As the cost-of-living crisis mounts once more, resistance is rising, and now is the time to build the People’s Assembly demonstration on 7 June, reports Steph Pike

The Labour Party that promised change is in government subjecting us to more of the same misery that the Tories have been inflicting on us for over a decade. This spring, we should have been seeing the green shoots of increased prosperity and hope as the new government addressed and reversed over a decade of neglect and cuts. Instead this April, we see huge rises in living costs: water rates are going up by between 19% and 47%; on average, energy bills will rise by £111 a year; Council Tax, car tax, broadband, phone and TV-licence charges are all increasing and there are hidden tax rises with the freeze on tax and NI thresholds until 2028.

This will all leave most people worse off, even factoring in any wage and benefit increases, and mean that people who were just about managing will now struggle to make ends meet. The government could intervene but chooses not to, allowing utility companies already bloated with profits to get even richer at the expense of ordinary people. With doctors reporting an increase in Victorian diseases caused by poverty, and more and more patients with malnutrition, the government’s failure to restrain cost-of-living increases alongside its brutal welfare-benefit cuts are unforgivable.

Starmer tells us that these cuts are unavoidable as there is no money. We know that this is a lie. There is always money to fund increased arms spending, with Starmer pledging billions to spend on bombs and bullets and to prolong the horrendous war in Ukraine. The richest 5% have seen their wealth increase over the past decade while ordinary people suffer. The government has choices and what it has chosen, like the Tories before them, is to redistribute wealth from the poorest to the richest in society.

While people worry about how they will manage with less money amid huge cost-of-living increases, Labour politicians are wheeled out across the media to tell us that this isn’t in fact austerity and that cutting the benefits of the disabled will actually make people better off.

The politicians can argue about the definition of austerity all they like, but the fact is that our living standards are declining even further, whether it is because of direct cuts to welfare benefits and public services or the government’s refusal to tax the rich and to intervene when private utility companies make vast profits while increasing bills. If it cuts like austerity and hurts like austerity, then it is austerity. And people know it.

There is a palpable anger in the air and a huge appetite to fight back against the cuts and the conditions that are forcing more and more people into poverty. DPAC protests against the benefit cuts have been well attended with lots of support from members of the public, and local People’s Assembly meetings are bigger than they have been for quite a few years. The fight back against Starmer’s government has started. The People’s Assembly Against Austerity has called a national demonstration against the cuts on 7 June. We need to unite together and build for this demonstration; we need hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of London to bring a powerful message to Starmer and his government: No More Cuts! Welfare not Warfare! Tax the Rich!