Anti-austerity

As Left Unity’s candidate for Edinburgh North & Leith, I have been disappointed in the lack of media coverage of alternative views to the political mainstream.

Audiences and readers have repeatedly complained that all the main parties sound the same, yet little is heard of other views. Our party differs entirely from the main four parties in that we categorically reject capitalism as a system of social inclusion.

Each of the main parties has had lengthy experience in government and each has failed to fulfil the main responsibility of governing: to eradicate poverty and to house everyone decently.

We believe this is because of an obsession with profit and growth, which drive down wages, stagnating the economy and choking recovery.

We would introduce a £10 living wage (rejected by the SNP last year) and rent controls to ease the burden on people in social housing. Far from selling it off, we would ban the right to buy, renovate empty properties and begin a massive council housebuilding programme.

To pay for the reversal of austerity cuts, we would shift the burden to those able to pay, instead of the poor and welfare-dependent.

That means increasing corporation tax, introducing a 50 per cent top income tax rate, and until the unfair flat-rate VAT is abolished, we would apply it to financial services, netting £7 billion.

Instead of Labour’s plan to tax bankers’ bonuses, we would axe them in publicly owned banks. As nationalised banks and railways have been profitable, we would return them and other essential utilities to public ownership.

Left Unity is offering a genuine socialist alternative in Edinburgh North, with socialist TUSC colleagues also standing in Edinburgh East and South.

In Greece and Spain, socialists are taking power. At last, there’s light at the end of the austerity tunnel.

Bruce Whitehead

Hillwood Place

Queensferry