Fiat Chrysler-Renault merger talks collapse

Will Morrow

Talks over the proposed merger between Fiat-Chrysler (FCA) and Renault were called off last week after a final agreement on the fusion of the Italian-American and French automotive giants could not be reached. The merger, which appears to have been shelved at least for now, would have created the third-largest automaker in the world by car sales.

Reports by executives from both Renault and FCA state that the deal was blocked at the final hour late in the evening of June 5 by the French government of President Emmanuel Macron. The French state has a 15 percent shareholder stake in Renault as well as double-voting rights on the company’s board, making it the most powerful shareholder.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire requested a five-day delay of a vote, in order to allow time for Renault to seek the support of Nissan for the merger. Nissan is in an alliance partnership with Renault and Mitsubishi. Le Maire’s request was reportedly a response to the announcement by Nissan representatives at the meeting that they would abstain in the vote on the merger. They declared that they needed more time to study its potential impact on its own operations and its alliance with Renault.

Shortly after Le Maire’s announcement, FCA announced that it was withdrawing from the talks. Executive John Elkmann sent a note to shareholders on Thursday evening stating that “when it becomes clear that the discussions have been taken as far as they can reasonably go, it is necessary to be equally decisive in drawing matters to a close.”

Executives from both companies criticized the Macron government for preventing the merger. On Wednesday, at Renault’s annual meeting in Paris, CEO Jean-Dominique Senard stated that the “project remains, in my head, absolutely remarkable and exceptional.” It was “the first time there was a chance to create a European champion at a time when people keep complaining that it doesn’t exist.”

Senard stated that the proposal for Renault to initiate discussion with FCA on a potential merger had been made by the Macron government eight months earlier.

On Wednesday, Le Maire insisted in an interview with France Info radio that the deal was not off the table and that the government remained open to a merger. “It remains an interesting opportunity. But I have always been very clear: that it should be in the context of a strategy to reinforce the alliance” between Renault and Nissan.

A range of geopolitical and corporate calculations appear to have been involved in the Macron government’s decision. The merger of Renault and FCA would have led to the halving of the government’s 15 percent stake and the loss of its double-voting rights. Under conditions of growing trade war between the United States and China and threats by the Trump administration to impose tariffs on European automakers, it is possible that the Macron government did not wish to see its stake in the company lessened.

The calculations of Renault and the French government in a merger with FCA were always closely bound up with strengthening the hand of the company in the alliance with Nissan. Under the complex “alliance” partnership between Nissan, Mitsubishi and Renault, the French automaker owns over 43 percent of Nissan’s shares. However, its ability to directly control Nissan’s decision-making is restricted by a 2015 agreement that limits its voting on the Nissan board.

Nissan, the significantly larger of the two companies by market capitalization, owns only 15 percent of shares in Renault. Any merger with FCA would evidently further reduce Nissan’s control over Renault. A statement released last week by Nissan noted that a merger with FCA “would significantly alter the structure of our alliance with Renault. This would necessitate a complete review of the relations between Nissan and Renault.” Nissan has reportedly requested that Renault and FCA agree to reduce their share in Nissan in exchange for the Japanese automaker’s support for a merger.

An article published last week by Le Monde stated that Renault’s decision to seek a merger with FCA was aimed at “shift[ing] the balance of power with Nissan to allow the French to regain control of the destiny of the alliance signed in 1999.”

The conflict between the two companies has become increasingly sharp over the past year and reached a high point with the decision by Japanese authorities to arrest Charles Ghosn, the chairman and CEO of Renault, on corruption charges last November. Ghosn was replaced by Senard in January.

This week, Renault revealed that it will not provide the necessary votes for Nissan to carry out a planned restructuring of its leadership positions, stating that this would weaken Renault’s position.

It is possible that the merger talks will be resumed and an agreement reached. This would result in massive layoffs and plant closures for workers at both companies in order to eliminate excess capacity and boost profits and further increase the stock portfolios and dividend payouts for shareholders. The proposed merger was estimated to save $5.6 billion of “estimated annual run synergies,” according to a press release published by FCA.

At the same time, whatever the precise form that this takes, the driving force behind the proposed merger between the automotive giants remains the global restructuring that is now underway in the automotive industry and that confronts autoworkers internationally with a deepening assault on their jobs, wages and conditions.

A decade after the 2009 bankruptcy deal of General Motors and Chrysler orchestrated by the Obama administration—which fueled record profits, based on stepped-up concessions and the slashing of wages for new-hire US autoworkers—a new stage in this onslaught is underway. Since December last year, layoffs totaling 15,000 have been announced by General Motors in North America, 5,000 by Jaguar worldwide, and more than 7,000 at Volkswagen in Germany. As far as the financial investment funds that control the automotive giants are concerned, this is only an initial downpayment.

The increasingly bitter conflict among the global auto giants is being driven by a slowdown in sales, particularly in China, exacerbated by the Trump administration’s trade war measures. This is added to the turn toward electrical vehicles, which requires major investment in research and development of new technologies, an area that FCA was seeking to obtain via its merger with the technologically more advanced Renault and Nissan alliance.

The closest allies of the corporations and governments in imposing these layoffs are the trade unions. In France, the CGT and CFDT union federations responded to the proposed merger with FCA with a combination of corporatism and nationalism aimed at preventing any unified resistance by Italian, American and French autoworkers to the offensive being prepared.

The CFDT published a statement on May 27 that could have equally well been signed by the CEO of Renault. It stated that the union “estimates that this [merger] is an opportunity for the company and the Alliance,” hailing the “synergies of our two groups”—the same phrased used by FCA executives to refer to the billions of dollars to be slashed from operational expenses.

The CGT criticized the proposed merger from the nationalist and pro-company standpoint that this “merger will exclusively benefit FCA. In addition to realizing a strong financial operation, it will benefit from the technologies that Renault has developed, in electric technology …” Its statement sought to promote illusions that the Macron government, currently deploying police to shoot down “yellow vest” protesters opposing austerity and inequality with rubber bullets and tear gas, would act as an ally of French workers.

The greatest fear of these corrupt bureaucracies is that autoworkers will break out of their control and respond to the global assault underway with their own internationally organized struggle. This requires the formation of new organizations of struggle, independent rank-and-file committees of workers, to establish direct communications with autoworkers internationally.

Austrian billionaire takes over leading German chain store

Marianne Arens

The Austrian billionaire and investor René Benko is taking complete control over the major German department store chain Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof. The decision will result in more branch closures and cuts to jobs and wages.

