Grahame Smith: Review rhetoric fools no-one

The Scottish Trades Union Congress has been holding a mass demonstration in Edinburgh today to protest against the cuts that were outlined in the Comprehensive Spending Review this week.

These cuts are regressive and unnecessary and will hit the poor harder than the rich. We believe there is a better way to run our economy.

The Tories and the Liberal Democrats would have us believe that they have no choice but to cut. We have seen David Cameron, George Osborne and now Nick Clegg and Vince Cable arguing that the crisis in the British economy can only be tackled by drastically cutting the deficit now.

The government and other commentators on the right present this as a fait accompli but their assertions are not reflected in market activities nor supported by many respected economists. Their cuts are driven by ideology not economics.

The private sector will not be able to lead us out of this recession alone. There is no prospect of the private sector creating the one million jobs, 100,000 of them here in Scotland, which will be lost. These cuts put at risk the fragile economic recovery and may even cause a double dip recession.

The STUC believes that there is a better way to run our economy, based on the principles of jobs, services, fair taxation and a living wage.

Our demonstration in Edinburgh is not an end but a beginning. We will campaign for as long as the government continues to put at risk our economic stability.

Our demonstration brings together people from across Scotland: trade unionists; community activists; and representatives of civic Scotland, to voice our opposition to these ideological cuts. We are not fooled by their rhetoric. We do not believe that the cuts are inevitable and we certainly don't think they are fair.

Grahame Smith is STUC general secretary