George Osborne has declared that the UK economy is back on the road to sustainable recovery. Closer analysis shows that the recovery so far is based on rising household debt with policy seemingly geared toward inflating house prices, two of the factors that led to the economic crash in the first place. It is not that the powers-that-be are stupid: capitalism has been experiencing a long-term crisis of profitability for decades, and debt-fuelled growth and asset price bubbles have become essential methods of maintaining any kind of economic vitality. All capitalism can offer at its present stage is stagnation punctuated by the inflating and bursting of bubbles. Predictably, the far-right is thriving in this climate, and will continue to make possibly fateful gains as long as our side refuses to challenge them on what historically was always our ground.

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