Labour’s first budget a downpayment on its offensive against British working class

Robert Stevens

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first budget came with the declaration by the Labour government that it marked the end of austerity. This is a lie.

After pushing through £1.4 billion in cuts to 10 million pensioners, including 2 million of the poorest, and declaring that more savage austerity must follow, the government had to change tack slightly in finalising the budget.

UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves leaves the Treasury to deliver the Autumn Budget 2024 [Photo by HM Treasury / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Sections of the ruling class insisted that the government find some necessary funding for investment and not simply ram through more cuts. This was expressed in op ed-columns and commentary from the Guardian to the Financial Times.

This has nothing to do with largesse on the part of the ruling elite. There was genuine concern that too savage cuts would undermine global confidence in the UK economy, given the evisceration of much of its essential infrastructure.

Politically most important, after backing Labour to take office from a deeply unpopular Conservative government which had carried out 14 years of relentless austerity, there was the fear that a too swift deepening of this offensive would spark massive opposition in the working class. It had taken almost two years to quell the strike wave demanding an end to austerity that erupted in 2022, even with the best efforts of the trade union bureaucracy—in large part consisting of a promise that a Labour government would bring some relief.

The winter fuel allowance cut for pensioners, coming together with Labour’s refusal to scrap the Tory government’s vicious two-child cap on benefits payments, saw a collapse in Labour’s and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s already weak popularity ratings. Having won the July general election with a 10 percentage point lead over the Tories, by the time of the budget a Times poll showed a tie between Labour and the Tories on 27 points and the extreme right-wing Reform UK on 21 points.

Starmer had trailed a budget that would be “painful”, with Chancellor Rachel Reeves speaking of “difficult choices” and “discipline on spending” to “restore fiscal and economic stability”.

As late as Monday, Starmer was still saying, “It’s time to embrace the harsh light of fiscal reality” and to run “towards the tough decisions because ignoring them set us on the path of decline.”

Just two days later, Reeves proclaimed in her speech, “I said there would be no return to austerity, and that is the choice I have made today.”

But beneath a few meagre concessions, Reeves put forward £40 billion in tax rises and spending cuts alongside announcing that the way debt is measured would be recalibrated to allow for investment in the economy over the Parliament of around £100 billion.

Reeves claimed that “Working people will not see higher taxes in their payslips” and that instead there would be an increase in the rate of Employers’ National Insurance by 1.2 percentage points to 15 percent from April 2025. There would also be a reduction in the threshold level at which employers start paying national insurance on each employee’s salary—down from £9,100 per year to £5,000. Reeves said these measures would bring the Treasury £25 billion per year.

The chancellor also announced increases in some taxes affecting the wealthy, including tax trusts used by non-domiciled residents; private equity tax; capital gains tax, and inheritance tax (which will collectively raise around £7 billion a year).

These headline measures are meant to conceal the fact that Labour has already saved the corporate super-rich a fortune ahead of the budget by capping Corporation Tax at 25 percent for the next five years.

Claims now are that employers have just been hit with a £25 billion increase in national insurance taxation. But as was made clear by the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in 2021, the “economic incidence of the tax is passed through entirely to lower real wages in the medium term.” What this means is that businesses will seek to pass on this cost entirely to their workforce.

This assessment was echoed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, whose head Paul Johnson commented following the budget: “These tax rises partly explain why the OBR has downgraded its projections for real household income growth over the next few years. Somebody will pay for higher taxes—largely working people”.

And the slight increases in the minimum wage announced by Reeves to £12.21 an hour for a full-time worker, and just £10 an hour for 18-20 year olds, will just as surely be eaten up by any widely anticipated downturn in the global economy produced by a deepening turn to trade and military war.

Every other announcement made by Reeves kept public spending to a minimum, with each extra penny listed as a concession to “working people” also having a major downside.

Reeves made clear that a £22.6 billion increase in day-to-day spending, plus £3.1 billion for capital spending, for a National Health Service (NHS) brought to the brink of collapse would, as Health Secretary Wes Streeting warned ahead of the budget, be conditional on “vital” reforms, i.e., attacks on the workforce, so that there could be “two percent productivity growth next year.”

With much of the money set to be absorbed by NHS staff pay increases and the increased cost of care, Siva Anandaciva, chief analyst at the King’s Fund health thinktank, predicted, “The health spending announced today is unlikely to be enough for patients to see a real improvement in the care they receive.” The capital spend is set against a maintenance backlog of £13.8 billion.

Education spending was also kept to a minimum, with Reeves announcing £6.7 billion in capital investment for next year, claiming this was a 19 percent real-terms increase on the previous year. Like the NHS funding announced, this will fail to even touch the sides.

The £2.1 billion specifically allocated for the schools rebuilding programme, for example, represents an actual increase of just £550 million on what the Tories planned. Just 50 schools will be fixed each year. The £2.3 billion increase for core schools funding represents a measly 1.6 percent increase per pupil.

Even the Starmer-supporting Guardian noted, “School leaders welcomed a £2.3bn increase in core funding for schools, including a much-needed £1bn boost for special needs. However, experts said the additional investment was likely to be used mainly to plug existing deficits, while the special needs system would remain in a ‘perilous’ state.”

