for the next year at a special discount price. IV is the hard-hitting monthly review of the Fourth International, the world socialist organisation. Send your cheque for £30 payable to 'Outlook International, PO Box 1109, London N4 2UU. Offer available in Britain and Ireland only. Name lAddress Socialist Outlook and International Viewpoint can be yours "But when he got there The cupboard was bare, And so the poor workers got none". | 17 YEARS of Tory government tax cuts and profligacy have cleaned out the national kitty, according to official figures released in September.
Interest payments on staggering levels of government borrowing are now the fourth biggest category of public spending - above defence, and below only I social security, health and education.
The indebtedness of the British state has trinled since 1970. indeed the na. tional debt has doubled to £385 billion since John Major took over, while billions have been handed to the very richest in Tory tax cuts.
The Tories have squandered £77 bil lion in North Sea Oil revenue and a massive £64 billion from privatisation, well as borrowing an extra £223 billion since 1979.
So serious is the imbalance with the economy on track for a budget deficit equivalent to 5% of national income by the year 2000 - that most objective analysts predict that whichever government wins the next election they will have to put taxes up sharply — or savage the remnants of the welfare state to cut spending.
Simply to cut the deficit to 2.5% would require the equivalent of a 7p increase in income tax.
Tonv Blair's team are not like Old Mother Hubbard. They know already that the Tories have left the cupboard quite bare.
Yet instead of examining ways in which the rich, the banks and big business can be made to pay the cost of the crisis created by the Tories they have joined in the conspiracy of silence and the crazy Dutch auction in which Tories and Labour bid for the middle class vote, claiming to be the party of lowest taxation Alan Simpson MP has pointed out that a tax of just one eighth of one percent on the speculative dealings conducted through the City of London would yield over £50 billion a year. A turnover tax on multinationals trading in Britain would bring billions more, without touching the pay packets of working class people. But even such radical reformsare too daring for New Labour.
It's time to demand some honesty from Labour's front bench moralisers and religious fanatics.
John Lister
Socialist Outlook 110 • 9 November 1996