The current concern was formed just eight months ago by the merger of Karstadt with Galeria Kaufhof. Benko’s Signa Group will now take over 49.99 percent of the company and the remaining shares in its real estate portfolio, which previously belonged to the Canadian Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), for a total of €1 billion. The Canadian corporation will retain only its department stores in the Netherlands, while the Inno concern in Belgium will also be taken over by Signa. In future, the German head office will be concentrated in the former Karstadt headquarters in Essen. The headquarters of Kaufhof in Cologne is to be closed.

The complete takeover of the department store giant with 240 premises across Europe and around 30,000 employees awaits approval from the same antitrust authorities which easily approved the previous merger last November.

In his plans to rationalise and downsize the workforce, Benko can rely on the loyal cooperation of representatives of the Verdi services trade union. Verdi responded to the latest takeover in typical fashion. Verdi’s retail representative Orhan Akman said: “We expect the right decisions for a convincing future concept worthy of the name.”

Behind this cautiously worded comment is the fact that Verdi has been involved in talks since the beginning of the year. At that time, a top-level discussion took place in Berlin, where René Benko and his German managers presented their “future concept” to the leaders of the central works councils of Kaufhof and Karstadt. The national chairman of Verdi Frank Bsirske and Verdi federal executive member Stefanie Nutzenberger also took part.

Afterwards, Verdi promoted the deal that had been reached, i.e. Signa-Holding would “provide a three-digit-million euro cash injection in spring if workers were prepared to make a 70 million euro contribution to the company’s recovery.”

On May 17, just three weeks before the full takeover, Verdi and the company works councils signed an agreement and redundancy plan to slash 2,000 full-time jobs—1,000 management and administrative staff (mainly in the old Kaufhof headquarters in Cologne) and another 1,000 full-time jobs in shops. The deal struck with Verdi was an important step for Benko.

In the Kölner Stadtanzeiger the head of the works councils for Kaufhof, Peter Zysik (Verdi), reported with satisfaction that “only 1,000 of the initially announced 1,800 jobs” would be lost. In fact, the total number of jobs threatened is much higher, because department stores employ many part-time workers. In the merger last fall, several reports cited a figure of 5,000 jobs to be eliminated, i.e., one fourth of the current workforce of just under 20,000 in Germany.

In addition, the employees remaining will once again be expected to accept wage cuts. The contracts for the retail industry no longer apply to the workforce. Galeria Kaufhof resigned from the official contract bargaining agreement in March 2019, which Karstadt had quit some years previously.

Ten years ago, the union agreed to a special “restructuring contract” at Karstadt, which forced employees to accept wage cuts and waive their holiday and Christmas bonuses. Verdi also started negotiations at Kaufhof in November 2017 on a “restructuring agreement.” As a result, jobs and wages have been cut and branches closed. Wages and working conditions are well below contractual norms.

In the past few weeks, and as part of the current contract negotiations, Verdi has called short-term strikes and some protests. Its officials have verbally denounced the cuts at Kaufhof-Karstadt and demanded normal contractual wages, but these actions are aimed merely at letting off steam and suppressing any real resistance.

Verdi is prepared to support the company in all attacks on employees. While Verdi activists organise toothless protests, leading union representatives sit on all the company’s executive boards and often work out the plans for cuts themselves, which they then sell to the workforce as the “best possible solution.”

Verdi has been working with the former Karstadt boss and today’s CEO Stephan Fanderl for years. According to the Karstadt works councillor Jürgen Ettl: “Mr. Fanderl tackles things consistently.”

Time and time again Verdi have claimed that job and wage cuts were necessary to avoid the closure of individual branches. The latest developments confirm the utter hypocrisy of such claims.

In June, the shops that were transferred to the Saks-Off-5th chain just two years ago are to be shut down. This applies to Saks-Off branches in Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Wiesbaden, Bonn, Heidelberg, Cologne, Hanover, as well as in Amsterdam and Rotterdam. At the end of January 2019, Benko closed down the Kaufhof branch in Hof. Other closures will follow.

The closure in Hof graphically reveals the background to the many years of transactions. The property of the branch in Hof was sold off to a Hamburg real estate owner. The latter refused to extend its lease with Kaufhof because he preferred to hand over the property to a hotel chain planning to build a four-star hotel on the site.

This sheds light on the real interests at work in this game of department store monopoly: Investors are particularly interested in the real estate of the shops, which are mostly situated in prime locations in inner cities. They are less interested in the department store business, which is under strong pressure from online retailers such as Amazon and Zalando. Traditional department stores are struggling with falling sales and profits while property prices are rising. Ownership of the land and building is increasingly being separated from the department store business. The real estate is being sold separately, and then the department stores are forced to lease back their sites for ever higher prices.

Those able to survive will be the most exclusive and profitable department stores whose employees raise the necessary funds for leasing through increased workplace exploitation. According to Verdi, the various “reorganisation tariffs” agreed during the past few years have increased the company’s coffers to the tune of well over €1 billion.

Workers’ wages, jobs and conditions can only be defended on the basis of a socialist program: by expropriating the big banks, corporations and billionaire investors, and organising the economy to satisfy social needs, rather than the interests of shareholders and speculators.

This is impossible, however, as long as workers remain subordinated to unions such as Verdi and their works councils. This is shown by the way in which Verdi board members have welcomed and applauded the billionaire René Benko, as well as his predecessors, Nicolaus Berggruen and Thomas Middelhoff, as “white knights” and saviours.

Like Berggruen, Benko was able to take over the then loss-making Karstadt Group for a symbolic euro. Despite the years of salary waivers by employees agreed by Verdi in 2010, Karstadt has continued to make losses, while Berggruen received €7.5 million annually—from the Karstadt naming rights alone. Berggruen had originally acquired the rights for a one-time payment of €5 million. Now the same theatre is being played out under Benko.

French hospital workers strike against Macron’s health cuts

Anthony Torres

While the Senate adopted the 2022 health bill on Tuesday, hospital strikes against the deterioration of the health system that began in March in Paris are now spreading throughout France.

Health Minister Agnès Buzyn and President Emmanuel Macron have turned down all the demands of hospital staff despite rising anger among workers. Already, Macron has refused to make any concessions to demands of “yellow vest” protesters that he put an end to his policy of austerity and war. He reacted by launching riot police against the “yellow vests,” leading to mass arrests of thousands of protesters, dozens of whom have been mutilated by the cops.

