Without any mandate the politicians who lead Britain have launched a huge change for the worse in millions of people’s lives. They have joined a race with other EU regimes to use the banking crisis as an excuse for breaking down the welfare state.

Banking losses cost Britain’s taxpayers £2,000 Billion. There are only two ways available to deal with a system-shaking catastrophe like this.  The first way is the one that was chosen (but not openly debated in the General Election) by all three mainstream parties. It is to shift away a vast amount of money and social wealth from the majority of the population. The second is to reorganise your economy in the interests of all. There are obvious signs of the meaning of the first policy in examples like the tiny bank levy of £2 billion in the budget when even the Bank of England (25 June) says if last year’s bank bonuses were stopped it would make £10 billion instantly available. At the same time millions of workers are to be forced to go into years of pay cuts.

The news that the Chancellor intends to hack more £ billions off welfare benefits to protect the government departments that award contracts to private business (FT 24 June) is part of the same story. And, worried about a backlash from the Liberal Democrat rank and file, lest we forget, their leaders remind us that Labour cuts were proposed to be at least two thirds of those in the Tory / Lib Dem budget. They were also planning 20% cuts for all government departments this year (instead of George Osborne’s 25%.)

Even major international and pro-system economists like Richard Koo (called the ‘Economist’s economist’) and Professor Paul Krugman (of Princeton University) deride the slash and burn policies of European and UK big business and its political representatives. They say (NYT, Newsnight) policies like these are leading us into a new 1930s. But the rich do not care.

The alternative way starts with cleaning up the banks by taking state control of this vital part of our economy. Banks without share dividends and bonuses will save us £20 billion a year. Neither will they ever again play the lottery with our wealth. A truly progressive tax system plus removal of the estimated annual £40 billion worth of tax dodging (Caroline Lucas MP, HOC 23 June) would create more than enough to maintain welfare. Taking the £10 billion cost of wars and the £70 billion cost of Trident from expenditure would begin to release new sources of wealth that might begin to destroy the scourge of poverty in Britain for once and for all. These are only a few examples of what can be done.

There have been general strikes in Greece, in France, in Spain and now in Italy against the plans of the rich. Some unions in Britain have so far led the call for resistance despite the shackles of the law. The Charter shows there is an alternative. We do have something to fight for.

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