Where is Britain now in the fight against austerity?

At the last election 14 million votes were cast for parties which at that point were against any cuts. 10 million votes went to the Tories - who said there would have to be £6 Billion worth of cuts.  In other words, as the Archbishop said, there was no mandate for the programme of the Coalition government. Britain faced a 'democratic deficit'. This result was not unconnected with the lack of a social base for the incoming Tory led government. Thatcher won support, in its majority, from the then skilled working class. No such social bloc underpins the Coalition. Today, the Coalition government remains a weak government.

However, politics has moved on. Particularly the politics of the opposition.

We are now in the second year after the election. Memory fades. More important, the Labour Party has had its chance to show what would happen if there were to be a re-run of the General Election. And it turns out that the British people would get a different version of the same thing! At Labour's conference Milliband denounced bad, as opposed to good, business and banking. He also attacked the November 30 public sector union strikes. Labour will not lead the fight-back. The 14 million votes against the Tories would also have been wasted by a Labour Government. We would still have been in the fight of our lives. The social weakness of the government has not gone away but the undemocratic nature of the Coalition's victory at the General election does not now look so crucial. Instead a new political idea is emerging.

Much more potent than any effort to pretend that we would have had a substantially different government if Labour had squeaked into office is a new political fact that started with the 'Indignants' in Spain, flooded across Southern Europe, reached the US and now laps at the pedestal of St Paul's in London. Flowing out from last year's student rebellion has come thousands of young people who want a new system. This is dynamite.

Up to now in Britain, opposition has been focussed ; on student fees; on the Health Service; on pensions. This new movement looks across Europe, the US, the western world and says
'It is the system that is wrong!'

So. In the dark days at the end of November, we shall witness, in calm, solid Britain, the biggest official, general strike since 1926 AND the beginnings of a new political voice of thousands who act to show that we live in a decaying and dying system - and we do not need to.

Some principled unions are leading the battle. The next step is surely to bring together those who are organised to fight against their specific grievances with those who begin the march towards a different politics and a different economics altogether.

In my opinion the first bridge could be built around a common goal for a new type of bank. A British peoples' bank. The £75 Billion offered recently by the Bank of England as a sacrifice to big business could be used to build that bank. A democratic structure could be built to control that bank, and the experts needed to run it on a day to day basis would be employed by that structure. Will Hutton might be its CEO. Who knows? We might force a bank that supports the people, that finances new technology and jobs, that supports social house building, out of this rotten, rank, system.

A new bank is a symbol of something much more important. The old economics are collapsing. So are the old politics. And we do have very practical and very exciting alternatives.