On Monday on the set of the BFM-TV news channel, faced with demands for an increase in staff and salaries, Buzyn dismissed out of hand “the idea of a new salary increase for carers.” She bluntly said, “But when the concern is purely about wages whereas it is the entire system that doesn’t work ... honestly, the problems won’t be solved just because I pay you more.”

Despite €400 million investments to create medical assistant positions and finance rural or territorial health care, the 2022 health project plans to cut €3.8 billion from health budgets. There is rising anger and concern among hospital staff, who fear a drastic deterioration in working conditions.

Hospital staff began striking in Paris in March, and these strikes have now spread to 95 emergency wards across France. Demonstrations are planned in Paris and in the provinces.

Faced with rising anger in the hospitals, the trade unions have called strikes to protest against the lack of resources at the University Hospital of Bordeaux, as well as of Libourne, Agen-Nérac and Pau. All hospital staff in the neurological and cardiological services at Albi are also on strike to demand “a better quality of care and acceptable working conditions.”

Staff at Lariboisière Hospital, in the 10th arrondissement of Paris, mounted a sickout in the night from Monday to Tuesday.

Terrified by this growing movement, the Macron government deployed police-state measures against hospital workers, with requisitions issued by the gendarmerie to deprive staff of their constitutionally protected right to strike and require a return to work. In the emergency room of Lons-le-Saunier, health workers were requisitioned by order of the police prefect. The authoritarian methods first used against “yellow vests” are being deployed against all workers in struggle.

WSWS reporters spoke to Fanny and Chloé, nurses at Saint Louis Hospital in Paris, who denounced the lack of beds and staff when there are more and more people who need them. “Before, people arrived at the hospital, and we had beds for them in separate rooms,” one said.

Chloé added: “Over the past year, a year and a half, that has changed. There are no more beds, they’re full. People sleep on stretchers in the emergency corridor all night long.”

Fanny pointed out that three or four years ago there was one caregiver for every 10 people, but now it’s one for every 14. “The problem is money. There is money, but it’s the politicians who decide what to do and we the people, we have no power to decide. We don’t feel anyone listens to us at all. Our work is not recognized in fact, but it is essential for the population. Our salary has not changed since 2010.”

Fanny told the WSWS that they can earn almost €1,700 a month, but have to work on several public holidays and weekends. She compared the deterioration in the working conditions and living standards for hospital staff to that of other civil servants: “My sister is a teacher. They always cut classes and there are more children in the classes. It’s like us, because they’re closing down the services.”

The WSWS also spoke to Maryline, who works as a doctor in Nancy. She said that ruling circles “do not want to invest in hospitals. ... They are happy that public hospitals are deteriorating and that there are more private clinics, and that only those who can afford them can go to private clinics.”

She added, “There is now a crisis in the hospital system. They offer doctors 1,500 euros for 24 hours of work if they come to regions where there is a shortage of doctors. If someone doesn’t come to work, there’s a problem. But many employees have health problems, and in some services there are working conditions that are difficult, and people do not stay. Nurses are paid only 1,300 euros per month, but they have many responsibilities. We need more nurses and more caregivers. We can’t treat people like this anymore. When people wait, their health deteriorates.”

Fanny explained that there is plenty of money, but the Macron government and its predecessors are setting out to destroy social rights established by previous generations of workers struggles, looting the education and health system to extract more money from them. For the first time in 18 years, the Social Security system is running a surplus. This is due to the gutting of retirement pensions and family benefits in 2019 and 2020.

The policy adopted by the Macron government in its “social dialogue” with the union bureaucracies is deeply regressive. These austerity cuts in healthcare and the surpluses generated are used to finance Macron’s tax cuts for the rich and to finance the massive military spending increases, so that France and the EU can wage neocolonial wars in Africa and the Middle East.

The creation of a public health service that meets the needs of the masses requires a broader struggle of hospital staff, mobilizing together with other sections of workers in France and internationally. To this end, workers must create their own organizations of struggle, independent of the trade unions, to defend social rights and lead a political fight against war and the police-state preparations.

Sudan’s opposition leaders capitulate to the military junta

Jean Shaoul

The Alliance for Freedom and Change (AFC) called off its protest campaign and general strike earlier this week in exchange for some vague promises of “concessions” from Sudan’s junta.

The AFC has handed the initiative to the Transitional Military Council (TMC), which ousted long-term dictator President Omar al-Bashir in April in order to prevent the overthrow of the entire regime.

The nationwide general strike had brought cities across the country to a virtual standstill for three days after the weekend, just days after the TMC ordered a bloodbath to disperse the months-long mass sit-in outside the defense ministry headquarters in Khartoum on June 3.

The sit-in gave expression to workers’ and professionals’ determined opposition to the junta despite its threats and intimidation. It prompted warnings of an imminent civil war.

Since then, the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an offshoot of the notorious Janjaweed that ruthlessly suppressed the rebellion in Darfur, have killed at least 120 protesters, including 40 whose bodies were dumped in the Nile River and 19 children, injured nearly 1,000 and arrested hundreds.

Among the opposition leaders arrested was Yassir Arman, who had returned to Sudan in May to take part in the talks with the junta despite facing a death sentence. He had been detained after the military broke up the sit-in and deported by helicopter—against his will—to South Sudan, along with two other oppositionists. The TMC had earlier announced that the three had been released.

There were reports of many rapes. Khartoum has been in lockdown, the University of Khartoum ransacked, and electricity and the internet switched off.

The TMC’s deputy leader and RSF chief, Lieutenant General Hamdan Dagalo (known by his nickname “Hemeti”), who has ambitions of stepping into al-Bashir’s shoes, had justified the brutal crackdown by blaming the protesters for “causing chaos.”

The Alliance for Freedom and Change consists of 22 opposition organisations, including the Sudan Professionals Association, coalitions of political parties, Girifna (“We have had enough,” a movement of young people), the Forum of Sudanese Tweeters and the families of the Ramadan martyrs (28 of the Ba’athist officers who, following a failed attempt to overthrow Bashir during Ramadan, were summarily executed by the Islamist security services in 1990).

It has called for the withdrawal of the militias from Khartoum and other towns, an international investigation into the bloodbath, the lifting of an internet blockade and the establishment of a civilian transitional government.

