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Britain Tory crisis budget desperate measures for desperate times

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the March 2020 Tory budget, with its sudden reversal of austerity and announcement of £30 billion in stimulus, is not a strategic shift but a panicked response to a "perfect storm" of intersecting crises: the coronavirus pandemic, tumbling stock markets, and the unresolved calamity of Brexit. The central claim is that British capitalism is structurally too weak to be saved by fiscal tinkering — decades of underinvestment, stagnant productivity, and reliance on speculation have left it unable to weather the coming world slump. The spending splurge will prove a "flash in the pan," and the bill will ultimately be presented to the working class through renewed cuts and attacks.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in the Marxist theory of capitalist crisis, specifically the understanding that slumps are not accidental malfunctions but expressions of the system's internal contradictions. The article draws on the classical Marxist distinction between appearance and essence: the Tories' talk of "prosperity" and "levelling up" is mere ideology masking the real dynamic of crisis. The argument that "government spending under capitalism can only come from taxation" and that borrowing must be repaid with interest reflects the Marxist critique of Keynesian demand-management — the state cannot suspend the laws of capital accumulation indefinitely. The piece also deploys the concept of the state as a committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie: the budget is not a concession to workers but a desperate attempt to stabilise conditions for capital, with the working class set to pay the price.

The analysis sits within the Trotskyist tradition's emphasis on the permanent character of capitalist decay and the impossibility of a "managed" capitalism. It rejects the notion that the crisis is a temporary disruption from which a return to "normal" growth is possible, insisting instead that the 2008 slump was never resolved — only postponed through quantitative easing and debt — and that the system is now entering a new, deeper phase.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was written in March 2020, at the precise moment when the coronavirus pandemic was triggering the first wave of global lockdowns and financial panic. It correctly identifies that the British economy was already "flatlining" in the last quarter of 2019, with the first quarter of 2020 set to show a fall — meaning the UK was technically entering recession before the full impact of the pandemic was felt. The piece names the Office for Budget Responsibility's growth forecasts as already out of date, and predicts that the "north and midlands will likely suffer more than most" from the coming downturn — a prescient observation given the uneven regional impact of both the pandemic and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis.

The article also situates the budget within the longer trajectory of British capitalism's decline: low investment, low productivity, a "low-skill, low-wage economy" reliant on cheap labour and foreign capital. This structural weakness, it argues, will be ruthlessly exposed by the world slump. The reference to Brexit as a "looming calamity" that will "compound the crisis" is significant — the article was written just weeks after the UK formally left the EU, and before the full economic consequences of that rupture became apparent.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is an early conjunctural analysis of the pandemic-era crisis, and its argument is developed in subsequent IDOM pieces covering the cost-of-living crisis, the Truss mini-budget disaster of September 2022, and the ongoing stagnation of the British economy. The claim that the state's fiscal stimulus is a "flash in the pan" is borne out by the rapid return to austerity rhetoric under Sunak as Prime Minister. The broader theoretical claim — that capitalism cannot be reformed out of crisis — is a recurring theme across the IDOM corpus, particularly in articles on the limits of Keynesianism and the inevitability of slump. Readers should consult the IDOM series on the global economic downturn and the Against the Stream episodes on the British political crisis for the continuation of this analysis.

Connections

This article should be read alongside:

  • Marx's Capital, Volume III, Part III on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the counteracting influences — the theoretical basis for understanding why state stimulus cannot permanently arrest a structural crisis.
  • Trotsky's The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (the Transitional Programme), which argues that capitalism has exhausted its progressive potential and that only socialist revolution can resolve its contradictions.
  • IDOM's later analysis of the Truss budget crisis (September 2022), which demonstrates the same dynamic of panic, reversal, and working-class sacrifice in even starker form.
  • The broader Marxist literature on the 2008 crash and its aftermath, particularly the argument that quantitative easing and low interest rates merely postponed the reckoning while inflating new bubbles.

Key Quotes

  1. "The British economy was already slowing down fast. But it is now being thrown into disarray by the unfolding coronavirus and its paralysing effects. The world economy is also threatening to collapse, with catastrophic consequences."

  2. "Fiscal 'responsibility' – the key mantra of the Tory Party for decades – has been ditched. What a change of tune! All talk of balanced budgets and fiscal prudence has ended. Instead, the spending taps have apparently been turned on. This is clearly not a thought-out strategy, but a case of 'desperate times and desperate measures'."

  3. "The weakness of the British economy is the result of short-termism. Big business has failed to invest and modernise industry. Instead, the capitalists have preferred to speculate and put their money abroad. They have created a low-skill, low-wage economy, reliant on outside investment and cheap labour."

  4. "This surge in spending will be a flash in the pan. Who is going to pay for it? The capitalists and bankers? No – once again, it is the working class who will be presented with the bill through further cuts and attacks."

  5. "Government spending under capitalism can only come from taxation. Even borrowing has to be paid back, with interest. There is no such thing as a free lunch."

  6. "Once this slump begins to take hold, nothing will stop it. The laws of capitalism will quickly come into play. No amount of financial tinkering is going to prevent this. The perfect storm is upon us. The time has come not to bail out capitalism or attempt to patch it up – but to do away with it."