The state and local government

407 J. Lister, 'Staked out for the vultures', Morning Star, 14 July 2010.

408 Ibid.

409 Ibid. GPs, according to the findings of a survey published by Pulse magazine on 17 July 2010, are also split over government plans to hand control of NHS budgets to them through commissioning groups. Some 51 per cent back commissioning and just under half are ready to take on commissioning, according to their survey of some 250 doctors. However just 40 per cent said the profession would be capable of managing commissioning budgets. Some 39 per cent rejected the idea. And 46 per cent of GPs said they were not ready to take on commissioning budgets. Just 16 per cent reported having experience of budget management (http://about.doctors.net.uk/About/News.aspx?i=3).

410 Ibid.

411 Quoted in W. Stone, 'Uncertainty ahead for health care', Morning Star, 23 July 2010.

412 S. Iliffe, 2010. Steve Iliffe is Professor of Primary Care for Older People, University College London and Practice Based Commissioner, Kilburn Locality, Brent PCT. He co-edits with Paul Walker the online magazine Health Matters.

413 Quoted in R. Booth, R. Wachman and J. Vasagar , 'Austerity drive will hand billions to private sector', The Guardian, 17 July 2010.

414 Ibid.

415 Ibid.

416 R. Booth and K. Scott, 'Edinburgh considers privatisation of bin collection to avoid cuts', The Guardian, 17 July 2010.

417 Insurance Times, 13 July 2010.

418 IMF, 2010, p. 7.

419 OECD, 2010, p. 2, their emphasis.

420 Ibid.

421 Ibid., p. 3.

422 W.Keegan, 'Deficit cuts: We're all in this together. But some are more in it than others From the way they are going about the cuts, the coalition seems in danger of reviving a class war. I say "in danger", but perhaps that is what some of them want', The Observer, 11 July 2010.

423 M. Cliffe et al, 2010, p. 9.

424 C. Smallwood, 2010.

425 Quoted in D. Smith, 'Lord, beak up the euro, but not just yet', The Sunday Times, 11 July 2010. RBC is part of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

426 D. Leonhardt, 'Governments Move to Cut Spending, in 1930s Echo', The New York Times, 30 June 2010.

427 B. Eichengreen and K. H. O’Rourke, 'A Tale of two depressions', http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/3421. Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics and Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Kevin O’Rourke is Professor of Economics at Trinity College Dublin.

428 L. Elliott and P. Inman, 'No pleasing rating agencies as UK growth story called into question', The Guardian, 13 July 2010.

429 Ibid.

430 National Audit Office, 2010b, p. 4.

431 House of Commons Treasury Committee, 2010, p. 6.

432 ibid., p. 42.

433 Ibid.

434 The Guardian, 21 July 2010.

435 See C. Lapavitsas et al, 2010. Professor Costas Lapavitsas is a leading Marxist economist at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

436 Communist Party of Britain leaflet, July 2010.

437 Only freeholders and landlords would pay LVT with the owner of a large estate paying a higher rate than someone who owns a small suburban semi. Last year, the council tax also brought in £25 billion – one quarter of the cost of local budgets. Almost all of the rest came from central government grants and national taxes whose proceeds are earmarked for local authorities. A two per cent levy could therefore raise £100 billion (see Chapter 13).

438 See note 13.

439 Ibid.

440 B. Camfield, 2010. Barry Camfield is National Organiser of the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions.

441 ‘...as if they sensed the danger faced by the left at the end of the New Labour era’ (H. Wainwright, ‘What’s new for the next Labour?’ Morning Star, 20 May 2010). Email

442 To disprove the truth of the joke that Ralph Miliband ‘had declared the Labour Party could never be the true representative of the working class and his sons entered politics to prove him right’ (I. Pinkus, letter, Morning Star, 31 May 2010). Moreover, as one Labour Party member commented: ‘Although I welcome Diane Abbott's candidature as a different type of candidate to the other four (David and Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Andy Burnham PL), her voting record and hypocritical action over sending her son to a private school means she cannot be considered an authentic candidate of the party's left wing. It was a little galling to see so many MPs make 11th-hour decisions to nominate Abbott to get a woman on the ballot paper while knowing that, at the same time, they were excluding the only candidate (John McDonnell PL) who represented the socialist tradition of the Labour Party (T. Sandle, letter, The Guardian, 11 June 2010). Conversely, Paul Richards, a former special adviser to Hazel Blears tweeted: “Some of us spent decades fighting the hard left. Now our MPs are falling over themselves to get the Campaign Group on the ballot paper. Crazy” (quoted in A. Stratton, ‘Miliband keeps Abbott in the race’, The Guardian, 10 June 2010). Whereas, according to Andrew Robinson, ‘[i]f the left can unite behind Diane Abbott, the neoliberal, neoconservative new Labour hold on the Labour Party can be broken...John McDonnell showed this week that he is serious about socialism. The question is, is the left as serious?’ (letter, Morning Star, 12 June 2010). And joint secretary of Unite Against Fascism Weyman Bennett – who thinks the school ‘issue was damaging’ to Abbott – considers ‘it was never a killer blow because she had so obviously tried to improve things for other people’s children’ (quoted in H. Muir, ‘Cheers in black community at Abbott’s “big step forward”’, The Guardian, 12 June 2010).

443 Whereby as Trent Brown states: ‘people will move from the economic-corporate phase, and recognise that their interests overlap with all of those whom capitalism marginalises and will come to recognise their power and demand radical change’ (T. Brown, 2009, p. 8).

444 P. Toynbee, 'Blair tried to bury it, but class politics looks set to return', The Guardian, 10 July 2010; YouGov interviews with 1,482 adults online across Britain on 10-11 June 2010; W. Stone, 'Crow vows to lead walkout at TUC', Morning Star, 9 July 2010. Cameron subsequently declined the invitation and sent Business Secretary Vice Cable instead: 'But the rostrum at the TUC', as the Morning Star commented, 'is not a vantage point from which a hostile government should be allowed to engage in dialogue with working people. It's our platform and our organisation and Mr Cable is no more welcome on it than "chicken Dave" Cameron was' (21 July 2010).