The bourgeois and petty-bourgeois layers represented by the AFC, regardless of their differences with the TMC, offer no way forward for the workers and poor in Sudan. A civilian-led transitional government in alliance with the military, while giving them a greater share in Sudan’s national cake, would continue to represent the interests of the country’s capitalist elite and its enforcers in the military.

This venal clique presides over a country where at least 80 percent of the 40 million population lives on less than US$1 per day, with some 5.5 million in need of humanitarian assistance in 2018, an increase of 700,000 compared to 2017, and around 2.47 million children suffer from acute malnutrition.

The TMC is riven with dissent, having admitted there have been at least two coup attempts since al-Bashir’s ouster, with “two groups of officers,” apparently supporters of al-Bashir, taken into custody. However, Saudi Arabia’s state broadcaster al-Arabiya denied this, claiming that most of them had refused orders to disperse the mass sit-in, while al-Hurra, a US-based Arabic channel, said that the officers had been arrested for holding opposing views to the TMC.

Following the military’s crackdown in the capital, there have been reports of clashes in other parts of the country, particularly the already-fragile and troubled regions of eastern Sudan and Darfur, where Janjaweed militia shot and killed nine people in the village of al-Dalij Monday.

In Eastern Sudan, there have been escalating tribal clashes and looting by criminal gangs in Port Sudan that have spread to the cities of Khashm el-Girba and Kassala and resulted in the deaths of more than 30 people. According to the Middle East Eye, it is widely believed that the TMC, RSF and agents of the “deep state” allied with it, are responsible for the tribal clashes and that the authorities released criminal gangs from prisons and allowed them to run riot.

The TMC’s offer of concessions comes in the wake of several international developments: the African Union’s suspension of Sudan, the UN Security Council’s condemnation of the TMC’s crackdown on peaceful protesters and mediation efforts by Ethiopia. According to Mahmoud Dirir, Ethiopia’s special envoy to Sudan, the TMC and AFC had “agreed to resume talks soon.”

Both the AFC and General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the TMC chief, met separately with Washington’s newly appointed special envoy to Sudan, Donald Booth, and the assistant secretary of state for Africa, Tibor Nagy, dispatched to Sudan to help craft a “peaceful solution” to the crisis. Booth served as the US Envoy to Sudan and South Sudan from 2013 to 2017.

The US is determined to pressure the TMC for concessions to its own imperialist interests. Washington’s primary concern is to ensure that the uprising does not spread to its regional allies: Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. These dictatorial and venal regimes, fearing their own working class and poor peasants, backed the junta and ordered the bloodbath.

The last thing the US—and Europe—want is instability in Sudan, strategically located in the Horn of Africa, alongside the Red Sea and the entrance to the Suez Canal through which much of the region’s oil passes, and a new wave of refugees heading for Europe.

In a sop to the protesters, Sudan’s state prosecutors have charged former dictator al-Bashir with corruption and misuse of emergency orders and announced investigations into the financial dealings of “leading officials of the former regime.” The TMC has also “retired” 98 officers from the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) accused of cracking down on protesters while al-Bashir was in power.

The junta has also admitted that its security forces committed abuses when they attacked the mass sit-in in Khartoum, with its spokesman announcing an investigation into the violence and the arrest of several military officers for the “violations.”

These concessions urged upon the TMC by international “mediators” can and will be revoked at the drop of a hat. They are a trap for the Sudanese working class. Complicit in this treachery are Britain’s fake lefts—the Socialist Workers Party and the Socialist Party and their international affiliates—who have called for Sudan’s revolutionaries to negotiate and ally with the lower ranks of the officers and among soldiers.

They likewise supported the Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists, which backed the Egyptian military’s ouster of elected President Mohamed Mursi, paving the way for General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s bloodbath and repression more ferocious than that of his predecessor, Hosni Mubarak.

Sudan’s struggle takes place amid a growing wave of working-class militancy throughout the Middle East and North Africa, exemplified by the strikes and demonstrations in Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco.

The only way to establish a democratic regime in Sudan is through a struggle led by the working class, independently of and in opposition to the liberal and pseudo-left forces in the middle class, to take power, expropriating the regime’s ill-gotten wealth in the context of a broad international struggle of the working class against capitalism and for the building of socialism. This requires the building of a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution, in Sudan.

European Union threatens to sanction Italy over budget deficit

Peter Schwarz

Following last month’s European elections, the dispute over Italy’s state debt has flared up once again. The European Commission recommended on June 5 the launching of disciplinary procedures against the highly indebted country, which could culminate in the imposition of severe fines if the government fails to drastically cut spending.

However, numerous steps would have to be completed before that point is reached. To date, no financial penalty has ever been imposed on a eurozone member. Additionally, the potential of an Italian bankruptcy could drag the entire eurozone over a cliff. After Germany and France, Italy is the third largest member of the currency bloc.

The Italian government is divided over the issue. While the non-party prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, threatened to resign, and pleaded together with Finance Minister Giovanni Trea, also a non-party minister, for obeying European Union (EU) regulations, far-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini initially adopted a confrontational stance. The strongman of the government ridiculed the “little letter” from Brussels and vowed not to bow to the EU’s demands.

But Conte announced a de-escalation of the situation earlier this week. At a crisis meeting with Salvini and Five Star Movement leader Luigi Di Maio, it was agreed that a strategy would be drafted together with Trea to avoid EU sanctions, Conte announced. He previously warned that disciplinary action would trigger a crisis on Italy’s financial market.

Salvini confirmed the agreement. However, this isn’t worth much. The EU previously threatened to initiate proceedings against Italy late last year, but eventually agreed to a compromise. The EU now assumes that both Italy’s new debt and its overall debt will continue to increase.

In essence, the conflict over Italy’s budget is a bitter fight between competing factions of the European and Italian bourgeoisies that is being carried out at the expense of the working class.

The EU’s threats of penalties recall its treatment of Greece. The EU is particularly irritated by the Five Star-Lega government’s introduction of a basic income and the abandoning of a pension reform, both of which cost several billion euros. EU officials are demanding an end to these measures and a stricter regime of austerity.

As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, these measures are nothing more than a drop in the bucket, and are, moreover, bound to draconian requirements much like Hartz IV in Germany. They do nothing to change the glaring levels of social inequality, and poverty and unemployment continue to rise. They were introduced above all at the initiative of the Five Star Movement, which won large numbers of votes in southern Italy on the basis of its promise for a basic income.

