UK parliamentary report reveals shortage of midwives is causing preventable maternal deaths

Margot Miller & Jean Gibney

The abysmal state of maternity care in the UK, among the worst in Europe that is putting mothers’ and babies’ lives at risk, was spelled out in a parliamentary report following a recent inquiry into birth trauma.

“Listen to Mums: Ending the Postcode Lottery on Perinatal Care. A report by The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Birth Trauma” was published in May and paints a devastating picture of neglect after decades of underfunding to the National Health Service (NHS).

St Mary's maternity hospital in Manchester, England, June , 2024

The inquiry was set up by Conservative MP Theo Clarke and Labour MP Rosie Duffield after Clarke, giving birth in an NHS maternity unit, was left traumatised thinking she “was going to die.”

The inquiry’s findings are shocking. Sampling 1,300 women and maternity professionals, it found 4 to 5 percent of women develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) every year after giving birth—approximately 30,000 women in the UK. About a third experienced birth as traumatic.

One respondent to the inquiry spoke about postnatal bleeding, which is life-threatening: “About 6 hours after [my son] was born, I experienced a heavy bleed. I could see my white hospital bedsheets going red and I thought I was haemorrhaging again. I pressed my bell, nobody came. I pressed it again harder, and nobody came.”

Others told the inquiry they were denied pain relief, or left with life changing injuries, including severe tearing leading to bowel incontinence. Some babies were brain damaged through lack of oxygen, while others were stillborn through complications during labour.

Behind the litany of horror stories, including overworked maternity staff not having time to listen to patients, is a service depleted of funds.

One midwife told the inquiry she and her colleagues “are witness daily to the devastating impact of poor staffing, poor provision of resources, poor care and poor communication, which result in people lacking confidence in the service and the standard of care they will receive.”

Unable to do their jobs properly, suffering stress and burnout, the inquiry found that midwives have “the highest rate of absences for mental health reasons within the NHS.”

Donna Ockenden, who chaired an Independent Review of Maternity Services in Nottingham, told the inquiry that staff retention was a major problem: “If we are losing midwives with 20, 30, 35 years’ experience, if they are leaving the NHS in their fifties, early sixties because they can’t cope… then being replaced by a more junior workforce who are not being supported in those early days of their career… two going out doesn’t equal two coming in.”

A survey by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM) over a one-week period in March this year revealed 136,834 extra unpaid hours were worked. But this did not compensate for staff shortages as 76 percent surveyed said “their workplace was not safely staffed during those seven days in March.”

The BBC reported in January a shortage of 2,500 midwives, with many more leaving the job. Hannah, a midwife, told the BBC, “I walked away from it because I couldn’t live with myself if I provided unsafe care for someone because the staff numbers were unsafe.”

The consequences of staff shortages and underfunding are catastrophic. Birth Trauma cites the findings of a separate report, “”, produced by Mothers and Babies: Reducing Risk through Audits and Confidential Enquiries Across the UK (MBRRACE-UK). It found the UK’s maternal death rate was the second highest in an eight-country European study in 2022.

MBRRACE-UK reported maternal death rates in pregnancy and up to 42 days after birth were 9.6 per 100,000 births, only less than the worst rate in Slovakia at 10.9. The lowest rate of 2.7 was in Norway. Heart disease, thrombosis and suicide were listed as the main cause, the latter pointing to traumatic experiences during birth and poor aftercare, when women are susceptible to postnatal depression. The lack of good quality pre/post-natal care plays a significant role in preventable deaths.

Led by Professor Marian Knight of the University of Oxford, the MBRRACE-UK study reported rising maternal mortality rates. In 2020-2022, 272 mothers or 13.41 per 100,000 died during pregnancy or up to six weeks after giving birth. Between 2017-2019 and 2020-2022, there was a statistically significant increase in maternal mortality, excluding deaths due to COVID-19. The rate in 2017-2019 was 8.79 in 100,000.

Commenting on the findings, Knight told the Guardian, “Maternal mortality rates are a barometer of health systems.”

MBRRACE-UK also found “Women living in the most deprived areas have a maternal mortality rate more than twice as high as women living in the least deprived areas.” Women from Black ethnic backgrounds are almost three times more likely to die around childbirth and Asian women twice more, than white women.

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists declared the work by MBRRACE-UK “adds to the weight of evidence showing lives are being lost to persistent inequalities.”

Birth Trauma is not the first official inquiry into maternity services involving deaths and injuries to mothers and babies. All were ignored by government.

The past 10 years alone saw three investigations into maternity care, at Morecambe Bay, Shrewsbury and Telford, and East Kent hospital trusts, which made recommendations to improve maternity care.

Current inspections by the Care Quality Commission (regulating health and social care), however, found nearly half of maternity units in England either “inadequate” or “requires improvement”. There are currently nearly 1,900 cases under investigation at the Nottingham Hospitals Trust alone concerning failings in maternity care.

The Birth Trauma report concludes with a list of recommendations, including “a new Maternity Commissioner who will report to the Prime Minister, which will outline ways to: 1. Recruit, train and retain more midwives, obstetricians and anaesthetists to ensure safe levels of staffing in maternity services and provide mandatory training on trauma-informed care.”

Women’s Health Minister Maria Caulfield responded to the findings of Birth Trauma with the lame statement: “maternity services are not what they should be” while remaining silent on decades of funding cuts overseen by Tory and Labour governments.

The deliberate collapsing and defunding of the NHS is being used as a battering ram to pave the way to a private health insurance model.

In 2021 and again in 2022, midwives and maternity support staff took to the streets to protest lack of funding and chronic understaffing. This rank-and-file action was not supported by the Royal College of Midwives (RCM).

Last year the RCM and other health unions sold out their members’ disputes over jobs, wages and cuts to the NHS, pushing through below-inflation pay deals. The health unions blocked calls for sector-wide action against the destruction of the NHS, working with the Labour Party to head-off a direct confrontation with the Tory government.