Reeves declared that since coming to office Labour had been “driving efficiency and reducing wasteful spending” throughout the public sector and had already “made £5.5bn of savings this year. Today we are setting a 2 percent productivity, efficiency and savings target for all departments to meet next year”.

Reeves announced that she would also implement welfare benefits cuts devised by the Tories, centred on making the work capability assessment more restrictive to deny benefits to hundreds of thousands of disabled people.

The chancellor announced that military spending had to be maintained, handing the Ministry of Defence a further £2.9 billion for the next year, “ensuring the UK comfortably exceeds our NATO commitments”. But the figure means defence spending is now slightly down as a percentage of GDP because of updated growth forecasts.

Reeves was unable to say when military spending would increase more dramatically because the economic and social impact of an immediate hike to pay for deeply unpopular wars would be so severe and provoke opposition. Labour is instead conducting a Strategic Defence Review to be published next year that will “set a path to spending 2.5 percent of GDP on defence at a future fiscal event,” Reeves said.

More than any other measure, this retreat was considered impermissible by Britain’s ruling elite. Pressure is already being piled on to demand Labour ditch this timeline and name a date for when the armed forces are handed tens of billions more.

Speaking in the House of Lords this month, crossbench peer and former Chief of the Defence Staff Lord Stirrup insisted, “Investment in defence needs to be above 3 percent of GDP, not the 2.5 percent that the government say that they aspire to but for which they have not so far set out a firm plan.”

Further IFS analysis published Thursday concluded that Reeves’ budget means this parliament set to be second worst for household incomes for 75 years.

Sudan’s civil war and “world’s worst” humanitarian crisis unleashed by imperialist scheming

Jean Shaoul

An emergency session of the United Nations Security Council held to discuss Sudan’s catastrophic civil war on Monday occasioned much handwringing but failed to discuss any measures to stop the fighting or relieve what aid agencies have called “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said that the Sudanese people are living through a “nightmare of violence, hunger and displacement,” while countless others are facing “unspeakable atrocities”, including widespread rapes. He highlighted “shocking reports of mass killings and sexual violence” in villages in east-central Gezira province where paramilitary fighters in a days-long assault had killed more than 120 people in one town.

Sudanese refugee camp in Chad, May 16, 2023. [Photo: Henry Wilkins/VOA]

Guterres said that outside powers are “fueling the fire” and intensifying the nightmare of hunger and disease for millions and warned that the 18-month civil war faces the serious possibility of “igniting regional instability from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa to the Red Sea.”

The emergency session follows last month’s UN fact-finding mission that said both sides of the conflict have probably committed war crimes, including targeting civilians and blocking humanitarian aid, during the now 18 months-long civil war.

Fighting broke out in April 2023 between the army, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, leader of the Sovereign Council and de facto ruler of the country, and his deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (better known as Hemedti) who heads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The UN mission said that the RSF had also probably committed crimes against humanity and called for the deployment of an independent peacekeeping force to protect civilians.

The RSF, based in the western Darfur region, has taken control of the west of the country and most of the capital Khartoum. Al-Burhan, who has the backing of Egypt’s military regime, South Sudan and Saudi Arabia, and what remains of the civil authorities have retreated to the east and Port Sudan, on the Red Sea where they have established a quasi-government-in-exile.

Both factions, composed of rival sub-ethnic groups with competing interests, have the support of various local militias as well as constantly shifting support from outside forces, with Egypt (until forced to back off by its paymaster the United Arab Emirates), Saudia Arabia, Eritrea and more recently Iran supporting al-Burhan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Russia’s Wagner Group supporting the RSF and mobilising their regional allies in Libya, Chad and South Sudan. Russia has largely taken a neutral stance and latterly has supported al-Burhan. This has led to fighting along ethnic lines that has evolved into five or six different wars, with local militias taking control of the northern part of the country, with the potential to splinter the country and spill over into and exacerbate conflicts in neighbouring countries.

The two army leaders, al-Burhan and Dagalo, fighting to control Sudan rose to prominence during the war in Darfur, in which 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced in fighting from 2003 to 2008. Al-Burhan headed the army, while Dagalo led the notorious Janjaweed militias responsible for some of the worst atrocities of the conflict. Dagalo has become enormously rich based off Darfur’s gold. Both men were implicated in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Fighting between these two corrupt figures erupted in no small part due to longstanding efforts by US imperialism and other regional powers to exert control over Sudan and its resources—gold, minerals, oil and agricultural land—and cut off Khartoum’s relationships with China, Russia and Iran, which all have growing economic interests in the region.