By contrast, Salvini is developing very different plans. His Lega was initially formed as a separatist party in northern Italy and had a base of support among sections of the middle class and businessmen. An old hate-filled song that Salvini posted on YouTube at the beginning of his political career is once again making the rounds. It concerns the stinking Napolitans (people of Naples, the largest city in the impoverished south), who allegedly even force the dogs to leave the city.

Only later did the Lega expand its influence across the country with anti-refugee xenophobia and anti-EU demagogy. But Salvini benefited above all from the fact that the so-called left parties and trade unions had slavishly imposed the EU’s austerity demands for more than three decades.

Salvini’s major goal is the cutting of taxes for the super-rich and corporations. By introducing a flat tax, he wants to trigger a fiscal crisis. The project would cost between €50 billion and €60 billion to implement.

Such a policy would be inseparable from ruthless attacks on the working class. In the past, similar policies were practiced by dictatorships, like the Pinochet regime in Chile, or the right-wing governments that ruled in Eastern Europe following the restoration of capitalism. Salvini is consciously cultivating a fascist base to enforce these policies against bitter opposition from the working class.

The Five Star Movement, which long claimed to be neither left nor right, has been exposed as a reliable prop for the far-right Lega. The WSWS warned six years ago that the Five Star Movement was mobilising distressed sections of the middle class with nationalist appeals against foreigners and refugees.

While the Five Star Movement won 33 percent at the 2018 Italian elections, and Lega 17 percent, the vote percentages were almost reversed in last month’s vote. While the Lega emerged as the strongest party with 34 percent of the vote, the Five Star Movement secured just 17 percent. The protest party is deeply divided and faces the threat of a split.

Under these conditions, Salvini hopes to be able to form a government of right-wing parties following early elections. Together with the Forza Italia of former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (8.8 percent) and the fascist Fratelli d’italia (6.5 percent), the Lega secured almost half of the votes in the European elections. However, Salvini can’t afford to engage in an open conflict with the EU, which brings with it the threat of a financial crisis. This is why he is shifting on the debt issue.

In principle, the EU has no objection to massive tax cuts for the rich, provided that they are offset through deep social spending cuts. All of its policies over recent decades have been based on this principle. However, the EU is not prepared to tolerate tax cuts being offset temporarily through increased debt. This would, first and foremost, undermine Germany’s dominant position in the euro zone, which is based on a strong euro.

This is why German economists in particular are stressing that Italy must first cut social spending. For example, Clemens Fuest, president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research, said that the former Democratic Party (DP) government “deregulated the labour market and secured more flexibility.” Now, they are “taking the other direction. The deregulations were reversed, and that’s just the wrong approach.” It is necessary to “restructure costs, away from pension benefits towards investments, for example.”

The dividing line between supporters of the EU and nationalists like Salvini is fluid, with both agreeing that major attacks on the living standards of the working class are necessary to defend the capitalist system. For the Italian working class, there is no lesser evil in this conflict. They must organise themselves independently, align themselves with the workers in Europe and internationally, and fight for a socialist programme. This is the only way to prevent a relapse into barbarism and war.

Rising US “deaths of despair” driven by health care costs, lack of access to care

Kate Randall 

A new report reveals that most US states are losing ground on key measures related to life expectancy, which has declined in each of the last three years. The Commonwealth Fund’s “2019 Scorecard on State Health System Performance” shows that “deaths of despair”—premature deaths from suicide, alcohol abuse and drug overdoses—continue to rise in nearly every state. The report further shows that these deaths are tied to rising healthcare costs that are placing an increasing financial burden on families across the country.

The Commonwealth Fund’s Scorecard assessed “deaths of despair” in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as ranked states on 47 measures of access to health care, quality of care, health care usage, health outcomes and income-based health care disparities. The report found that Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act has been a central factor leading to meaningful gains in access to health care.

The reasons behind the decision of a person to take his or her own life, to take drugs resulting in a fatal overdose, or to drink alcohol in excess leading to health problems and death, are complex. But this new study shows that one of the major underlying causes of such tragedies is social inequality, in particular lack of access to health care and the associated financial struggles.

The opioid crisis, suicide and alcohol-related deaths

While the study finds that deaths from suicide and alcohol and drug abuse are a national crisis, it notes that states and regions are affected in different ways. Opioid use disorder has fueled a rise in drug overdose deaths with tragic outcomes for families across the country. The emergence of highly lethal synthetic opioids, such as fentanyl, in the illicit drug supply has contributed to this national crisis.

The opioid epidemic has hit states in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and several Southeastern states particularly hard. West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Delaware and New Hampshire have the highest death rates from drug overdoses.

In Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio, death rates from drug overdose were at least five times higher than from alcohol abuse and about three times higher than suicide rates. In Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming, death rates from suicide and alcohol were greater than those from drugs.

Source: Commonwealth Fund. Data from National Vital Statistics System

West Virginia has been the state hardest hit by the opioid crisis, with 58.7 deaths per 100,000 residents—a staggering two-and-a-half times the national average. This was 25 percent more than the state with the next highest rate of opioid deaths, Ohio, which had 46.3 deaths per 100,000 residents. Opioid-related deaths in West Virginia increased fivefold in 12 years—rising from 10.5 deaths per 100,000 in 2005 to 57.8 in 2017.

The rate of death from drug overdose more than doubled across the US between 2005 and 2017. These deaths surged by 10 percent just between 2016 and 2017.

Suicide rates nationally have risen by nearly 30 percent since 2005. Parallel to the sharp rise in the death rate from drug overdose, the national suicide death rate rose more sharply between 2016 and 2017 than during any other one-year period in recent history. Similarly, the alcohol-related death rate rose by about 2 percent per year between 2005 and 2012 but increased by about 4 percent per year between 2013 and 2017.

Health insurance, access to care, cost

The Commonwealth Fund notes that the reductions in the uninsured population following the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) expansion of health coverage in 2014 have now stalled or even begun to erode in some states.

The ACA, commonly known as Obamacare, while expanding some access to health care coverage, has never challenged the domination of the for-profit health care industry. It required that individuals without insurance from their employer or a government program purchase insurance from a private insurance company.

Nearly all states saw substantial reductions in uninsured rates between 2013 and 2017 with the opening of the ACA’s insurance marketplaces, with fewer people citing cost as a barrier to receiving health care.