Labour Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting has rejected calls for extra spending on the NHS, decrying a “something for nothing culture.” His promise to shorten NHS waiting lists is based on exhausted doctors working weekends and a further extension of the private sector.

Streeting has pledged “unsentimental reform” of the NHS, saying a Starmer-led government “will go further than New Labour ever did. I want the NHS to form partnerships with the private sector that goes beyond just hospitals.”

Both Labour and the Tories are committed to NATO’s expanding wars and massive hikes in military spending. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has predicted the health budget will fall from £168.2 billion in 2023-24 to £166.2 billion in 2024-25. Institute for Fiscal Studies Senior Research Economist Ben Zaranko wrote last year that “Defence cuts effectively paid for UK welfare state for 60 years—but that looks impossible after Ukraine”.

Claudia Sheinbaum, AMLO’s protégé, elected president of Mexico

Andrea Lobo

The Morena party of Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, won a resounding victory in Sunday’s general elections, with its results described as a “landslide” or “tsunami” in the corporate media.

Claudia Sheinbaum, Zocalo Plaza, Mexico City [Photo by EneasMX / CC BY 4.0]

Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist who until recently governed Mexico City, was elected president with 58.8 percent of the vote. Once all votes are tallied, she is expected to surpass the 30.1 million votes received in 2018 by her mentor, López Obrador, who was limited to a single term in office by Mexico’s constitution.

According to the preliminary results, the ruling coalition led by Morena is also expected to increase its seats in Congress, reaching a two-thirds supermajority in the House of Deputies and close to one in the Senate. The ruling party is also expected to prevail in four additional state governments, extending its control to 25 out of Mexico’s 32 states, including the capital, Mexico City.

Despite receiving a distant 28.2 percent, Xóchitl Gálvez, the right-wing candidate supported by a coalition of the traditional oligarchic parties (PRI-PAN-PRD), initially declared herself the victor, raising the specter of an attempted coup and a social eruption in response. However, after the Business Coordinating Committee (CCE), the top employers’ association, congratulated Sheinbaum and called on the opposition to strive for “unity” nationally, Gálvez backpedaled and acknowledged her defeat. 

Jorge Álvarez Máynez of the Citizens’ Movement, which dubiously styles itself as “center-left,” reached 10.5 percent of the presidential vote. 

Predictably, the corporate media in Mexico and internationally has focused its commentary on Mexico’s election of its first female president, suggesting fraudulently that this milestone will somehow open the door to a more democratic and socially conscientious form of capitalist rule.

While Sheinbaum, an accomplished scientist, made a more appealing candidate than the at times shrill and cartoonish “tech entrepreneur” Gálvez, the vote mostly reflected the ongoing popularity of AMLO.

The results expressed a persistent popular hatred for the right-wing record of austerity, corruption, repression and subservience to US imperialism associated with AMLO’s predecessors. Masses of workers and youth seek a radical expansion of the limited social programs initiated under Morena, which consisted of cash transfers for pensioners, students and small farmers, and more than doubling of the minimum wage.  

López Obrador saw a major spike in his popularity in recent weeks, with a positive rating of up to 80 percent, according to pollster Gallup. This reflects in large measure short-term economic expectations, nationalist sentiments after the police invasion of the Mexican embassy in Ecuador, and support for a shift by the government toward open denunciations of the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

The election campaign was dominated by empty populist bluster. Gálvez even stood in front of a crowd and signed in blood her promise to maintain AMLO’s social assistance programs.

Sheinbaum’s acceptance speech Monday morning summed up her campaign. She stressed her gender, declaring: “I do not arrive alone, all women arrive with me.” She vowed to secure resources for establishing a “welfare state” and prevent increases in fuel and electricity costs. 

On the other hand, she promised to promote “national and foreign private investment,” to “consolidate the National Guard, intelligence and investigation for security,” and “a relationship of friendship, mutual respect and equality” with the US government. 

Throughout the election cycle, there was no significant or honest discussion in the debates or rallies about the explosive crisis of the entire global capitalist order, and how the next Mexican government will attempt to balance the growing demands and threats from US imperialism that Mexico align its policies with the drive to World War III. 

The US corporate media largely focused on demanding that Sheinbaum “turn her back on López Obrador once elected,” as expressed by the right-wing CNN and Miami Herald commentator Andrés Oppenheimer. 

In a sign that sections of the ruling class are concerned above all by the unprecedented political crisis and brinksmanship of their imperialist overlord north of the border, the major Mexican daily La Jornada dedicated its editorial on election day to denouncing the US war drive against China. It states:

The truth is that Washington’s determination to prolong its imperial control has a negative impact on its own society and on those of the entire planet. To mention just one example, one wonders what percentage of the inflation that has destabilized the world economy and impoverished millions of people can be explained by the illegal sanctions and tariffs imposed by the United States on Russia, China and other countries. The United States would do well to fix its own problems, such as the very deficient democratic institutionality that we have reported here. 

Morena’s own record and the numerous assurances made by Sheinbaum to Wall Street make clear that, amid the emerging escalation to global war and growing economic shocks, the next administration will put the defense of the massive fortunes of Mexican billionaires and the profits of global corporate and finance capital above the social programs, democratic rights and even the lives of the Mexican working class and poor. 

The main transformation of Mexico under AMLO has been its total integration into the North American economic platform that US and Canadian imperialism rely on to wage economic and military warfare against their rivals, above all Russia and China, both nuclear powers.

During the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, as major companies in defense and other key US industries warned that they couldn’t operate without Mexican suppliers, López Obrador joined Trump in opening the factories and sacrificing hundreds of thousands of lives. Sheinbaum also dropped all major protections in 2020 and deliberately covered up the death toll in Mexico City—a clear exposure of the claim that, as a scientist, she will rule “following the data.”

