A SIMPLE glance at today’s headlines shows a county whose economic priorities are completely out of step with the needs of the people.

Cuts to key infrastructure and slashing school budgets by £460 million through unfunded pay awards, in order to add another £15 billion to bloated defence budgets shows a complete distain for the people of this country.

Our roads will fall further into disrepair, crippling the infrastructure needed to grow our economy, and our children will face further restrictions on their right to a broad and balanced education. Meanwhile, more families will be plunged into fuel poverty, increasing household debt and forcing people to choose between paying fuel bills and eating. This winter, there will be more needless deaths to feed the super-profits of the energy companies and the rapacious appetites of their shareholders. All of these decisions have a direct human impact.

However, it is not only the immediate human impact of these decisions that we will suffer. Increasing energy prices slows production, effectively imposing a tax on the productive economy. Cutting investment in infrastructure, and in the workforce as schools struggle to afford teachers and resources and the privatised university system collapses before our eyes, leads to long-term productivity decline. This has been the story of the British economy for the past 40 years — low investment, low productivity, sluggish, at times negligible, growth.

Of course, there are profits to be had. The shareholders of the energy monopolies will do very well out of the current crisis, the big business interests embedded in the military-industrial complex will see a healthy return from every flattened home and broken body, and the City speculators will be laughing all the way to the bank.

As always, there will be no job creation. The profits they extract from the billions in government investment they take right out of our pockets will find its way into offshore tax havens, not the pay packets of working people. Anyone who tells you increased defence spending or energy super-profits lead to more skilled jobs is selling you a fantasy — one that you and your children will pay for.

It is time for a different approach to the economy.

Tightening energy price caps, introducing rent caps and restricting prices on basic foods are the only way to protect the mass of people from the coming cost-of-living crisis. They must go hand in hand with above-inflation wage increases. This cannot be said loudly enough. A below-inflation pay award is a real-terms wage cut, an inflationary increase is simply treading water as we face an economic tsunami. Only above inflation pay increases can start to restore security to the mass of people in this country.

Localism, too, can play its part — increasing local control over key infrastructure as a first step towards full democratic nationalisation should be welcomed. But it must come with investment. The New Labour model of devolution to presidential-style regional mayors, combined with decreasing local budgets is a recipe for cuts and disaster.

However, even taking all of these measures together, this barely touches the sides. If we want to see real change, we need to rebuild Britain’s productive economy. That means investment in infrastructure, not cuts to fuel the war economy. We need to see investment in foundational industries which provide the basis for redeveloping a productive manufacturing sector and diversifying away from profit-driven military production to high-skill sectors in developing technologies that are labour-intensive and create good jobs and lifelong careers.

Most importantly, though, we need investment in the labour force. We need investment in all sectors of education, the development of properly funded training in key sectors of both the productive economy and essential services, and investment in basic necessities such as housing, energy and food. We need to invest in the people of this country, invest in wages, invest in creating full employment, invest in a future for the people of our country.

To take on this challenge, to go beyond simply reacting to job cuts and the drive to war, to play a key role in shaping the future of Britain, the trade union movement needs to engage fully with political economy, articulating alternative approaches around which the movement can build unity of action.