While there are no official or reliable statistics for the number of people killed in the conflict that started in the capital Khartoum, spread to Darfur and extended into other states, the death toll could be around 200,000. At least 245 towns or villages have been burnt, while much of Khartoum lies in ruins. The fighting has forced almost 11 million people to flee their homes, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). While around 3 million have taken refuge in neighbouring countries such as Egypt and Chad, the vast majority—nearly 8 million—remain inside Sudan, many of them in camps like Zamzam, an internally displaced people (IDP) camp, on the outskirts of the city of el-Fasher in Northern Darfur province in western Sudan

In August, the UN declared a full-blown famine—only the third time in 20 years—in the Zamzam. A staggering 25 million of Sudan’s 50 million population face severe food insecurity. Aid agencies have been unable to reach much of the country, with reports of some convoys taking six weeks to cross the country as both the Sudanese army and the RSF have refused to let trucks carrying aid go through their check points and/or are extorting bribes. Food prices have gone through the roof.

The situation has been further exacerbated by the heavy rains and flooding in the states of Red Sea, River Nile and Northern State that have caused deaths, injuries, the loss of livestock, the destruction of homes, public infrastructure, bridges, roads and the catastrophic collapse of the Arba’at Dam in Red Sea State, hindering the movement of goods and people. With the health system and water systems broken, cholera outbreaks have been reported, with at least 112 deaths between July 22 and September 1.

Map of region of Darfur (light shade), Sudan, July 2011 [Photo by derivative work: User:Пакко / CC BY-SA 3.0]

Last April, the charity Médecins Sans Frontières estimated that a child in the camp was dying from starvation or disease every two hours. Since then, the situation has worsened with Sudan facing mass starvation on a scale not seen in decades. Even in the most “optimistic scenario,” with fighting stopping and this month’s harvest better than last year’s, there could be six million “excess deaths” by 2027, with more than 10 million perishing if the fighting continues.

Sudan’s location in the Horn of Africa gives it enormous geopolitical strategic importance. It is the gateway to the Sahara, Sahel and the Horn. It has an 800-kilometre coastline along the Red Sea that carries around 15 percent of world trade by volume. While it borders seven countries, most of which are in an equally fragile state, it is also close to the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf States.

The Gulf States have turned to the Horn of Africa in search of food supplies for their burgeoning populations, buying up land. Much of Sudan’s most fertile region—the states of Khartoum, River Nile and Northern that once sustained indigenous farmers—has been bought up, particularly after the 2008 food crisis and 2013 introduction of business-friendly legislation. Land has been turned over to highly mechanised food production for export, often via agreements with agribusiness companies such as the US firm Cargill. The UAE’s AD Ports Group has just signed a $6 billion agreement to build and operate a port to export the produce, as well as an industrial zone, an international airport and an agricultural zone covering more than 400,000 acres at Abu Amama, north of Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

In other regions dominated by agro-pastoral subsistence economies, changes in the ownership, rearing and export of livestock have led to violent land clearances and the militarisation of livestock rearing for a rapidly expanding export market, as well as to the displacement and destitution of local people forced to live in edge-of-city shanty towns or giant internally displaced peoples’ camps that are little more than bonded-labour camps. The militarised livestock production is believed to have played a role in exacerbating the ethnic and tribal rivalries and the civil war in Darfur and Kordofan states.

With the Horn of Africa, the Sahel, North Africa and the Red Sea basin becoming key battlegrounds for competing interests, the Biden administration in the United States has been unable to broker any agreement either among its own regional allies or between Sudan’s rival gangsters. While in the past the UN Secretary Council might have sent in peacekeepers to keep the warring factions apart and stop the killing, it has been stymied by the imperialist powers’ refusal to oppose the UAE—a crucial ally in its preparations for war against Iran—and the hostility between the US and Russia.

As a result, it has left it to regional bodies, including the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an eight-country trade block in the Horn, and the African Union (AU) that are themselves wracked with conflicts. Guterres ruled out sending a UN peace-keeping force to Sudan, saying, “At present, the conditions do not exist for the successful deployment of a United Nations force to protect civilians in Sudan.”

With the Sudanese authorities’ three-month approval for the UN and aid groups to use the Adre border crossing between Chad and Darfur—that has also been used to transport mercenaries and arms to the RSF for some of the most intense fighting between government forces and the RSF—due to expire in mid-November, Russia insisted that it was up to the Sudanese government to decide whether the Adre crossing would remain open beyond mid-November and that it would be “inappropriate to put pressure on” the government.

Guterres pointed out that only 56 percent of the UN’s humanitarian funding appeal of $2.7 billion had been met. The miserable funds testify to the prevailing view among the imperialist powers that Sudan’s impoverished people are surplus to requirements.

H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award 2025

Application Deadline:

The application deadline for the H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award 2025 For Changemakers is November 15, 2024.

Tell Me About The H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award:

The Global Change Award, launched by the H&M Foundation in 2015 and known as the “Nobel Prize of Fashion,” supports innovative changemakers working to decarbonize the fashion industry and achieve net-zero emissions. Since its inception, the award has funded 46 innovations with a total of 8 million euros in grants. Each year, ten changemakers receive €200,000 and are celebrated at Stockholm City Hall, alongside participation in a yearlong Changemaker Programme with Accenture and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. The award promotes sustainable solutions aimed at enhancing circularity and fostering a socially inclusive, planet-positive future.

Which Fields are Eligible?

The following fields are eligible:

• Technology
• Science
• Business
• Design
• Social Innovation

Type:

Contest/Grant

Who can Apply For The H&M Foundation’s Global Change Award?