In her government plan, titled “100 steps toward transformation,” Sheinbaum explicitly calls for Mexico to “to take advantage of the economic situation to replace imports mainly from Asia with regional production, with a high domestic content. The idea is to produce in North America what is consumed in North America.” This closely jibes with the “nearshoring” drive of US imperialism.

On security, she calls for the “establishment of bi-national working groups to deal with determined criminal phenomena” with the US government. She told The New York Times that she is “prepared to work with whichever candidate wins the next U.S. election,” at a time when one contender, Joe Biden, is moving headlong toward a war with Russia and the other is planning on establishing a fascistic dictatorship and conducting the mass deportation of migrants. 

While the US and Mexican ruling classes would have preferred Gálvez to win and carry out a swifter shift to the right, they have taken the measure of Sheinbaum. Bloomberg, for instance, writes: “Businesspeople see her as potentially more market-friendly than AMLO and open to change in policy areas such as energy and private investment.”

Sheinbaum has promised not to increase any taxes, including maintaining the major corporate incentives across the free trade zone on the US-Mexico border, and to maintain a strict “no deficit” policy for the government under the slogan of “Republican austerity.” This can only mean that social spending will be the first casualty of the imminent economic shocks and, above all, demands for even greater spending on the military. 

In fact, the shameless efforts by AMLO and Sheinbaum to give the military a facelift are the clearest demonstration of the real character of Morena, which has effectively allowed the traditional oligarchic parties represented by Gálvez to pose as defenders of democratic institutions. 

The AMLO administration retrieved Mexico’s former defense minister retired Gen. Salvador Cienfuegos after his arrest in the US on drug charges, has enshrined the domestic deployment of troops in the Constitution, increased the combined military budget by 150 percent, handed to the armed forces management of ports, customs and infrastructure projects, and has allowed them to continue to cover up their role in the 2014 disappearance of the 43 Ayotzinapa teaching students. 

Tens of thousands of troops are currently deployed in “migrant containment” operations and have detained record numbers of migrants at the behest of Washington. 

López Obrador has called the military “the pillar of the Mexican state,” which means that the ruling class is prepared to enforce its interests via the use of military force against opposition at home under conditions of an unprecedented level of social inequality and an explosive descent into war and barbarism globally. Absent the revolutionary intervention of the working class, the Tlatelolco massacre of hundreds of student protesters in 1968 and other deadly repressive experiences throughout Mexican history will pale in comparison to the state violence that is to come.

Signs of potential turmoil in global financial system

Nick Beams

Financial markets appear to have been enjoying a period of relative calm in the past year since they were shaken by the failure of three significant US banks in March 2023, requiring rescue operations by financial authorities.

But there are signs of turmoil building up beneath the surface. They centre on continuing possible liquidity problems in the $26 trillion US Treasury market, the basis of the global financial system, signs of currency divergences and concerns over the growing role of private credit in the financial system.

Last week a tremor went through the Treasury market when there was what was characterised as a “shaky auction” for $44 billion worth of seven-year US Treasury notes. The shortage of buyers mean that the big banks, which are crucial to the operation of their market as primary dealers, had to make up for the shortfall and purchase 17 percent of the debt, somewhat higher than the norm.

This followed an auction the previous day when there was subdued demand in an auction of two- and five-year debt.

The lack of demand, sending the price of debt lower, meant that the interest rate on the 10-year bond (the two move in the opposite direction), went to 4.63 percent, higher than it has been in some weeks.

The immediate cause is the realisation that the Federal Reserve is not going to make significant cuts in interest rates in the near future. At the start of this year, markets were pricing in as many as six rate cuts by the Fed in 2024. Now there are predictions there may not even be one.

The longer-term issue is the amount of debt which must be issued to finance the ever-growing US government deficits.

Back in March, in an interview with the Financial Times (FT), the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Phillip Swagel, sounded the alarm on US debt saying it was on an “unprecedented” trajectory. He pointed to the Liz Truss experience of September 2022 when a proposal for unfunded major tax cuts by her government sent UK bond markets into a crisis requiring intervention by the Bank of England.

US government debt is now almost the equivalent of 100 percent of GDP, coming in at more than $33 trillion, and is set to accelerate in coming years. Payments of interest have reached 3.3 percent of GDP, the highest level since 1940 following the Great Depression.

Speaking to the FT, Ronald Temple, a market strategist at the financial firm Lazard, said the fiscal situation was his “single biggest concern for the US economy” and that it would continue.

“I don’t see it as a Liz Truss moment,” he said, but warned that a gradual build-up of problems can lead to a crisis.

“It’s more of a frog in a boiling pot. That to me is why the market should be cringing every time we see these auctions. Auctions should be on everyone’s calendar as a risk factor.”

Treasury officials and leading financiers are still haunted by the experience of March 2020 when the US Treasury market froze for several days at the start of the pandemic when no buyers were to be found for US debt and the Fed had to step in to support virtually all financial markets to the tune of $4 trillion.

The US debt market is highly dependent on foreign capital inflows, with Japan, China and the UK the main foreign holders of debt. The most significant move in this area has been the decline in Chinese holdings. From more than $1 trillion, they have declined to just under $800 billion, after a 40 percent reduction in the past year, and are now sitting at a 14-year low.

Currency markets are also giving cause for concern. The rise of the US dollar relative to other currencies, due to the higher interest rates in the US, is putting downward pressure on other currencies, in particular the Japanese yen and the Chinese renminbi, also known as the yuan.

It is estimated that last month Japan spent $62 billion to support the yen, which has fallen to a 34-year low against the US dollar.

The Bank of Japan has ended its policy of so-called yield curve control, under which it suppressed the interest rate on bonds, and has signaled that it wants to start to lift rates and return to a more normal policy.

