At the recent G7 summit in Japan, Rishi Sunak guaranteed President Zelensky that Britain will continue its crusade for ‘freedom’ and ‘sovereignty’ in Ukraine.
“From providing Challenger tanks to long-range missiles and pilot training,” Sunak sternly stated, “the UK’s support for Ukraine’s defence will never waver.”
Hugs and handshakes were liberally exchanged, with the British Prime Minister attempting to mimic the budding bromance that Zelensky shared with his predecessor, bullish Boris.
Ukraine, we’re not going anywhere.#G7
🇬🇧 🤝 🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/3GL2iWuyy2
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) May 20, 2023
The G7 pow-wow marks the first real indication that the West will send its fighter jets to Ukraine. As to be expected, this has drawn the ire of Russia.
This international meeting followed on from Zelensky’s recent touchdown in Britain, where Sunak promised that the UK government would play its role in securing Ukraine’s ‘wings for freedom’.
Whilst promising the world to his beleaguered Ukrainian counterpart, however, the PM faces mounting problems back home, with strikes continuing, the economy stagnating, and his party tearing itself apart.
No doubt the Tory leader hopes, in this respect, that the war abroad can provide a welcome distraction from the class war and Conservative civil war breaking out in his own backyard. If so, he’s in for a nasty shock.
Spending spree
For all the bluff and bluster about creating an ‘international coalition’ in support of sending western fighter jets to Ukraine, it transpires that Britain’s RAF does not have any of the American-made F-16s coveted by Zelensky.
Not for the first time this year, Britain’s armoury has not been able to supply the goods.
But not to worry! Sunak – supposedly representing the more ‘dovish’ wing of the Tory Party – is happy to go on a spending spree, pledging plenty of attack drones and hundreds more air defence missiles to the Ukrainian war effort.
This latest shipment of arms will add hundreds of millions to the already eye-watering sum of £4.6 billion provided in military assistance to Ukraine by the UK since the war began.
This escalation will no doubt infuriate millions of ordinary workers in Britain, who have been consistently told by the Tories and bosses that the ‘cupboard is bare’ when it comes to funding pay rises and public services.
Class war
The Tories have taken every opportunity to smear striking workers as ‘greedy’ and ‘unreasonable’ for demanding above-inflation pay increases. Their banker chums, meanwhile, chime in by saying that workers should accept wage cuts.
At the same, the energy giants are raking in record profits. Arms companies are making a killing. And corporate monopolies everywhere are lining their pockets through ‘greedflation’.
This is all fuelling the determination of workers to fight for a real pay rise.
Teachers organised in the NEU, for example, have rejected the government’s pitiful offer of a £1,000 one-off payment for the past year, and a 4.5% wage increase for the year ahead.
This package comes to £1.1 billion – under a quarter of what has been given by the UK (so far) to the so-called ‘fight for freedom’.
Similarly, RMT strike action over pay and conditions in the last year is estimated to have cost the UK economy over £1 billion – a sum that one Tory minister embarrassingly admitted would have been enough to settle the dispute in the first place!
Elsewhere, the Tories recently announced that they will not be able to meet their 2019 election manifesto pledge to build 40 new hospitals by 2030, at a cost of £3.7 billion.
Instead, successive Tory administrations have run down the NHS to the point of collapse. And the government is now playing hardball with overworked, underpaid health staff, including nurses in the RCN.
The Tories are happy to turn on the money taps for militarism, it seems, but funds freeze up when it comes to sorely-needed infrastructure or essential workers’ wages.
Warfare vs welfare
The truth is, the ongoing disputes between the government and the doctors, civil servants, and more could be resolved straight away, just with the amount blown on the Ukraine war.
Pacifists will offer moralistic appeals to the establishment, in this respect, hoping to convince them to invest in wages and welfare, not warfare.
But this obscures the class interests driving this military expenditure. From the viewpoint of British imperialism, this absurd waste makes complete sense.
The ruling class and its representatives know that appetite comes with eating. Conceding to the demands of striking workers would set a dangerous precedent, which workers in other sectors would be keen to follow.
The conflict in Ukraine, by contrast, provides an opportunity for deluded Tory warmongers to puff up their chests, wrap themselves in the Union Jack, and whip up jingoism as a distraction from the problems of everyday life.
Unfortunately, however, flag-waving doesn’t pay the bills or put food on the table. Workers want butter, not guns.
Overthrow their system
As the cost-of-living crisis continues to spiral out of control, the Tories’ enthusiasm for war seems like an increasingly cruel joke for ordinary people. Whilst Sunak breaks bread with Zelensky, millions are expected to survive on nothing but crumbs.
As the fumes of nationalism and chauvinism wear off, however, the class issues are increasingly coming to the fore. And the government is finding itself with less and less room for manoeuvre, as the debts pile up and inflation wreaks havoc on the economy.
With the billionaires laughing all the way to the bank, millions can see that the money exists to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and ensure that families do not have to choose between heating and eating. But this wealth is simply in the wrong hands.
The devastating impacts of the war – from skyrocketing energy costs, to shortages of basic necessities, to the countless deaths and refugees – are a secondary consideration for the Tory lackeys of imperialism. They are more concerned with appeasing the rabid ranks of their party, as well as their masters in Washington.
As Lenin once remarked: “War is terrible…terribly profitable.” But whilst the capitalists prolong and continue the conflict for their own cynical, narrow interests, it is the working class who is being made to foot the bill.
As long as there is capitalism, this horror and barbarism will continue. Only the working class, organised and mobilised, can end the misery of war once and for all – by ending the system that is responsible for it.
