AT some point in the near future, we will be faced with a full-frontal assault on our class. We will see once again mass unemployment as the furlough scheme ends. Already there are attacks on workers’ terms and conditions and this will only expand unless we prepare.

Someone will have to pay for the crisis and slogans like “they’ve failed us” falls far short of what we need to be doing. We need a strategy. We need to move from being just an anti-austerity campaign to an anti-monopoly alliance in concrete terms.

What we are faced with is a class struggle and this goes further than just the Tory versus Labour anti-austerity campaign run since 2013 during which far too much emphasis was placed on Corbyn’s Labour and not enough effort put into building a real mass movement from below.

This is the immediate task. The building of that mass movement across the whole trade-union and labour movement to create an anti-monopoly alliance where we work nationally, locally and within our trade unions to develop that strategy.

Part of this strategy has to take account of the Brexit negotiations that have apparently failed again. With the Tories blaming the EU and the EU blaming the Tories, both are posturing and both are still working for an agreement, so don’t be surprised if there is a last-minute deal concluded.

Boris Johnson is not the buffoon portrayed in the liberal media. He is using this crisis to his advantage. In his speech to the Tory Party conference he stated that they would build 48 more hospitals, recruit 50,000 nurses, fix the injustice of care-home funding, that offshore wind will be powering every home in the country in ten years’ time, £160m will be invested in ports and factories across the country and the next generation of turbines will be built — helping to create 60,000 jobs in this country.

All of these announcements even we would applaud. What’s not to like there? The question is how will this be done?

Johnson has made it very clear how his state aid would work.

“…There comes a moment when the state must stand back and let the private sector get on with it. I have a simple message for those on the left, who think everything can be funded by ‘uncle sugar the taxpayer.’

“It isn’t the state that produces the new drugs and therapies we are using. It isn’t the state that will hold the intellectual property of the vaccine, if and when we get one. It wasn’t the state that made the gloves, masks and ventilators that we needed at such speed.

“It was the private sector, with its rational interest in innovation, competition and market share — and yes, sales. We must not draw the wrong economic conclusion from this crisis.”

He has a plan and an end goal. When he talks of state intervention it is not the state intervention we would want. His is to create a much closer alliance with big corporations. Remember he said “it is not a job for government but for free enterprise.”

That is his state intervention — funnelling government money to prop up corporations and the city of London. The trade unions’ response to all this has been very patchy and at times woefully inadequate. This has to change.

His white paper on Britain’s internal market will enshrine two principles of mutual recognition and non-discrimination into law, meaning that anything that is acceptable for sale in one part of Britain would be automatically acceptable in all other parts — and governments cannot prioritise businesses in their part of the nation at the expense of business in others. Sounds a bit like EU rulings, does it not?

This bill concentrates all powers over state-aid and competition policy in the hands of the Tories, taking away the powers delegated to the other parliaments.

The devolved parliaments will be given an opportunity to vote on whether to consent to all the clauses of the bill and both the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments will vote against. The British government will then just press ahead regardless, as it did when all three devolved parliaments withheld consent over the EU withdrawal agreement.

This will play right into the hands of the SNP and the independence movement. It will also force the trade unions in Scotland to campaign against this bill as we all should do. This is a power grab and destroys the very devolution that the labour movement fought for. But this in itself will only further the calls for independence.

This is what we have before us and as communists we need to respond at every level, very quickly. The need of the hour is to build that anti-monopoly alliance. To strengthen and increase our links with the wider labour and trade union movement and to convince them of this need. To move beyond catchy slogans and to develop strategy and actions

Although it is difficult at this time to carry out active campaigning on the streets and in our communities, we must develop a strategy to maximise everything we can do. We need to work within our trade unions now to promote this anti-monopoly alliance strategy.

The Tories are not so restricted, their plans are fully developed and they are ready with their allies to move their agenda forward. We need to be prepared for mass action when we once again can take to the streets.

We need to create the mass movement that has not come to pass over the last ten years of austerity and swingeing attacks against our class.