Every day, my constituents make tough choices. Tough choices like deciding whether to heat their homes or put food on the table. Tough choices like taking out a loan to pay for this month’s rent. Tough choices like selling their home to pay for their family’s social care.
People are making tough choices because governments have made the wrong choices. We warned that Tory austerity would weaken our economy and decimate our public services. We were ignored, and the poorest in society paid the price. Austerity is not just a buzzword. It is the ongoing, brutal reality for millions of people who have been pushed into destitution. It is the face of desperation and anxiety of those forced into a spiral of debt. It is a freezing cold night for the record numbers of people sleeping rough on the streets. It is the graveyard for those left without vital support: more than three hundred thousand excess deaths have been attributed to austerity policies.
We often talk about austerity in terms of cuts to public spending, but that is just one side of the coin. By starving public services of resources, the government manufactured a convenient excuse for their privatization. We saw this most acutely with the National Health Service (NHS): an underfunded public service does not just cause satisfaction to plummet, but the belief in the principle of public health care itself. Austerity was never about saving money (the UK’s debt pile increased every single year under the Tories). It was about transferring money from the poorest to the richest. Between 2010 and 2018, aggregate wealth in the UK grew by £5.68 trillion. Ninety-four percent went to the richest 50 percent of households; 6 percent went to the poorest 50 percent. As child poverty was heading toward its highest levels since 2007, Britain’s billionaires more than doubled their wealth.
It was a political decision to defund, dismantle, and auction off our public services. And it will be a…
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Auteur: Jeremy Corbyn