As the ACA was written, Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor jointly administered by the federal government and the states, was to be expanded to cover all US citizens and legal residents with incomes up to 133 percent of the poverty line. However, the US Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that it was up to the states whether or not to expand their Medicaid programs.

Almost all those states that expanded Medicaid under the ACA saw a reduction in rates of uninsured through 2015. However, after 2015 any progress in reducing the rates of uninsured had stalled in most states. From 2016 to 2017, more than half of states were simply treading water. Sixteen states saw a rise of 1 percent in the uninsured rate, including both those that did and did not expand Medicaid.

States that adopted Medicaid expansion have seen lower rates of the uninsured. As of January 1, 2017, Massachusetts had the lowest rate of uninsured, at 4 percent. The states with the highest rates of uninsured—Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, Oklahoma and Texas—were among the 19 states that had not expanded Medicaid as of January 1, 2017. In Texas, 24 percent—nearly a quarter of all residents—were uninsured.

Uninsured rates were particularly high in states with large African-American and Hispanic populations. In Florida, George and Texas, about 20 percent of black adults were uninsured in 2017, compared to the US average of about 14 percent. In Texas, more than a third of Hispanic adults were uninsured in 2017. Undoubtedly contributing to the uninsured among Hispanics is the denial of Medicaid and access to the ACA marketplace for undocumented immigrants.

Health care costs

In addition to the lack of health insurance, the high cost of coverage for those who are insured is contributing to the crisis in accessing health care. The report notes that as of the end of 2018, 30 million adults remained uninsured and an estimated 44 million people had insurance but were considered “underinsured” due to the high out-of-pocket costs for health care in relation to their income.

People with individual-market plans under the ACA were insured at the highest rates. However, the cost of private, employer-sponsored health care plans is rising, exposing workers and their families to increasingly higher deductibles and out-of-pocket costs. In most states, the amount that employees contribute to their employer coverage is rising faster than median income.

A key contributing factor to the uninsured and underinsured rates is the overall rate of growth in US health care costs compared to the slow growth in US median income. Workers face rising costs as insurers increase deductibles and other cost-sharing for enrollees. As workers in both ACA and employee plans are covered by the insurance industry, these private companies raise costs for the insured to boost their bottom lines.

The Commonwealth Fund’s report explodes the myth that people’s use of health care services is the primary driver of cost and premium growth. The report notes that there is growing evidence that the prices paid by private insurers to health care providers, particularly hospitals, are responsible for this growth.

The report notes, according to the Health Care Cost Institute, that “between 2013 and 2017 prices for inpatient services paid by private insurers climbed by 16 percent while utilization fell by 5 percent. The analysis found similar patterns for outpatient and professional services as well as prescription drugs.”

In other words, while workers and their families are struggling to obtain decent health care and to pay for it, the entire system of health care delivery in America is geared toward enriching the hospitals, pharmaceuticals and insurance companies. Those succumbing to “deaths of despair” are the victims of a health care system and a society that values capitalist profit over the health and very lives of its citizens.

Australia’s industrial tribunal maintains poverty-level minimum wage

Terry Cook

The Fair Work Commission (FWC) ruling last month, raising the minimum wage by a meagre 3 percent, to just $740.80 a week, ensures that 2.2 million workers and their families will continue to eke out an existence on poverty-level wages.

The decision is part of a decades-long assault on workers’ pay and conditions enforced by successive governments, Labor and Liberal-National Coalition alike, and the trade unions. It follows real pay reductions over the past six years, which have resulted in wage growth falling to its lowest level since the 1930s Great Depression.

The FWC, the federal government’s pro-business industrial tribunal, has wide-ranging powers, including to set the minimum wage and penalty rate payments. It enforces Fair Work industrial laws, introduced by the previous Labor government with the full support of the unions, which ban virtually all strike action.

The FWC judges rejected raising the minimum wage to a “living wage,” openly stating that many working-class households would remain in poverty as a result. “Some low paid, award-reliant employee households have disposable incomes which are less than the 60 percent of median income relative poverty line,” they stated.

A 2018 report by the Australian Council of Social Service put the poverty line at 50 percent of median household disposable income. That means a single adult living on less than $433 a week, or $909 for a couple with two children, before housing costs.

The minimum pay decision was announced by FWC President Justice Iain Ross, a former union official. In 2017, he ruled in favour of cutting public holiday and Sunday penalty rates for thousands of low-paid workers. Ross said the minimal pay increase awarded “will mean an improvement in the real wages of employees who are reliant on minimum wages and an improvement in their living standards.”

These claims are a fraud. The paltry increase of little more than $3 a day, or an extra $21.60 a week, is not enough to buy a loaf of bread each day. It will do nothing to alleviate the deepening social crisis facing thousands of low-paid workers amid rapid increases in the costs of health, food, fuel, rent and electricity.

For their role in imposing the dictates of the corporate and financial elite for the suppression of wages, the well-heeled FWC judges themselves are well paid.

As of 2018, FWC deputy presidents, for instance, were paid $460,000 a year, while receiving a raft of other benefits such as lucrative retirement packages. Former FWC vice president Graeme Watson received a full judicial officer’s pension of $272,544 per year for life when he retired in 2017. During his reign, Watson continuously worked to hold down pay and complained that the minimum wage was too high.

Major business groups, who had pushed for an even lower minimum wage increase, still welcomed the FWC decision. The Australian Industry Group, which had argued for an increase of no more than 2 percent, said the ruling marked a return to a “more moderate level” compared to the previous two years’ rises.

In fact, the 2017 and 2018 increases were just 3.3 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively. They brought up the minimum wage to only $719.20 per week or $18.93 an hour. As with the latest ruling, they were designed to maintain the chronic low-pay regime, while acting as a sop to prevent struggles by workers for a real improvement in wages and working conditions.

While the employer groups opposed any significant wage increase for the low paid, the fortunes of the corporate and financial elite continued to rise.

The Australian Financial Review’s Rich List, released last month, reported: “The 200 wealthiest individuals or families in Australia now control wealth totaling $341.8 billion.” Their collective wealth rose 21 percent in just 12 months.

The pay of company chief executives hit the highest level in 17 years in 2018, thanks to what an Australian Council of Superannuation Investors report termed “persistent and increasing bonus payments.”

The median-realised pay for ASX 100 chief executives rose 12.4 percent to $4.36 million, while salaries for ASX101-200 CEOs jumped by 22.1 percent to $1.76 million. Bonus payments rose more than 18 percent. Nearly one in three ASX 100 chief executives were awarded at least 80 percent of their maximum bonuses.

