by Rob Griffiths

General secretary, Communist Party of Britain

CHANCELLOR George Osborne’s skill would be better employed selling snake oil or magic beans to gullible tourists.

He makes a fall in economic growth sound like success, projects a “Northern Powerhouse” without modern railways, peddles a “long-term economic plan” that exists only in his imagination and ends up fantasising about Britain being the world’s most prosperous society by the 2030s.

But he knows which class he comes from and whose interests he represents.

Renaming the national minimum wage and increasing it to £7.20 an hour next year will not make it a genuinely living wage, which would have to be more than £8, and around £9.40 in London, and should include all workers.

Britain’s historically low levels of investment in productive industry, infrastructure, research and new housing will not be changed without large scale public-sector intervention and planning, funded by higher taxes on wealth, financial speculation and big business profits.

The Treasury’s reliance on short-term privatisation proceeds and the impact of further cuts and the public-sector wage freeze on the economy mean further austerity measures in the future.

However, the breadth of the Chancellor’s attack also illustrates the potential to build a broad alliance around the People’s Assembly against austerity and privatisation, based on the trade union movement.

But it will be important for such a movement to put ­forward a clear alternative economic and financial strategy to that of the Tories and the current Labour Party leadership.