It seems that Cameron and his cronies want us to be bombing Syria within two weeks, saying that it is vital for Britain to, ‘play it’s own part in leading the fight against ISIS’. We are being rushed into another war, lied to in the same ways, and we all seem to think that this is different. But, war is not free, it costs money. In light of the Syria question, it seems Osborne has forgotten he needs to get the deficit down.
Tony Benn was right when he said ‘if you can find money to kill people, you can find money to help people’. The Government have been telling us that they can’t possibly help the most vulnerable and worse off in our society because we have not got the money for it. They fail to help schools, they fail to help the police force and they are failing our NHS. We as a country are having to take cuts here and cuts there with no investment on us, the people. These cuts are causing the NHS to fail and run on a major deficit, they are making us less safe by the cuts to our police, and they are making sure that we can’t learn in an environment that is clean, tidy and not falling apart. Not only in these sectors but in other vital sectors too. The Chancellor even still wants to take 4.6bn pounds off the most needy and vulnerable in our society through the tax credit changes he is getting ready to announce. This will increase inequality, it will secure children’s lives in poverty and it will destroy many families. The show of the governments failure to provide is in the rise of food banks. In the past year, food bank usage has risen by 163%. This means that even more people are not able to feed their families; the working poor, people who we need to support, but people that the government failed to support. All this because we don’t have enough money and we have to get the deficit down, before we can help anyone.
Here is another lie, the deficit. We have been told that the Conservatives are the people to rely on for economic prosperity. We are told that they are getting the deficit down. But they are not. In nearly six years since their rise to power, the Tories have borrowed more money than Labour have in their 13 years prior. When the Chancellor took charge in 2015, the deficit was 811bn pounds, now it is 1505bn pounds. They are lying to us, and those lies are at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society. It seems that Syrian intervention will be another excuse at the next election for why the Conservatives have failed to balance the books, but it shouldn’t be. The deficit is a toy with which the Conservatives use as an additional excuse not to help people. They say we need to focus on the economy and the deficit, but they are making it worse, just so that they don’t have to put their hands in their own pockets and help others.
Yet now we miraculously have money for a war? No, we have always had money, but the Tories won’t give the people any. Money in their view is something that only the rich should have, and the poor, debt. What I say is that we should have an economy not intent only on helping the rich, but the poor too. What I say is that we have an economy that is armed not to kill people at the expense of helping them. Austerity is a lie, but we can’t spend money on a war that will only fracture our own security. Let’s change our economics, let’s make Britain work for the many, not the few.
Political Evolution 