea of Japan. In total, the North has launched 12 projectiles, including sending an intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRMB) over Japan on October 4. It was the first missile North Korea has launched over Japan since 2017.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and South Korean Foreign Minister Chung Eui-yong, right, pose for the media before their meeting at the Foreign Ministry in Seoul, South Korea, Wednesday, March 17, 2021. After Tokyo, President Joe Biden’s top diplomat and defense chief are traveling to South Korea after North Korea made sure it had their attention by warning the United States to refrain from causing trouble amid deadlocked nuclear negotiations. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, Pool)

On Monday, which was also the 77th Party Foundation Day, the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that the missile drills took place “under the simulation of loading tactical nuclear warheads.” The exercises confirmed “the order of taking tactical nuclear warheads out and transporting them and of managing them in a rapid and safe way at the time of operation.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was quoted as saying, “This is the verification of the operation posture of our war deterrent and, at the same time, an occasion that proved the reliability of the thorough preparedness of the state nuclear defense posture.”

North Korea is responding to the US war planning in the region, which is primarily aimed at China as Washington and Tokyo, backed by South Korea, attempt to provoke a war over Taiwan. The US plans include a return to large-scale military exercises with South Korea and Japan on China’s doorstep.

At the same time, Washington is creating a situation to which Pyongyang feels it must respond. The US had halted large-scale joint military exercises with South Korea under the previous Donald Trump administration in a tacit agreement with Pyongyang to place a moratorium on nuclear and intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) tests.

The US and South Korea have now resumed major war games for the first time in five years. The Pentagon deployed the USS Ronald Reagan nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and its strike group to the Sea of Japan for joint drills beginning September 26. Following the launch of the IRBM on October 4, the US redeployed the USS Reagan, which had left the previous week, to the Sea of Japan for additional drills in a move the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff called “very unusual.”

The US State Department on Monday also denounced North Korea’s missile tests as “unlawful and destabilizing the region” while “reject[ing] the notion that our defensive actions to respond to the DPRK [North Korea] threats justifies their escalatory and unlawful behavior.” The State Department claimed, “We remain committed to a diplomatic approach to the DPRK and call on the DPRK to engage in dialogue.”

In reality, Washington has refused to address Pyongyang’s well-founded security concerns. North Korea, an impoverished, former colonial country of 26 million people, has long been the target of US imperialism, from the division of the Korean Peninsula and the 1950‒1953 Korean war to the Trump administration’s threats in 2017 to “totally destroy” the country. Furthermore, the US has a long track record of illegal invasions and regime-change operations in countries around the world that do not line up behind US interests.

Washington’s claims that it is committed to a diplomatic solution to the dangerous standoff with North Korea ring hollow—particularly as the US wages war against Russia in Ukraine at the risk of nuclear Armageddon.

US imperialism, backed by Japanese imperialism and South Korea, has systematically isolated Pyongyang through crippling economic sanctions, which have created an economic crisis alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. As it targets China over Taiwan, the Biden administration has allowed North Korea to languish under these conditions, including new sanctions on October 7 targeting two individuals and three entities. Pyongyang’s missile tests represent an attempt to bring Washington to the bargaining table to negotiate an end to these sanctions.

South Korea’s right-wing administration of President Yoon Suk-yeol, which came to office in May, has also contributed to this instability on the Korean Peninsula. Yoon’s presidential office stated on Monday, “It is important to accurately recognize the grave security reality on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and prepare appropriately for it.” Seoul has followed Washington’s lead, not only in restarting joint military exercises but on a key US demand: the improvement of bilateral relations with Japan.

Driven by trade and other disputes, Seoul and Tokyo’s relations have been strained in recent years. However, last Thursday, Yoon and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke by phone to discuss their response to North Korea, and denounced Pyongyang’s weapon tests. Yoon stated the following day, “We shared the understanding that if relations between South Korea and Japan return to the good times of the past at an early date and exchanges between businesses and between our people become smooth, it will be of great help to the two countries’ economies.”

What goes unstated is the fact that improved relations between the two is a necessity from Washington’s standpoint for its anti-ballistic missile system being installed throughout the region. This system above all targets China and includes the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery installed in Seongju, South Korea and its corresponding radar, two of which are deployed in Japan. In order to effectively operate this system, the US requires high-level, bilateral intelligence sharing and cooperation between Tokyo and Seoul.

In addition, on October 6, the US military delivered equipment to Seongju to complete an upgrade of its THAAD battery. The presence of the battery and its radar system capable of spying on Chinese territory has falsely been presented as a necessary defensive measure to protect the South Korea population from a North Korean attack. From its current location, however, the battery’s 200-kilometer range does not even cover Seoul, South Korea’s capital of ten million people.

Amid a rapidly intensifying US confrontation with China, US pressure on North Korea is creating another dangerous situation in the Asia-Pacific that could spiral into a larger conflict.