The intervention in May arrested the slide of the yen but it is not a long-term solution because, as UBS economist Masamichi Adachi noted, the yen will not move higher “unless investors think that interest rates will seriously begin to rise.”

But Japanese financial authorities are in a dilemma because a rise in rates will further slow the economy, already described as “sluggish” because of low consumption spending.

The position of the renminbi is also coming in for attention. Last week it fell to a six-month low against the US dollar with indications that state-owned Chinese banks were intervening to prevent a further slide. At this stage it appears that Chinese authorities want to prevent a devaluation.

But the divergence between interest rates in the US and China is continuing to exert downward pressure.

An article in the South China Morning Post last month was headlined, “Is another Asian currency crisis coming? Keep an eye on China’s yuan.”

It said a bigger danger than a “collapsing yen” was “the possibility that an economically beleaguered China could be pushed into a devaluation of the yuan.”

In an article last week, the FT reported that market pressure was increasing on the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) to allow the renminbi to weaken because of the divergence of interest rates, with the yield on US 10-year bonds at 4.57 percent compared with 2.3 percent on their Chinese equivalent.

At present the PBoC is holding the line on the currency, no doubt recalling the turmoil that followed a devaluation in 2015.

A fall in the value of the renminbi would impact on other countries, especially in Asia, which depend on the Chinese market, and could lead to stepped up action from the US, which has already accused China of dumping cheap products on the US and world markets. A devaluation would further lower the price of Chinese goods in the US and other markets.

But a one-off devaluation is a possibility because, as one Shanghai-based currency trader told the FT, there was “enormous downward pressure that has built up over the past few months.”

Another potential source of instability, already pointed out by the International Monetary Fund and other financial institutions, is the growth of private credit funding.

Last week Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, warned “there could be hell to pay” because of problems in this area.

He said some of the fund providers were “brilliant” but others were not and problems were often caused by the “not good” ones.

In a reference to the situation which developed in the lead-up to the global financial crisis of 2008, when highly risky products in the sub-prime mortgage markets were given top marks by credit rating agencies, he pointed to the emergence of similar issues today.

“I’ve seen a couple of these deals that were rated by a ratings agency, and I have to confess it shocked me what they got rated. It reminds me a little bit of mortgages.”

Germany’s housing market crisis intensifies: Exploding rents, evictions, homelessness

Tino Jacobson

The state of Germany’s housing market is becoming increasingly catastrophic. Millions of households are struggling with exploding rents, while property sharks skim off record returns. Evictions and homelessness are on the rise due to the deliberate lack of affordable housing and social housing.

Protest against Deutsche Wohnen [Photo by Uwe Hicksch / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]

This trend is particularly glaring in the German capital. The Housing Market Report 2024 published by Berlin Hyp AG and estate agent CBRE shows that rents have recently risen sharply throughout Berlin. The average basic rent was €13.60 per square metre in 2023, an increase of 19 percent on the previous year. A year earlier, the average basic rent was still €11.43 per square metre. The most expensive flats are in the Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district at €17.86, while even the cheapest in Marzahn-Hellersdorf now average €10.81 per square metre. There were particularly drastic increases during this period in the districts of Neukölln and Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, at €23.5 and €23.2 percent respectively.

An analysis by property provider ImmoScout24 confirms this explosion in rents. At the end of 2022, the average price per square metre in Berlin was €12.05, rising by 18.7 percent to €14.30 one year later. Lukas Siebenkotten, president of the German Tenants’ Association, aptly summarises the current housing situation: “Too few flats are being built, and the ones that are being built are not aimed at those who need them most urgently.” He goes on to explain that “everything legal is being utilised in terms of rent increases.” As a result, households are forced to spend an ever larger proportion of their income on rental costs.

Students in particular are severely affected by the lack of affordable housing. “This also has an impact on the choice of where to study. The decision is reduced to where you can afford to study,” emphasised Beate Schücking, president of the German Student Union.

The poorest layers are affected by a blatant lack of social housing. Over the last 35 years, the number of social housing units has fallen from 1.8 million in 1989 to 1.08 million today. The study by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft für zeitgemäßes Bauen (ARGE) shows that around 800,000 flats costing up to €10 per square metre rent are needed in Germany. The PESTEL study commissioned by the “Social Housing” alliance assumes a deficit of 912,000 social housing units.

When the coalition government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) took office, it announced that it would build 400,000 flats per year, at least 100,000 of which would be social housing. Last year, just 300,000 flats were built, 25,000 of which were social housing. The federal government officially spends just €2.5 billion on the construction of social housing, a sum which is downright ridiculous in view of the massive funds spent on internal and external rearmament.

The lack of affordable housing and exploding rents are resulting in an increasing number of evictions. Last year, evictions in Berlin rose by 22.7 percent compared to 2022. There were 1,931 evictions in 2022 and 2,369 a year later. The main cause of evictions is rent debt, which results in the landlord cancelling the tenancy agreement.

As a result, the number of homeless people is rising continuously. According to the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Wohnungslosenhilfe (BAGW), around 607,000 people were homeless in Germany in 2022. A further sharp increase is expected this year.

Rbb24 news recently reported on a dramatic case that is by no means an isolated incident. Manfred Moslehner, 84 years old, is currently facing eviction in the Berlin district of Reinickendorf. For the time being, he is allowed to stay in the house where he was born. The owner of his house, Am Steinberg Entwicklungsgesellschaft (development company), wants to modernise the building, which Manfred Moslehner has been trying to prevent for years. As a result, the owner has cancelled the tenancy. The district court in Wedding recently confirmed the cancellation—all because the tenant is standing in the way of the profit line of the owner, who is being allowed to drastically increase the rent with a modernisation.