Also, the eligibility criteria include:

• Open to individuals or teams with innovative ideas addressing decarbonization in the textile industry.

• Applicants should demonstrate a commitment and capacity to implement solutions that benefit people and the planet.

Which Countries Are Eligible?

All countries 

Where will the Award be Taken?

Sweden

How Many Awards?

Not specified

What is the Benefit of the Award?

Additionally, the benefits include:

• Winners receive a grant of €200,000.
• Recognition and celebration at the iconic Stockholm City Hall.
• Participation in the yearlong Changemaker Programme.
• Access to a powerful network of industry experts, brands, and retailers.
• Opportunities for collaboration with global brands and businesses.
• Knowledge sharing and insights to drive systems change within the industry.
• Support for innovative solutions in sustainable materials, responsible production, mindful consumption, and new ideas (wildcards).

How Long Will the Award Last?

Not specified 

How to Apply:

To apply, click this link.

Volkswagen plans closure of 3 plants in Germany, cutting tens of thousands of jobs

Ulrich Rippert

With Volkswagen management planning a radical cost-cutting program, Central Works Council Chairwoman Daniela Cavallo, of the IG Metall trade union, announced yesterday that at least three German plants are to be closed and tens of thousands of jobs cut.

VW plant in Wolfsburg

On Monday morning, the works council invited workers to information meetings at all German plants. Some 25,000 employees gathered at the main plant in Wolfsburg alone. A works council leaflet, which was distributed en masse on Monday, begins with the words: “It is a declaration of war of historic proportions on its own workforce and entire home regions at the heart of the Group.” It continued: 

In connection with job losses for tens of thousands of us, the Board of Management intends to enforce the following: close at least three VW factories in Germany, shrink virtually all plants still existing in Germany, also separate from previous core areas and, on top of that, enforce massive pay losses for the remaining employees.

All this is “not sabre rattling” as a tactic in the current round of collective bargaining, the VW works council explained, as the board really wants all this and considers that the cost-cutting plan has “no alternative and no room for concessions.” The Central Works Council was informed in advance, but the Board of Directors refused to come clean to its own employees. “That is why your works councils are now forced to inform you about this.”

The financial daily Handelsblatt quoted from an internal strategy paper, which is referred to as a “poison list” in management circles. According to the paper, further massive social attacks are planned. They include, among other things, major wage cuts, the outsourcing of individual administrative areas and pay freezes for the years 2025 and 2026. 

Chief Human Resources Officer Gunnar Kilian said in a media release that the Board of Management had decided not to disclose any further details about the planned measures in the cost-cutting programme: “We adhere to the principle agreed in codetermination to first conduct the discussion about the future of Volkswagen AG internally with our negotiating partners.”

On Wednesday, negotiations between management and IG Metall on a new company collective bargaining agreement will enter the second round. During the first round in September VW rejected IG Metall’s demands for a 7 percent wage increase and instead pushed for savings. According to Cavallo, VW is now demanding a 10 percent wage cut and pay freezes in the next two years. 

Many VW workers are shocked. The largest European carmaker already announced a “cost-cutting policy” in the summer and terminated the employment guarantee that had been in place for decades. But Monday’s announcements exceeded all fears. The VW Group has long been known in Germany for relatively high wages and social benefits with jobs considered crisis-proof, from apprenticeship to retirement.

The works council chief’s apparent indignation on Monday was, however, all for show. In truth, the works council is involved in all management discussions and is directly involved in the preparation of the plans to shut plants. The works council and IG Metall are responsible within management for designing the social attacks in such a way that resistance to them can be suppressed. The confidentiality up to now was also agreed upon and the announcement now made by the works council two days before the next round of negotiations was deliberately calculated. 

Cavallo and her IG Metall colleagues speak of an attack “on us” and try to present themselves as representatives of workers’ interests. The reality is the opposite. The fact that the works council speaks of “historic” attacks, but has so far not initiated any combat measures against them, shows this. In no other German company is the cooperation between the owners, management and trade unions as close and sophisticated as at Volkswagen.

Head of Human Resources Gunnar Kilian, who is responsible for the plan to shutter plants and for layoffs, was General Secretary of the works council before moving to the Board of Directors. He was considered the “closest confidant” of Cavallo’s predecessor Bernd Osterloh and his “mastermind.” 

The VW Group has in the past been described as the epitome of social partnership and as a “German codetermination model.” IG Metall and the works council, together with an army of full-time officials, ensure that the decisions of the Executive Board and Supervisory Board are implemented smoothly. 

The head of IG Metall traditionally serves as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Group, assisted by the works council, which, due to statutory codetermination, together with IGM, occupies half of the Supervisory Board. The other half is accounted for by Porsche Holding, which is controlled by the Porsche and Piech families and owns 53 percent of the ordinary shares, the Emirate of Qatar (17 percent) and the Social Democratic Party-governed state of Lower Saxony (20 percent). 

The VW Group is thus practically dominated by a triumvirate of trade unions, works councils and the SPD. Ex-IGM head Jörg Hofmann, General Works Council Chairman Daniela Cavallo and Lower Saxony Minister President Stephan Weil (SPD) sit on the eight-member Supervisory Board, where all important decisions are discussed.

