With falling living standards and more draconian cuts on the way, the Tories have presided over the biggest assault on the conditions of working class people in living memory.

The phone hacking scandal that led to the closure of the News of the World (NotW) newspaper brought to the surface the real state of things within the British establishment. Three years later, verdicts have now been issued that have found Andy Coulson, former editor of NotW and former Director of Communications for David Cameron, guilty of conspiring to hack phones. Meanwhile Rebekah Brooks, former Chief Executive of News International, parent company of NotW, was found not guilty of all the charges against her.

"I’ve never seen such a phenomenal rise in personal wealth as the growth in the fortunes of Britain’s 1,000 richest people over the past year." (Phillip Beresford, compiler of The Sunday Times Rich List)

UKIP-mania has swept Britain, or rather, its chattering classes. If we were to form our opinions solely on the basis of those found in the bourgeois media (as the media’s own members do), we would be able to think of nothing but the inevitable rise of UKIP to electoral dominance.

Conor Burns, the backbench MP for West Bournemouth, can only be described as a caricature of a head-banging Tory with a hatred for working class people. Having strongly supported cuts to welfare across the board and been fiercely opposed to increased taxes on bonuses and the super-rich, Burns has now outdone himself once again by attacking a charity for tackling poverty.

The results of the 2014 local and European elections have delivered a resounding double blow to the Tories and their coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.

Some recent opinion polls have put the Tories ahead of Labour for the first time since 2012. Does this mean that the public has made an historic shift to the right, at a time when the right wing is presiding over possibly the biggest ever fall in living standards and rise in inequality? Is the support for UKIP further evidence of this strange, irrational trend? No, the contradiction between the working class’ interests and their voting intentions is more apparent than real. In reality, the contradiction lies between the working class’ interests and the Labour leadership. This poll is a dire warning to Labour that they must fight on a pro-working class, socialist programme to win

With less than five months to go before Scotland goes to the polls to vote on independence, the Better Together campaign is in a state of panic as the gap between both sides continues to narrow.

For workers and youth, it is clear that the fallout from the 2008 global economic crisis adversely impacts upon the majority of households in the UK. It is plain for all to see: as jobs are lost by the thousands, public services are cut to the bone, and the juggernaut of austerity ploughs on desolating communities, synchronously wealth continues to flow upwards into the pockets of the elite.

Over the last weeks and months, concerns about energy have become more and more widespread in Britain. Firstly the simmering controversy over “fracking” has become more prominent, with a series of demonstrations pushing this issue into the public eye. Then the pledge of Ed Miliband that the next Labour government will freeze energy prices was met with howls of protest from the coalition parties and threats by the energy companies that “the lights will go out”. In addition, the announcement that Britain will build the first new nuclear power station for decades has been overshadowed by the attempt to close the Grangemouth oil refinery. The question has to be asked: is Britain facing a

Ofgem – the regulator for the British gas and electricity markets – this week called for an investigation into the “Big Six” energy firms regarding anti-competitive behaviour. As a result, there will now be a lengthy review of the energy market by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which will look into Ofgem’s accusations of "possible tacit co-ordination" by the major energy companies regarding the prices they offer.

The events in Britain and worldwide are and will have a major impact on the consciousness of the working class and youth. Although the situation will be protracted, there will be sharp and sudden changes in the situation. This crisis will at a certain point become pre-revolutionary, as in Greece today. After all, Greece is only a mirror reflection of Britain in the future. Then the situation can open up in the direction of a revolutionary one, where there occurs a profound break in consciousness.

This year’s budget from George Osborne has been described as the most typical Tory budget he has yet given. Whether that is correct is open to debate; but what is true is that it has many of the features of previous Tory budgets in a pre-election year: huge handouts to the rich, lots of shiny baubles for wavering Tory voters, and nothing for the poor.

The death of Tony Benn after a long illness at the age of 88 marks the passing away of an outstanding leader of the British left. Although Tony Benn came from a very privileged class background – his father, Viscount Stansgate, was a Labour peer – he became the standard bearer for the left and the militant working class in the 1970s and 1980s.

The first few weeks of March 2014 will be a time of deep reflection for hundreds of thousands of people across the UK who will recall what they were doing when the 1984/85 coal miners’ strike began.