In order for Moslehner to be allowed to continue living in his flat for the time being, he had to deposit €4,300 as security with the district court, which could only be achieved through donations. The current tenancy agreement from 1978 stipulates a basic rent of €400. His monthly pension is just €1,000, but the modernisation would allow the owner to demand a monthly rent of €1,300. Manfred Moslehner explains his current situation: “I’m in a bad way, I feel at the end of my tether. I can hardly sleep at night and when I do, I have nightmares. As you get older, you don’t have the energy for all this anymore, it’s just missing.”

At the end of April, the coalition government adopted a national action plan against homelessness. According to this plan, there should be no more homelessness by 2030. For the most part, the action plan consists of hot air. At a federal and state level, the governments that have caused the problems with their policies have repeatedly made grandiose promises and launched projects which barely scratch the surface.

One example is the so-called Housing First project in several federal states such as Berlin. In 2021, the then state government of the SPD, Left Party and Greens adopted the “Berlin Masterplan to Overcome Housing and Homelessness by 2030.” The aim was to find housing for homeless people. During the project phase from 2018 to 2021, just 79 homeless people were placed in a flat.

This year, the Housing First project, involving six social organisations, will receive funding of €4.4 million. A total of just 250 homeless people are to be given a flat each year, out of the total of 35,000 homeless in Berlin.

At this snail’s pace, it would take 140 years to find accommodation for all the homeless, assuming no more people become homeless during this period. If the Senate were to tackle the problem seriously, around 5,000 homeless people would have to be placed in flats every year in order to eliminate homelessness in Berlin by 2030.

The capital city is a perfect example of how all established parties have deliberately brought about the catastrophic housing situation. Under the current Berlin Senate of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and SPD, led by Mayor Eberhard Diepgen (CDU), the subsidising of new social housing was discontinued in 1997 and several estates were exempted from the occupancy obligation in 1998. The Berlin Senate of the SPD and the Democratic Socialist Party (PDS), led by Klaus Wowereit (SPD), pulled the plug on funding for some of Berlin’s social housing in 2003, and in 2011 the Senate of the SPD and the Left Party enabled the early release of social housing ties.

In 2021, a majority of the Berlin population decided in the referendum “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co.” to expropriate the property sharks, but the SPD, Greens and Left Party Senate has since then done everything in its power to prevent this. At the beginning of the year, the current CDU and SPD Senate ended a moratorium on terminations by state-owned housing associations, allowing rent increases of 2.9 percent per year.

All the establishment parties are solely committed to the interests of the property companies. At the same time, the social attacks resulting from the escalating demands for rearmament and war are making the situation much worse for more and more people.

End of African National Congress hegemony: ANC vote slumps to 40 percent in South African election

Jean Shaoul

The African National Congress (ANC) lost its overall majority in last Wednesday’s national (parliamentary) and provincial elections in South Africa. The ANC has long dominated South Africa’s political scene, both in opposition to the hated apartheid regime and while in office following the first post-apartheid election in 1994.

The ANC leader, President Cyril Ramaphosa, saw his party’s share of the vote fall from 57 percent in the 2019 elections, itself a record low, to just 40 percent, much lower than the most pessimistic forecasts. He and his faction-ridden party will now be forced to seek coalition partners to remain in office, if, indeed, he is not pushed out as the price for reaching a deal with some of the other parties.

The collapse in the ANC’s vote expresses the protracted political and economic crisis gripping the South African bourgeoisie. The political uncertainty rattled the financial markets, with the rand, South Africa’s currency, falling by 2 percent against the dollar; the main share index dropping by 2.3 percent; and interest rates charged by the financial predators to hold local-currency South African bonds jumping by eight basis points, to 12.13 percent.

So disenchanted with 30 years of ANC rule is South Africa’s predominantly young population that just 40 percent of young people registered to vote in the election. Preliminary indications from the electoral commission late on Thursday are that voter turnout was about 59 percent of the 27 million people (out of a population of 61 million) registered to vote, down from 66 percent in 2019.

Ramaphosa, the former head of the National Union of Mineworkers and ANC general secretary, who since has become a multi-millionaire, won the 2019 elections with a pledge to root out the ANC’s endemic corruption, epitomised by former president Jacob Zuma’s naked corruption. The scale of the corruption has made foreign capital and international financial institutions reluctant to deal with the country.

Driving the disaffection with the ANC has been the party’s failure to improve living conditions for all but the country’s new black corporate elite under its Black Economic Empowerment policy. Key infrastructure and industries such as electricity and transport were broken up and sold to leading members and supporters of the ANC at rock bottom prices, leading to massive inefficiencies, grotesque levels of corruption and soaring inequality, making South Africa the most unequal country on the planet, according to the World Bank.

While the economy grew at around 3.5 percent a year after the end of apartheid, following the 2008 world financial crisis socio-economic conditions plummeted. The COVID-19 pandemic further weakened the already fragile economy, with GDP per capita already lower in 2019 than in 2008, before falling to $6,190 in 2023. This was about the same level as in 2005.

Meanwhile, billions of rand in emergency funding allocated in response to the financial crisis only fueled the corruption. Unemployment is at record levels. Officially running at 32 percent, it is far higher among young people, more than half of whom have no regular jobs.

The World Bank estimated the poverty rate at 62 percent in 2023, with some 47 percent of South Africans relying on state welfare to survive. High fuel and food prices hit the poor the hardest.

While inflation averaged 6.0 percent in 2023, it was 9.3 percent for those at the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution. People are now forced to endure extended power outages and water shortages on a daily basis. Forty percent of piped water is lost before it reaches customers.

Along with falling living standards, public services, where they exist at all, have deteriorated. Crime has surged. The World Bank estimates that crime—much of it organized—costs the country at least 10 percent of GDP annually. Few murders are solved.

Such is the competition for party jobs, particularly in the municipalities, which play a significant role in the delivery of public services and in socio-economic development, that assassination attempts on politicians and officials have claimed the lives of 37 people, according to the conflict-monitoring group ACLED.