The cost-cutting at VW is part of a global offensive by the car companies, which—supported by national governments and trade union bureaucracies—are fighting a bitter battle for market share and higher returns, and are using the switch to electric mobility to lay off hundreds of thousands.

Ford is shutting down its plant in Saarlouis and is now attacking the workers in Cologne and Valencia. With Stellantis, “hardly a stone remains on top of another,” as the daily FAZ writes. The CEO Carlos Tavares, who is notorious as a “cost killer,” is destroying thousands of jobs in the US and Italy. The Opel plant in Eisenach is not spared either, and of the 15,000 jobs that once existed at the Opel main plant in Rüsselsheim, only 8,300 remain.

A veritable massacre is taking place in the supplier industry. ZF Friedrichshafen is destroying 14,000 jobs and Continental 7,000. Almost daily, smaller companies with several hundred employees close. The software group SAP is also cutting 10,000 jobs, ThyssenKrupp is cutting its steel division, the chemical group Bayer is destroying 5,000 jobs and BASF is closing two sites in Cologne and Frankfurt-Höchst.

The crisis of the capitalist system is intensifying and massive social attacks are being enforced in order to increase profits not only in Germany and Europe, but worldwide. In the US, striking Boeing workers are facing very similar attacks and have already twice rejected a miserable collective bargaining agreement backed by the union bureaucracy.

The unrestrained pursuit of profit by billionaires and speculators not only exacerbates exploitation, but also leads to war. The hunt for raw materials, markets and cheap labour develops into an economic war with trade restrictions, punitive tariffs and subsidies, and finally into a military conflict.

For example, the US is now imposing import tariffs of 100 percent on electric cars from China. At the same time, they are surrounding the economically rising country militarily and systematically preparing for war. The EU has imposed similar import duties—albeit at a lower level.

Germany has used EU enlargement to increase its economic dominance in Eastern Europe. It supports the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in order to force regime change in Moscow and bring the huge country with its raw materials and energy sources under the direct control of the German economy. The economic and energy crisis exacerbated by this is now being passed on to the workers using increasingly brutal methods.

Labor’s cuts set to destroy over 1,000 jobs at Australian universities

Jack Turner

More than 1,000 job cuts have been announced this month at public universities across Australia. This is a direct result of the Labor government’s caps on international student enrolments, on top of its systemic under-funding of the universities.

Striking NTEU members protest outside University of Newcastle.

Labor has decreed cuts to international student enrolments by more than 50,000 for next year, most heavily affecting 15 of the publicly-funded universities. This is a reactionary nationalist move, backed by the Liberal-National Coalition, to scapegoat international students for the worsening housing and cost-of-living crisis affecting working-class households.

The cuts are particularly hitting universities with large numbers of Chinese students, such as the University of Sydney and University of Melbourne. That is in line with efforts throughout the media and political establishment to whip up anti-Chinese sentiment amid escalating US-led preparations for war against China.

The cuts to international students are aimed at forcing universities to integrate themselves more fully with the demands of big business and the military, as set out in the Albanese government’s Universities Accord.

The cuts are depriving universities of one of their main sources of income, full fee-paying international students, who have become cash cows for the universities amid funding cuts by successive Labor and Liberal-National governments.

Among the job cuts unveiled or foreshadowed so far:

• The University of Wollongong announced a $35 million drop in revenue and cuts “in every part of the university.” National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) branch president Fiona Probyn-Rapsey predicted 200-300 job cuts, and said workers would only find out if they were among them on December 20, the last day of work before the summer shut down.

• The Australian National University (ANU) unveiled a projected budget deficit of $200 million this year, called for a $100 million cut from salaries. It has announced 108 redundancies so far, including 50 in the College of Health Medicine, with another 600 job cuts threatened.

• The University of Canberra (UC) said it would cut $50 million in wages by the end of next year, or at least 200 jobs. Outgoing Vice-Chancellor Stephen Parker said the cuts would affect “all levels of the institution.”

• James Cook University in Townsville said it would reduce its headcount by about 50 workers.

• The University of Southern Queensland will cut an estimated 60 jobs to fill a $32 million budget hole.

• The University of Newcastle released a “Business Improvement Program” that states the “need to review our approach to workforce planning.”

• University of Sydney Vice Chancellor Mark Scott said the university expected to lose $1 billion in revenue over five years and has implemented a hiring freeze affecting thousands of workers on fixed term or casual contracts who will not have their contracts renewed.

The Universities of Melbourne, Federation, Tasmania and La Trobe have implemented similar measures.

This is on top of the cuts already announced at Western Sydney University’s College of some 17 percent of the workforce, and the equivalent of 97 full-time positions from the Faculty of Arts at Macquarie University. At both universities, workers have formed rank-and-file committees, independent of the campus trade unions, to fight these cuts and develop a broader struggle of education workers.

Not accidentally, the main target at both Western Sydney and Macquarie is the arts and humanities courses. The ruling elite does not want critical and educated working-class students but fodder for industry or war. This points to the underlying agenda behind the cuts.