The top ASX 200 earners in the 2017 financial year were Domino’s Pizza Enterprises chief executive Don Meij at $36.8 million, Peter and Steven Lowy of Westfield at $25.9 million, and Macquarie Group chief executive Nicholas Moore at $25.2 million.

Just after the FWC handed down its wage decision, the Remuneration Tribunal awarded massive pay increases to federal politicians, who have all supported austerity measures to cut social and working conditions. The tribunal said the rise was necessary to “provide competitive and equitable remuneration sufficient to attract and retain people of calibre.”

While minimum wage workers are obliged to live on an annual wage of just $38,521, parliamentary backbenchers’ pay will rise from $207,000 to $211,000. Prime Minister Scott Morrison will receive a $10,000-a-year increase, taking his up to $550,000, while Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will get a further $8,000, increasing his salary to $433,000.

As a frontbench Labor Party parliamentarian, Anthony Albanese would have received $259,000 a year after the increase. However, having become opposition leader, in the wake of Labor’s May 18 federal election defeat, Albanese will get $390,000 a year.

While admitting the new minimum wage was “not a living wage,” unions welcomed the pittance as a “win for workers.” Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) assistant secretary Liam O’Brien said it was “a welcome pay rise for millions of low-paid workers, especially in the face of penalty rate cuts in a few weeks.”

In February 2017, without any genuine opposition from the unions, the FWC ordered a cut to Sunday and public holiday penalty rates in the retail, pharmacy, fast food and hospitality industries of between 25 and 50 percentage points. Cuts to public holiday rates came into effect on July 1 of that year, but the reductions in the Sunday rate are being phased in over two years.

There have been years of real wage cuts, including to penalty rates, in union-brokered enterprise agreements. Analysis by the Australia Institute’s Centre for Future Work of tax office data for 2012–13 to 2016–17 showed wages over that period rose by just 1.7 percent per annum, below the official inflation rate of 1.9 percent.

The trade unions are fully responsible for the plight of the low-paid workers and the ongoing reduction of wage levels. They fully supported the draconian Fair Work industrial laws introduced by the last Labor government in 2009 and operate as a police force of governments and the corporate elite.

French prime minister announces further social cuts and attacks on immigrants

Will Morrow

In an address to the National Assembly last night, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe announced a series of far-reaching austerity measures, particularly targeting pensions and unemployment payments, as well as new attacks against immigrants and Muslims.

That such a speech would take place was announced in the immediate aftermath of the European election vote May 26. It would signal “Act II,” corresponding to the second half of President Emmanuel Macron’s five-year term. Macron’s party narrowly lost the European vote to the far-right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen, which was able to exploit social anger over inequality and the austerity measures imposed by Macron and his Socialist Party (PS) predecessor, François Hollande.

Philippe’s statements made clear that the response of the Macron government will be to shift further to the right. While it faces growing left-wing opposition in the working class, expressed in a growth in strikes and protests by hospital workers and teachers in recent months, as well as the “yellow vest” protests against social inequality, the Macron government is determined to meet the demands of the financial elite for the funneling of ever greater wealth into its pockets. The policy outlined by Philippe yesterday consisted of continuing the destruction of the social entitlements won by the French working class in the 20th century.

His government is also adopting the RN’s anti-immigrant policies to whip up xenophobic hysteria and divert social anger produced by its policies.

The most significant measure announced by Philippe is the effective lengthening of the retirement age by two years. The government will introduce a new “equilibrium age” of 64 while keeping the legal minimum retirement age at 62, with “inducements to work longer” by cutting benefits for those under 64. This will force already retired workers to return to poverty-level jobs to survive.

“Everyone will be able to make their own choice, in freedom and responsibility,” Philippe said, with all the grandiloquent hypocrisy of the French bourgeoisie. The elderly will be driven to labor for longer, with the announcement of a “great plan of employment for seniors.”

Philippe also referred to a restructuring of the national pension system scheduled to be announced this year. It will abolish the 42 different pension entitlements according to industry and employer, and replace them with a single national retirement system. This will tear up the more generous retirement benefits won by certain sections of workers, including national railway workers, teachers and other public employees. These plans are to be replaced by a system of retirement “by points,” whose value the state can arbitrarily modify according to its financial interests up until the time a worker takes his or her retirement.

Unemployment benefits will also be slashed. “The second objective of this reform is to ensure that work pays more than inactivity,” he said. While this is “in general [already] the case,” there are “situations where the monthly unemployment payment is more than the monthly salary. We must put an end to it.”

On June 7, Les Echos published an exclusive report on the government’s plans to slash unemployment benefits, based on comments by unnamed government officials. The full details are to be revealed June 17. The plan will reportedly include raising eligibility requirements for receiving payments: whereas presently a worker must have been employed for the equivalent of four months over the previous 28 months, this will be increased to at least six months over the previous 24 months.

The National Union for Employment in Industry and Commerce (Unédic) stated that even without changing the time-frame from 28 to 24 months, the increase from four months to half a year in work requirements will automatically cut off benefits for 236,000 unemployed people, or 11 percent of the total.

These social attacks are being combined with tax cuts totaling some 5 billion euros [$US5.6 billion] per year. The full details are yet to be announced, and they will no doubt provide further concessions to the rich and sections of the upper middle class. Philippe stated only that for those in the first- and second-lowest income brackets, the cuts would lead to derisory reductions of 350 euros and 180 euros, respectively. At the same time, the property tax, calculated by property value, is being eliminated, disproportionately benefiting the rich.

At the same time spending that benefits the most vulnerable sections of the working class is to be slashed, Philippe reaffirmed his government’s commitment to provide billions of euros to fund the military and the police forces tasked with repressing working-class opposition. “To keep control means above all to guarantee public order,” Philippe said, “and one of our first decisions was to launch a great recruitment and equipment program for the police.” Macron’s pledge to raise military spending to two percent of GDP in line with European Union targets is “a massive effort,” he said, “but it is necessary to be consistent.”

The authoritarian content of Philippe’s speech emerged most clearly when he launched into a rant against immigrants, asylum seekers and the growth of “Islamism.”

His statements were in line with the lies of the Trump administration and extreme right-wing parties internationally that immigrant workers fleeing war and poverty caused by the policies of European and US imperialism and exercising their legal right to seek asylum are “abusing” the “system.”