While there were 70 parties on the national and provincial ballots, and 52 on just the national ballot, the ANC and four other parties received 90 percent of the votes.

It was UMkhonto weSizwe (MK), named after “Spear of the Nation,” the ANC’s armed wing during the struggle against apartheid, that benefited from the ANC’s collapse, winning 14.6 percent of the national vote, to come in third, with the other three parties largely maintaining their 2019 vote.

MK was launched last December by former ANC President Zuma and his ANC supporters. The 82-year-old Zuma, who was forced to resign the presidency in 2018 amid a series of corruption scandals going back years, was himself disqualified from standing in the elections, having served a prison term for contempt of court in 2021 and soon to face a trial for corruption. Winning 45 percent of the vote in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa’s second most populous province and Zuma’s home province, MK is expected to form the provincial government there.

However, MK has refused to join an ANC government under Ramaphosa, whom it holds responsible for Zuma’s ouster. In July 2021, days of angry riots broke out, triggered by Zuma’s jailing, which soon morphed into wider protests against poverty and the ANC government. More than 100 people were killed in fights between the rival factions and at the hands of the police.

Another ANC splinter group, the radical-posturing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), came in fourth, with 9.5 percent of the vote. The EFF is led by Julius Malema. He was expelled, along with other leaders of the ANC’s Youth League who wanted to use the Youth League to gain entry into the ranks of the more established black bourgeoisie, which had garnered its wealth and position through the ANC’s Black Economic Empowerment policy. Malema has called for social housing in white-owned areas, the nationalization of almost all institutions, and the redistribution of land without compensation for white South Africans.

The largest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), is widely seen as representing the interests of South Africa’s white minority and of business. It came in second with 21.79 percent of the vote. It has close relations with Washington and has supported Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza, in contrast to the ANC, which has refused to support the US/NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, and which filed the genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. The Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP), which, like Zuma’s MK party, gets most of its support from Zulu people, took 3.85 percent of the vote, much the same as in 2019.

In the provincial elections, the ANC gained a majority in five of South Africa’s nine provinces: Limpopo (74 percent), the Eastern Cape (63 percent), North West (58 percent), Free State (53 percent) and Mpumalanga (52 percent). It leads in the Northern Cape (49 percent) and Gauteng (36 percent), home to Johannesburg, the country’s commercial capital and largest city, and the capital Pretoria, but will need coalition partners to form governments.

The Democratic Alliance (DA) looks set to continue to govern the Western Cape (53 percent), as it has done since 2009, while Zuma’s MK party has trounced the ANC’s 18 percent of the vote, with 46 percent in KwaZulu-Natal.

With almost all votes counted under a new three-ballot proportional representation system, the final result is expected Monday evening, after which the new 400-member National Assembly must sit within 14 days and elect a new president by a simple majority vote, who then forms a government.

The ANC’s electoral collapse and the political crisis it has exacerbated express the inability of the national bourgeoisie to improve the social conditions of the working class and rural poor. The ANC came to power in 1994 pledged to rescue South African capitalism, as the globalisation of production rendered the country’s nationalist and autarkic apartheid regime unviable, amid fears that the rising militancy of the South African working class could spell the end of capitalist rule in the country.

Based on the trade unions organized under the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) and the South African Communist Party (SACP), the ANC’s role was to suppress the revolutionary strivings of the black working class while creating a black capitalist class to take its place alongside the white capitalists. This was sanctified politically on the basis of the SACP’s Stalinist two-stage theory, which proclaimed the formal end of apartheid as a democratic revolution and a necessary stage before any struggle for socialism could commence.

The ANC’s path from opposition to co-option has been replicated across Africa and the Middle East. The national bourgeoisie, dependent upon imperialism and fearful of revolution from below, cannot resolve the fundamental democratic, economic and social problems confronting the masses.

New Zealand government presents austerity budget amid nationwide protests

John Braddock

Nicola Willis, Finance Minister in New Zealand’s National Party-led coalition government—which includes the far-right ACT Party and NZ First—presented her first budget last Thursday. The coalition took office following October’s election in which the incumbent Labour-Green government was ousted after six years amid mass desertion by working class voters.

New Zealand Finance Minister Nicola Willis delivers 2024 budget, May 30, 2024 [Photo: Facebook/Nicola Willis MP]

After months of sweeping attacks on the social position of working people, the budget was anticipated with some foreboding. The government is carrying out a scorched earth policy targeting funding cuts of 7.5 percent across the public sector with over 5,000 jobs slashed and more to go.

When Willis rose to deliver her speech in parliament, a sea of opposition had erupted with nationwide protests. The mobilisation was called by the Māori nationalist Te Pāti Māori (Māori Party, TPM) over the government’s broad anti-Māori agenda but included thousands of people deeply hostile to all the government’s austerity measures. The protests coincided with a two-day strike over pay by 2,500 junior doctors, followed by one on Friday by hundreds of NZ Blood Service workers.

Thousands gathered in Auckland, Tauranga, Christchurch and Dunedin and many regional locations. In the capital, Wellington, a crowd estimated by police at 5,000–7,000 descended onto parliament grounds.

Tensions emerged days earlier when Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Labour leader Chris Hipkins warned workers against going on strike. On Instagram, organisers had called for all Māori and supporters to strike. “That would be illegal,” Luxon declared, adding it was “pretty clear what the rules are around strike action.”

The anti-working class “rules,” which place severe limits on strike action, are contained in the Employment Relations Act passed in 2000 by a Labour government, with the full support of the trade union bureaucracy.

TPM was never seriously advocating strike action but even the mention of a strike over political issues was enough to cause Luxon and Hipkins to sharply remind everyone that it was illegal. Both parties are undoubtedly concerned about anger among workers who want to strike against austerity, but are being blocked by the unions from taking any effective action.