As the rank-and-file committees have warned, far from providing a vehicle to improve education, as the campus unions falsely claim, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor government is spearheading pro-market restructuring, particularly in relation to the corporate elite and the military.

The government’s Universities Accord report, released in February, calls for courses to be designed “with the skill needs of industry in mind,” making special mention of the $368 billion “AUKUS nuclear submarine program,” which is bound up with the preparations for war against China.

While starving universities of funds, the Labor government is spending billions on supporting the US-led war against Russia in Ukraine, the US-Israeli genocide in Gaza, and preparations for war against China, including the construction of US military bases across the north and west coast.

The restructuring is coupled with a crackdown on dissent on campuses. Earlier this month, police arrested three Western Sydney University students for conducting a peaceful protest against the genocide in Gaza and bombing of Lebanon.

In July, the University of Sydney management imposed a “Campus Access Policy” that all but prohibits protests. While inflicted in response to anti-genocide student encampments, such measures setting anti-democratic precedents for use more broadly against youth and workers opposing the government’s pro-war agenda.

The NTEU and the other main campus trade union, the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU), are fully complicit in Labor’s assault. In September the NTEU asked its members to sign a petition to the government calling for a “phase-in periods for any caps” on international students, not the reversal of them.

The NTEU falsely claims that the enrolment cuts could be implemented without any job losses and that vice chancellors’ warnings about thousands of job cuts were just “scare mongering.”

Likewise, responding to the latest cuts at ANU and UC, NTEU Australian Capital Territory division secretary Lachlan Clohesy said “really poor [university] governance is at the root of all these problems.” He called on Education Minister Jason Clare to “implement a transition plan to make up funding shortfalls due to federal government policy changes.”

This was as though it was not the Labor government itself that has authored the cuts.

This represents a deepening of the role of the union apparatuses in diverting political opposition away from the Labor Party. The unions campaigned for and supported the previous Rudd-Gillard Labor governments of 2007 to 2013, which cut university funding by $10 billion, and implemented policies that forced universities to compete for enrolments.

Japan’s LDP suffers electoral defeat for only the third time since 1955

Peter Symonds

Sunday’s parliamentary election in Japan for the lower house of the Diet has resulted in a stunning setback for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). With its ally Komeito, it failed to win a majority of seats for only the third time since the LDP was formed in 1955.

Japan's prime minister and president of the Liberal Democratic Party Shigeru Ishiba, October 27, 2024 [AP Photo/Takashi Aoyama]

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, who just assumed office on October 1, called the snap election in a bid to obtain a mandate for his right-wing, militarist agenda. That has now backfired. He has pledged to remain in office, however, ignoring commentary that he was likely to take responsibility for the defeat and resign.

Ishiba told reporters on Monday that, in the light of Japan’s economic and security conditions, he would not allow a “political vacuum” to occur. Noting the “severe criticism” of the government by voters, he declared: “We will fulfil our duties to protect the lives of the people and the country by responding to tough issues in a solemn and appropriate way.”

In his brief period in office, Ishiba, a former defence minister, has lined up fully behind the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza and Washington’s accelerating preparations for war against China. He has called for the formation of an “Asian NATO” to confront China and North Korea, suggesting that Japan should play a more prominent role in the region’s security structures.

Prior to the election, the LDP held a majority in its own right in the 465-seat lower house. Its 259 seats have now been reduced to just 191. Two cabinet ministers lost their seats. Komeito also lost seats, dropping from 32 to 24, leaving the ruling coalition with just 215, well short of the 233 seats necessary for a majority.

Ishiba has blamed the defeat on the corruption scandal surrounding the misuse of proceeds from the LDP’s political fundraisers. However, the alienation and hostility to the government, and indeed the entire political establishment, is rooted in far deeper issues—the worsening social crisis, widening social inequality and the turn to militarism and war.

Commentators have pointed to inflation and the “cost-of-living crunch” as a significant factor turning voters away from the LDP. While core consumer prices rose by just 2.4 percent year-on-year in September, according to government data, the index excluded volatile fresh food items and obscured far higher rises in the price of some basics. Real wages fell by 0.6 percent in August compared to a year earlier.

According to data released last Friday, Tokyo rice prices in October soared by a record 62.3 percent from a year ago, driven up by high costs for fertilizer and other inputs. Imported food stuffs have also risen sharply due to a weak yen—coffee beans and beef up 16.6 percent and 14.1 percent, respectively.

While Ishiba promised to end corruption in the LDP and take measures to ease cost-of-living burdens, voters in large numbers clearly did not believe him. The far broader alienation of voters from the political establishment is evidenced by the fact that nearly half of registered voters did not bother to cast a ballot.

Voter turnout in single seat constituencies on Sunday was just 53.9 percent, a drop of 2 percentage points on the previous election, and the third lowest level since World War II. While figures have not so far been released, the turnout among younger voters will have been far lower. In the 2021 lower house election, just 43.2 percent of teenagers and 36.5 percent of voters in their 20s cast a ballot. Japan only lowered the voting age from 20 to 18 in 2016.

