THE fuel bill scandal exposes the rotten carcass of late capitalism. While millions face the choice between heating or eating, the big energy companies are predicted to see their profits increase to £170 billion this year. As the system fails, establishment politics stands naked, unable to manage a crisis of its own making.

The only response of the Tory government is a renewed attack on the working class, combined with an economic policy that is a desperate last throw of the dice.

We face the fight of our lives to defend our public services, our livelihoods and our planet. Global corporations and their political lackeys are destroying them all. But resistance is building. The upsurge of strikes, with more on the horizon. shows many workers have had enough of being the victims of other people’s greed.

Ultimately, there’s no escape from perennial crisis without a rebuilt, bold, trade union movement that, among other things, is ready to challenge and defeat anti-trade union laws, particularly with the Tories saying they want to increase them.

To resist these threats, we need to embrace a wider field of struggle than in the past. Sadly, many people — especially younger ones — no longer see the labour movement, especially the Labour Party, as agents for change. Who can blame them? Instead, they’re building different types of organisations and campaigns.

I got involved in Don’t Pay UK in July. They were saying what I’d been thinking: that we have the power to stop extortionate energy bills by refusing to pay them. It’s been one of the most dynamic experiences of my campaigning life and brought back memories of my involvement in the anti-poll tax movement.

Within months, thousands of people got involved, including pledging to withhold payments. Leafleting in my local area of Tower Hamlets was electric, instantly connecting with the huge concern and anger about energy bills doubling. The impact was immediate. Don’t Pay played an important part in building the pressure on Liz Truss to make a humiliating U-turn on her first day in office.

The resulting energy bailout, like the mini-Budget of September 23, is really a massive public subsidy to private wealth. But the £150 billion price tag represents a huge financial risk by the government and demonstrates that the Tories are making it up as they go along.

However, combined with the death of the Queen, there’s a real danger some steam has gone from the movement of resistance.

The limited energy bill concessions still leave us paying 27 per cent more than we were last year, but will come as a short-term relief to many, likewise the marginal tax cuts announced by Kwasi Kwarteng.

The government is clearly hoping to induce a feel-good factor before the next general election, based on a resurrection of Thatcherite ideology and an artificially inflated economic bubble.

Nonetheless, it would be a big mistake to assume the government’s gamble won’t pay off. Our movement urgently needs to harness the widespread desire for change reflected in the recent opinion poll showing people don’t want tax cuts as much as they want investment in public services.

The widespread public support for the RMT shows the potential to defy the Tory narrative and build a progressive movement for a windfall tax on the energy giants and a programme of renationalisation and investment in council housing.

This will require a willingness to broaden our organisational perspective to include campaigns like Don’t Pay UK, the environmental movement, smaller independent trade unions like UVW and the growing number of grassroots tenant groups.

Sometimes, this will mean going beyond traditional comfort zones and accepting different ways of doing things — but we can’t afford not to. We need a non-sectarian, popular left alliance and one that isn’t reduced to waiting for the next election and the possibility of a Labour government.

The battle lines are being drawn by the Truss administration. It has clearly signalled its intention to let the rich get richer, while launching the most aggressive attack on the working class in decades, with more restrictions on strikes, ripping up working time limits, reintroducing grammar schools, anti-immigration measures, creating whole areas with deregulated labour markets, cutting benefits and more privatisation, including of the NHS.

In essence, the Tories want to make us pay for the chronic underlying weakness of the British economy, but no amount of rhetoric and wishful thinking can make that weakness go away.

We’re already in a recession and every economic indicator shows it’s going to deepen, particularly with interest rates and inflation rising, while the value of the pound was falling fast, even as the Chancellor announced his spending package. Small reductions of tax and energy bills aren’t going to prevent hardship and poverty for millions.

We’re entering what could be a decisive period. Rarely have the stakes been higher. Despite its bluster, this Conservative government is weak, lacking any kind of credible mandate beyond the most reactionary elements of its own membership and facing a host of problems it will prove incapable of solving, including the fallout from Brexit.

It can be defeated. But this will only happen if the entire labour movement — old and new — can unite around a coherent socialist alternative to the death-march of capitalism.

We can send a clear message of defiance to the Truss agenda on Saturday October 1, when several organisations have called for a national day of action. Let’s make it big, united, loud and angry!

For information on the non-payment campaign visit www.dontpay.uk.