The budget slashes spending on social programs to fund tax cuts for the rich and free up money for war preparations, as the imperialist powers led by the US are engaged in wars in the Ukraine and the Middle East and are preparing for war against China.

More than half a billion dollars is going to the military. Defence Minister Judith Collins said $163 million is for pay increases to address personnel attrition “with urgency.” Replacement vehicles will have “integrated communications that will enhance interoperability with regional and global partners, such as Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States.”

Citing events in the Ukraine and Middle East, Collins declared ominously: “This Budget announcement is a signal that New Zealand is ready to step up and play its part to protect the freedoms that so many of us take for granted.”

New Zealand already has troops in Britain training Ukrainian conscripts to fight in the US-NATO proxy war against Russia, which is escalating by the day and threatens to widen into a nuclear war. New Zealand personnel are also participating in the criminal US-led bombing of Yemen, aimed at defending supply lines for Israel as it carries out its genocide in Gaza.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has escaped sweeping spending cuts with additional $60 million earmarked for diplomatic posts in the Pacific, designed to boost NZ’s role in the US-led confrontation with China.

The budget was sold as delivering on National’s election promises of substantial tax cuts to address the cost-of-living crisis. In her speech, Willis ludicrously claimed that “the parties in this coalition Government are the parties of the worker. We want working people to keep more of the money they earn.”

In fact, the wealthy emerge better off while for working people paltry increases will be far outstripped by rapidly rising costs. Election promises that an “average” family would get $250 per fortnight in tax relief were a fraud: this applies to fewer than 3,000 households.

Radio NZ calculated that a couple earning $94,000 a year, with two children, has had a 23.31 percent increase in expenses since 2020, but their tax cut will only increase their after-tax pay by 2.35 percent.

Families with children will benefit by $39 a week on average. A minimum wage worker can expect about $12.50 a week and superannuants just $4.50 a week. While a couple earning $300,000 will get $40 per week extra, a group of 9,000 are worse off.

With Treasury and the Reserve Bank forecasting a significant lift in unemployment, increases to welfare benefits will reduce due to changes in the way they are indexed. Challenged on TVNZ’s ‘Q+A’ that “the poorest are going to be even poorer,” Willis coldly responded: “Do you know how they’ll receive more? By getting a job.”

The government has meanwhile reinstated the ability for residential property investors to deduct interest costs from their tax bills, cutting their tax by a total of $2.1 billion. Landlords will get a 60 percent deduction in 2023/24, 80 percent in 2024/25 and 100 percent in 2025/26. Willis admits this will not stop ongoing rent rises.

Ordinary people face growing financial difficulties: the NZ Reserve Bank resolved to keep the Official Cash Rate at 5.5 percent until further notice, ensuring unrelieved pressure on mortgage payments. Unemployment is projected to rise from 4.1 to over 5 percent.

With inflation at 4 percent, down from 7.2 percent in 2022, the trade unions have played a key role imposing below-inflation pay rises. Cost increases of up to 15 percent are imminent for necessities such as council rates, domestic power and house insurance.

The tax cuts, costing $14.7 billion over four years, are funded by a mixture of spending cuts and borrowing. Net debt will rise by $68.3 billion to more than $220.7 billion over that period, which is $12 billion more than Treasury forecast in December due to the weakening economy.

The government is spending an additional $2.01 billion a year on the health budget and $1.01 billion on education. In real terms this barely matches inflation and is not nearly enough to address the existing crisis of unmet need. As a share of GDP, the health budget will drop from 7.8 percent in 2023 to 6.8 percent 2026. Over the same period, education’s share of GDP drops from 4.8 to 4.1 percent, its lowest level since 1984.

The cuts include the cancellation of $70 million for 13 new cancer drugs which were promised before the election, alongside the reinstatement of $5 payments for prescription medicines. In education, $107 million is being cut from the school lunch program, which will mean less nutritious meals for hundreds of thousands of the poorest children, and $153 million is earmarked to establish as many as 50 semi-privatised charter schools at the expense of the public system.

A representative of the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association told teachers at a recent union meeting in Wellington that it was illegal to strike in opposition to these attacks.

Other cuts include $5.5 million over four years in the arts, hitting the cash-strapped NZ Film Commission, NZ Symphony Orchestra and the film and television archive Nga Taonga. The Wellington Science City Project—which would have supported research into climate change, pandemic readiness and technology in the city—is being scrapped to the tune of $462 million.

A further $220 million is being saved by reinstating student fees for the first year of university study and deducting fees from the third year instead, making it even harder for working class students to enter higher education.

With no support for scientific research mentioned anywhere in Willis’s speech, a raft of programs related to climate policies worth $102 million, along with $33 million in conservation, have been axed. The only new funding in the environmental section of the budget is $23 million annually for resource management changes, including a fast-track bill that could see projects once rejected for environmental reasons given the green light.

While it pushes tens of thousands more people into unemployment and poverty, the government is funding 500 extra police officers and preparing for a significant expansion of the prison population. Waikeria Prison will be expanded by 810 beds, at a cost of almost $2 billion, making it the largest prison in Australasia with a capacity of 1,865 beds.

The opposition parties and trade unions, led by Labour, have no real differences with the government’s program of war and austerity. Labour entered the election campaign assuring the financial elite that it would not impose any capital gains taxes. In response to the current austerity measures, it has posted on social media: “The National government’s job cuts are going too far.” In other words, Labour accepts in principle that the assaults must proceed.

Former Thai prime minister Thaksin faces new criminal charges

Ben McGrath

Thailand’s Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) announced on May 29 that former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra will be charged under the country’s draconian lèse-majesté law for statements made nearly 10 years ago. The decision is another indication of the breakdown of the unstable alliance between the current ruling party, Pheu Thai, and the traditional elites including the military, which continues to exercise considerable political power.