The low turnout among youth reflects the fact that many have been condemned to a life of poorly-paid part-time or casual work with no future prospects. Successive governments have dismantled much of the post-war lifelong employment system that guaranteed jobs and other benefits. No doubt many young people, like their counterparts around the world, are also concerned about the rise of militarism and the dangers of war.

While the main opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), made significant gains, boosting its seats from 98 to 148, it is hardly a vote of confidence in the party. The CDP emerged out of a split in the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) that had defeated the LDP in 2009 for the second time since 1955 but was unceremoniously thrown out of office in 2012 after breaking its promises to address pressing social issues facing working people.

Yoshihiko Noda, who was the last of the three prime ministers of the 2009‒2012 Democratic Party government, was installed as CDP leader this September and turned the party to the right.

Mass protests erupted in 2015 against the LDP government of Shinzo Abe and its legislation to formalise so-called collective self-defence—that is, Japan’s military involvement in US wars of aggression—which was ultimately rammed through the Diet. The DPJ and subsequently the CDP had sought to capitalise on this anti-war opposition by promising to overturn the legislation, a pledge that Noda signaled he will jettison.

That the issues of government support for US-led wars, remilitarisation and the doubling of the defence budget were not raised in the official election campaign reflects the fact that the entire political establishment, in one way or another, supports a more aggressive assertion by Japanese imperialism of its economic and strategic interests.

Two parties could decide the next prime minister—the Democratic Party for the People (DPP) and the Japan Innovation Party (Ishin). The DPP, a right-wing fragment that emerged from the break-up of the DPJ, now holds 28 seats, up from 7. Ishin, a far-right party that openly supports Japanese remilitarisation, holds 38 seats, down from 44. Either party could give Ishiba the numbers he needs to retain the prime ministership when parliament reconvenes on November 11.

Ishiba, however, told reporters yesterday that he was not considering forming a broader coalition “at this point.” This raises the possibility that he will attempt to operate as a minority government, relying on deals with other parties to push through legislation.

Buoyed by the election result for the CDP, Noda is signaling that he will make a bid to become prime minister. “Voters chose which party would be the best fit to push for political reforms,” he declared on Sunday, adding that the “LDP-Komeito administration cannot continue.” The CDP, however, is in a far weaker position to form government, given the political diversity of parties that it would have woo to form a government.

The Japanese Communist Party (JCP), which long ago dropped any opposition to the capitalist system and is thoroughly integrated into the political establishment, has previously backed and concluded electoral deals with the CDP. In Sunday’s election, in protest over Noda’s refusal to commit to rescinding the collective self-defence legislation, the JCP stood against the CDP in numbers of electorates. The JCP’s seat count fell from 10 to 8.

The decline of the LDP and fragmentation of the Japanese political establishment has been a protracted process over the past three decades, fueled by the break-up of the post-war order dominated by US imperialism, and the crisis of world capitalism. The LDP lost office briefly for the first time in 1993, after breakaway LDP factions formed an unstable coalition with the Socialist party. It is no accident that the LDP again lost power in 2009 during the global financial crisis and failed to gain a parliamentary majority on Sunday amid growing financial instability, geo-political tensions and war.

None of the establishment parties can address the needs and aspirations of workers and youth in Japan. Whatever the form it takes, the next government will be one of instability and crisis as it seeks to impose new burdens on the working class in order to boost the profits of big business and aggressively pursue the interests of Japanese imperialism.

Georgian president refuses to recognize election results, appeals for Western backing

Andrea Peters

Political turmoil has seized the south Caucasus country of Georgia, after President Salome Zourabichvili declared Sunday that she would not recognize the results of parliamentary elections held the day before. The vote delivered a victory to the ruling Georgian Dream party, which won 53.92 percent of the ballots cast, securing it 89 seats in the legislature and renewing its mandate to form a government. The leading opposition parties, which the president backs, collectively won 37.78 percent of the vote, giving them a total of 61 representatives.

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili speaks to a crowd during an opposition protest against the results of the parliamentary election in Tbilisi, Georgia, Monday, Oct. 28, 2024. [AP Photo/Zurab Tsertsvadze]

Zourabichvili, who was born in France and worked in its diplomatic service for 30 years, including as the country’s ambassador to Georgia, described Saturday’s elections as a “Russian special operation” and a “constitutional coup.” The head of state, who, while occupying a ceremonial position is also commander-in-chief of the military, called for mass protests on Monday night and appealed for “the firm support of our European partners, of our American partners.”

Press reports indicate that tens of thousands took to the streets, with many draped in Georgian and EU flags, similar to mass pro-Western demonstrations that occurred in the early summer when the Georgian Dream government passed a “foreign agents” law. Zourabichvili, who told the crowd yesterday night “They stole your vote,” found time between addressing the demonstrations and working to overturn to the election results to give an interview to CNN. Speaking to Christiane Amanpour on Monday, she described the October 26 vote as a “complete falsification.”

The country’s president is laying the groundwork for overthrowing the re-elected ruling party. As Brian Whitmore, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, noted Monday in a comment on the organization’s website, “Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary election has entered its ‘Maidan’ phase.” Drawing a comparison between what is unfolding in Tbilisi now and the right-wing coup that brought to power the current regime in Kiev, he observed, “This weekend’s deeply flawed election was just the opening bell.”