“The number of asylum seekers had dropped by 10 percent in Europe last year, but continues to go on in France on the order of 22 percent.” France must “get control over this immigration flow,” he declared. “The right to asylum is a treasure,” Philippe said, “but we must fight with firmness against abuses… We must be sure that asylum seekers choose France for its values, for its history, for its language, and not because our system is more favorable than those put in place by our neighbors in Europe.”

This suggests that the government will further attack the conditions for immigrants in France, which Macron had already suggested in the wake of the European elections. Le Monde published a report on Monday headlined “New offensive by the executive on immigration,” based on anonymous statements from Macron government officials. It noted that at an internal meeting last week the interior minister spoke “about the too great attractiveness of France” for immigrants.

Macron held a meeting with ministers on April 30, during which he declared that the “question of immigration is once again before us.”

Philippe announced that the Macron government will organize an annual debate in parliament on “asylum and immigration,” the first edition of which will be held in September, because it “goes to the fundamentals of our sovereignty and our principles.” This will be little more than a platform for denunciations of immigrants and the whipping up of xenophobia by the entire political establishment.

Philippe’s speech was a demonstration of the far-right trajectory of the political establishment in France and internationally. Terrified by the growing struggles of the working class against more than a decade of social attacks and preparing for major wars, the ruling class is building up the forces of a police-state and promoting nationalism and anti-immigrant scapegoating.

UK police seek to prosecute 1,130 Extinction Rebellion climate change protestors

Alice Summers

The London Metropolitan Police are pushing to prosecute every single one of the 1,130 protestors arrested during climate change demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion (XR) in April.

In the face of a massive police operation to intimidate and disperse them, protestors had peacefully occupied prominent public spaces across London, including Parliament Square, Piccadilly Circus, Waterloo Bridge, Oxford Circus and Marble Arch.

Hundreds of extra police officers from neighbouring forces were drafted into the city, with the heavy police presence at times outnumbering the demonstrators. At the height of the protests, Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick declared, “Every day we have had over 1,000 officers—and now over 1,500 officers.”

Oxford Circus Extinction Rebellion April 2019 [Credit: Andrew Davidson]

In fact, a staggering 10,000 police officers were deployed over the two weeks of protests.

Many videos were circulated on social media showing police officers forcibly removing peaceful protestors and dragging them through the streets by their wrists. But despite police surrounding their targets, sticking video cameras in their faces and dragging them to police vans, there was no violence from the demonstrators.

According to Deputy Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, more than 70 XR protestors have already been charged with various offences, including breach of a Section 14 Notice of the Public Order Act 1986, for obstructing a highway and police.

A dedicated unit of around 30 police officers has been set up to investigate the alleged “offences” committed by the demonstrators during the XR protests, Taylor told journalists at Scotland Yard. “It is our anticipation that we are putting all of those to the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service] for decisions,” he continued.

The mass arrests at the XR protests constitute the largest act of state repression against peaceful protests for at least 37 years. The number of arrests far surpassed that at the anti-nuclear protests at RAF Upper Heyford in 1982, where 752 were detained, and at the poll tax riots in 1990, where 339 were arrested.

The arrests of over 1,000 came amidst vitriolic denunciations from politicians and the bourgeois media of the XR demonstrations and calls for stepped-up police repression.

“No one should be allowed to break the law without consequence,” Conservative Home Secretary and now leadership contender Sajid Javid tweeted during the protests. He called on police to “take a firm stance” against “any protestors who are stepping outside the boundaries of the law” and “significantly disrupting the lives of others.”

In April, former Labour Home Secretary, now Sir David Blunkett, also wrote an opinion piece in the right-wing Daily Mail demanding: “Why hasn’t the full force of the law been used against these eco-anarchists who fill me with contempt?”

Sky News presenter Adam Boulton attacked protestors for “fascistic disruption” in a clear attempt to redefine and criminalise the right to protest.

Speaking about the moves to prosecute all the detained protestors, deputy assistant commissioner Taylor called for stronger punishment for protestors who apparently commit “unlawful” activities.

“I’m not saying going to jail,” Taylor said, “but we would like to see consequences for any activity at these events that is unlawful.

“Protest is not illegal. There is nothing unlawful about protest,” he conceded grudgingly. “[But the] activity of some individuals at a protest can be unlawful… [At] the moment there doesn’t seem to be much of a criminal deterrent for doing that and therefore, it doesn’t legitimise it but it does make it easy for that unlawful activity to take place.

“And what we would like to see is consequence, where the law is clearly broken and it goes beyond what is reasonable and a legitimate aim for a protest, for that to be recognised and for appropriate sanctions [to be imposed].”

Precisely what constitutes a “reasonable and… legitimate aim for a protest” in Taylor’s book is left unsaid.

In keeping with the demands from journalists and politicians, the Met Police are calling for the effective criminalisation of protest. This was made doubly clear back in April by Metropolitan Police Commander Adrian Usher, who called on the government to change “outdated” protest laws to criminalise even peaceful demonstrations.

“We need to move away from the language of ‘peaceful protest’ to talk about ‘lawful protest,’” Usher told the Human Rights Committee in parliament.

“A protest being peaceful is only one of the attributes police would assign to a protest to make it lawful,” he continued. “We will conduct a sober review of our tactics against recent protest but I think it’s likely to say the legislation associated with policing protest is quite dated.

“Policing and protest has moved on and legislation should follow suit,” Usher added.

The calls by police, politicians and the media to criminalise demonstrations are a massive upscaling in attacking democratic rights.

What is being prepared are police state conditions, whereby any demonstration, no matter whether violence has been used by protestors, can be declared “unlawful” by an arbitrary decision of the police, leading to legal charges against anyone who opposes the government’s policy.

Usher’s demands that protest laws be changed ostensibly come in response to verbal “abuse” of MPs such as Tory Anna Soubry, who was verbally confronted by right-wing pro-Brexit protestors outside parliament earlier this year.

But while the targets of calls for police repression have so far been isolated protestors outside parliament, and the largely middle class XR demonstrations, the real purpose of this stepped-up authoritarianism is to combat unrest from an increasingly restive working class.

The statements by the Met police are only a foretaste of how the state will respond to any large-scale movement of workers. The arguments being deployed to justify police repression against environmental protestors—including “disruption” and “inconvenience” to the public—will be used tomorrow to demand mass arrests and repression against striking railway workers, bus drivers, pilots and cabin crew, or National Health Service staff.