Former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra arrives at Don Muang airport in Bangkok, Thailand, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023 [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File]

The OAG has accused Thaksin of lèse-majesté based on a 2015 interview conducted with South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper during which he stated that members of the king’s privy council were involved in the 2014 military coup that overthrew the government of Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck. Thaksin is scheduled to be formally indicted on June 18. He reportedly has contracted COVID and is being given time to recover.

Thaksin served as prime minister from 2001 to 2006 before the military ousted him in a coup, accusing him of corruption as a means of justifying his removal. Facing significant jail time, Thaksin spent 15 years in self-imposed exile before returning to Thailand last August as part of a deal worked out between Pheu Thai and the military. That agreement allowed Pheu Thai to form a government in a coalition with military-backed parties, in which the latter would exercise control through the appointment of its officials in the cabinet of Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin.

Thaksin, the de facto leader of Pheu Thai, had an eight-year prison sentence reduced to one year by King Vajiralongkorn. Claiming illness, he then spent six months in the Police General Hospital in Bangkok before being granted parole.

Despite claims to the contrary, Thaksin has engaged in political activity since leaving the hospital in February. That month, he met with Hun Sen, Cambodia’s former long-time prime minister and current president of the country’s Senate. Thaksin also met with Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim early last month during which the two reportedly discussed conflict involving Thai Muslims near the Thailand-Malaysia border and fighting in Myanmar between the government and rebel groups. Thaksin held talks with these groups in March and April, reportedly to play a mediating role.

The military and other layers of the traditional elites, including the courts, the bureaucracy and the monarchy, are now moving against Thaksin and Pheu Thai. Prime Minister Srettha faces accusations of ethics violations from military-aligned senators that could result in being removed from office. Furthermore, the largest party in the National Assembly, the Move Forward Party (MFP), faces dissolution by the Constitutional Court for advocating reforms of Thailand’s lèse-majesté law.

Academics and political commentators have stated that the charges against Thaksin and Srettha are “warnings.” Stithorn Thananithichot, director of the Office of Innovation for Democracy at King Prajadhipok’s Institute told the Bangkok Post, “The lèse-majesté case is meant to be a warning to Thaksin not to step out of line. The (Pheu Thai-military) deal must be honored.”

However, Pheu Thai’s opportunist deal with the military last year to form a government created a highly unstable alliance between the two. In a country that has experienced two coups, mass protests and political violence over the last twenty years and the breakdown of the power-sharing deal nine months after it was reached, cannot be dismissed as simply “warnings.”

The military and other sections of the traditional elite are making clear that they, not Pheu Thai or any civilian government, are the real power in Thailand. The military allowed Pheu Thai to take office last year believing it would be preferable to rigging the results of the May general election, as it did in 2019, and risk the renewal of mass, student-led protests that broke out as a result. The MFP took the most seats in last year’s election but was sidelined by legal moves against it.

These right-wing layers are unsatisfied with Srettha’s government and Thaksin’s influence. Srettha is now highly unpopular as a result of declining economic conditions, with Pita Limjaroenrat, the de facto leader of the MFP, the most popular candidate for prime minister with 46.9 percent support according to a poll released in May. Srettha garnered only 8.7 percent of support.

The military fears that social discontent could bring the working class into open struggle. Economic growth is slowing. The World Bank estimates that Thailand’s GDP will grow at only 2.8 percent this year, a trend which is predicted to continue over the next 20 years and give Thailand one of the slowest growth rates in ASEAN.

Part of the economic difficulties Thailand faces is a result of the United States’ trade war measures aimed at China, Bangkok’s largest trading partner. The military cultivated closer relations with Beijing while in power. Srettha has attempted to look for other economic opportunities for attracting investment while still maintaining a balancing act between Beijing and Washington.

As the prices of goods grow, wages remain low, with the average daily minimum wage at just 350 baht ($US9.52). Pheu Thai has pledged to raise the minimum wage to 400 baht ($US10.88) in October, but this has been criticized by big business, which capitalizes on low labor costs. Household debt is also high, predicted to reach 91.4 percent of GDP this year.

Thailand is also experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases, driven by the new KP variants of the virus. Between May 12 to 18, for example, there were 1,882 cases requiring hospitalization and 16 deaths. These figures are a serious under reporting of the true state of the pandemic as the government does not track the total number of cases.

However, the dispute now unfolding is not limited to the poor economy and social conditions. General Jaroenchai Hintao, the commander-in-chief of the Army, is set to retire from his post, the most powerful in the military, on September 30. Srettha has supported Assistant Army Commander General Ukrit Buntanon to take over from Jaroenchai, while Assistant Army Commander General Tharapong Malakam and Army Chief of Staff General Pana Klauplaudtu are also vying for the promotion.

The latter two generals belong to the Red Rim faction, a group of officers noted for their loyalty to King Vajiralongkorn, who created the faction in 2018. Given its close relationship to the king, it is currently the most powerful faction in the military and far less inclined to accept civilian rule or its influence in the armed forces.

The Srettha government has also proposed a number of military reforms: reducing the number of active-duty generals from 1,700 to approximately 300; reducing military spending and establishing government limits on spending; and allowing conscripted soldiers time away to pursue education. These reforms have faced opposition from the military, which no doubt wants to make clear that even minor or symbolic attempts to limit its influence will not be tolerated.

The military also wants to guarantee that its economic interests are not threatened. The proposed reforms would also prevent the appointments of active-duty generals who previously engaged in criminal activity or who are under investigation for crimes, as well as a ban on doing business with the Defense Ministry.

The military has wide-ranging business interests throughout the country through which it enriches itself. In January, the lower house of the National Assembly created a committee to explore these business connections, which are shrouded in secrecy. These enterprises include golf courses, boxing stadiums, construction, hotels, and television and radio stations.

Whatever the exact reasons for the moves against Thaksin and Srettha, the court cases against them will only compound the bitter rivalry within Thai ruling circles that has wracked the country for more than two decades.