The Georgian opposition, which is ferociously anti-Russian and has extremely close ties to Washington and Brussels, insists that vote buying, physical violence and other “irregularities” marred Saturday’s vote. Several opposition political parties have said they will refuse to take their seats.

Irakli Kobakhidze, the leader of GD and head of the country’s parliament, has denied that his party was involved in any efforts to manipulate the election. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov also rejected accusations of Russian involvement, which he described as having become standard fare.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), whose 529 poll watchers observed the balloting, is playing a leading role in bolstering the opposition’s claims, as is the White House and the EU as a whole, all of which are demanding an investigation into the outcome.

The grounds for their demands are shaky. According to French Senator and Special Coordinator for the OSCE Pascal Alliard, the Georgian parliamentary election was flawed because of “imbalances in financial resources” and a “divisive campaign atmosphere”—in other words, the party that won had more money. It used its domination of the media to promote itself, and there are sharp political divisions in the population. He could not indicate, however, why any of these things—features of every modern election in every capitalist society—would make the outcome questionable.

Similarly, Antonio López-Istúriz White, the head of the European Parliament delegation that monitored the Georgian election, criticized the outcome because “during the electoral campaign, the ruling party used anti-Western and hostile rhetoric, targeting Georgia’s democratic partners, in particular the European Union, its politicians and diplomats, promoted Russian disinformation, manipulation and conspiracy theories.”

In essence, according to him, if the United States, the EU or NATO are criticized in any political process in any country, it makes that process—whether it be an election, media coverage or anything else—illegitimate.

Despite what is clearly a gathering campaign on the part of the Western-backed opposition to seize power in Tbilisi on the basis of accusations of election fraud, little evidence has been presented to substantiate the claims. There have been only statements of foreign election observers hostile to the ruling party and videos circulating on social media that show people forcefully shoving ballots into boxes in some unspecified location on an unidentified date in support of an unnamed candidate.

And even if these incidents and other alleged reports of people being pressured into voting one way or another, paid to cast a ballot, or otherwise intimidated turn out to be true, there is no reason to assume that vote rigging was solely, or even primarily, carried out on behalf of the ruling party. The opposition’s backers in Washington are masters at overturning democratic elections and have worked systematically over the years to create in Georgia an extensive network of pro-Western, non-governmental organizations, democratic-advocacy networks, press outlets and the like with the sole purpose of securing American and European interests in the south Caucasus.

Thus far the OSCE has held back from declaring that Georgia’s election results are completely invalid, a step that the White House has also yet to take. The latter, in particular, may be to some extent hemmed in at the moment by the obvious contradiction between the Biden administration’s support for the opposition in Tbilisi and the fact that Donald Trump—whom Harris and Biden, albeit meekly, have described as a would-be dictator—has also made clear that he will not recognize any vote that does not hand him victory.

However, neither this nor the veracity of the claims about election fraud in Georgia will stop the efforts of the NATO powers, with the aid of the local opposition, to secure what they want on the ground in the south Caucasus. Due to its geographic location, Georgia, as well as neighboring Armenia, is at the center of the United States and Europe’s war plans, both with regards to Russia and Iran.

Washington has been involved in the country for decades, pouring money into “civil society” organizations, working to establish closer military ties with the state, and helping to orchestrate the overthrow of administrations it identifies as too close to Russia, such as during the 2004 Rose Revolution.

Georgian Dream won the election because it presented itself as an anti-war party, the only means by which to prevent the nation from being ruled by the “global party of war” and transformed into NATO’s “second front. It won support among those sections of the population that fear what will happen to them if they become the next launching pad for NATO, are sympathetic to the plight of the Russian people on the basis of the countries’ shared cultural and political history, and are not terribly convinced, after decades of miseries being visited upon themselves and others around the world, of the West’s promises of prosperity and democracy.

GD, however, has no real ability to stop the tiny nation of less than 4 million from being dragged into World War Three. It represents that section of the Georgian ruling class that aims to balance between Russia and the West and is constantly seeking some sort of negotiated solution. Although the opposition presents GD as fanatical Putinists who hate Europe and all its values, it has long made clear its desire to bring Georgia into the EU.

Prime Minister Kobakhidze reiterated this just one day prior to the parliamentary elections. Speaking in an interview with Euronews on October 25, he described his government as “pro-European” and stated, “We will continue to do everything to promote Georgia’s EU accession in the future.”

Kobakhidze’s efforts to appease his critics, however, have failed. Georgia’s ruling party is targeted for removal, drawn into a maelstrom enveloping all the former Soviet countries ringing the Black Sea. In nearby Moldova, pro-EU forces, taking the opposite tactic to that of their counterparts in Georgia, just claimed victory in a highly questionable vote. According to their version of events, they managed to win the contest despite the evil of “Russian disinformation.” Which elections are “legitimate” and which are not has nothing to do with the integrity of the voting but the degree to which the outcome comports with what Washington and Brussels want.