Jeremy Corbyn, the left wing Labour MP, has got on the ballot paper for Labour leader. This is a remarkable and welcome turn of events, despite being achieved by the slimmest of margins.

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, 1776.

On 27th May, the Queen announced, on behalf of the new Tory government, the latest vicious attacks on workers, youth, and the poor that can be expected in the coming period: a raft of cuts to benefits, particularly aimed at young people; the depletion of the publicly owned housing stock, relied upon by those most in need; and the most serious assault on trade union rights in decades. The scene is now set for an intense class struggle in the period ahead.

Reformism in a time of capitalist crisis resembles “windmills whose sails turn in a strong wind but fail to produce a single pound of flour because there is no corn for them to grind” (Trotsky, Notes on the Situation in Britain 1925-6). The ‘ideas’ and policies on offer in the Labour leadership election are as empty as the corn silos of capitalism are bare, and there is zero prospect of anything of substance emerging from Labour in this leadership election.

Alongside the shock of a Tory majority, the other big story of the General Election results was that of Labour’s collapse in Scotland to the SNP. With the Nationalists very nearly sweeping the board with 56 out of 59 seats, it more than negated any small increase in votes Labour got in England and Wales.

The coming to power of a new Tory government opens a new stormy chapter in Britain. This is not only the conclusion of the Marxists but also of the strategists of capital:

Over the last week since the general election, David Cameron has been putting together the most right wing cabinet we have seen for decades and has lost no time in announcing some of the most reactionary laws that have been proposed in decades. Emboldened by their parliamentary majority, and freed from the ballast of coalition with the Lib Dems, the Tories have rushed to introduce further measures to stick the knife in against the working class.

Today, big business and the fat cats of the City of London are celebrating the victory of their friends in the Tory Party. Champagne bottles are popping and share prices soaring. The party of the rich is back in the saddle, and with an unexpected majority in the House of Commons. This will be a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich. The super-rich non-doms will be expressing a sigh of relief. Their loot will now be safe under a Tory government.

With just one week to go till the British General Election, polling in Scotland, and the SNP in particular, has been at the forefront of reporting. Ever since a poll in October showed the SNP to be on 54% and Labour 23%, projecting Labour to fall from 41 to 4 seats and the SNP to go from 6 to 54 (out of 59 Scottish seats), focus has been on the rise of the SNP and demise of Scottish Labour. Polls have shown that rather than Labour closing the gap, the SNP’s dominance in Scotland has solidified and even extended. An STV poll released earlier this week put the nationalists on 54% of the vote, predicting that the SNP could conceivably win every single constituency in Scotland.

Without doubt, we live in the most turbulent period in history, characterised by instability and volatility at every level: economically, politically, and socially. The global economy is in the seventh year of crisis, with no end in sight. Meanwhile, fires are burning across the world, with the imperialist powers locking horns in Ukraine, Syria, Yemen and beyond. But at the same time, mass movements and revolutionary currents are developing everywhere, most sharply in Greece and Spain with the rise of SYRIZA and Podemos.

We have entered into a new period on an international scale: a period of deep economic crisis, social and political instability. The masses everywhere are beginning to question things that were previously taken for granted. The whole political scene is a seething cauldron. In such a period sharp and sudden changes are implicit in the situation. The Scottish referendum was just such a sudden change, a political earthquake that upset all the calculations of the politicians. It represented a fundamental turn in the situation.

Recent figures reported by the BBC demonstrate that the “number of children being admitted to hospital in England for self-harm is at a five-year high”. In a study done by the Health and Social Care Information Centre it was shown that in the 10-14 year old age group, admissions of girls had gone up from 3,090 to 5,953 between 2009/10 and 2013/14, whilst admissions of boys during the same period were shown to rise from 454 to 659. This is an increase of almost 93% and 45% for

That the British ruling class has fiddled whilst Britain burns is no longer a metaphor, it is literally true. Now that the pandora’s box of paedophilic corruption at the top has been opened, an avalanche of vile revelations exposing the whole establishment spews forth each day.

With less than two months to go until the general election, and after five years of falling living standards and Tory austerity, the Con-Dem Coalition is hated and loathed. The Labour Party, by all accounts, should be charging ahead in the polls. Yet Labour find themselves neck-and-neck with the Conservatives as the election campaign picks up steam. The threat of another Tory-led government looms. The responsibility for this lies entirely with the Labour leaders, who have shown themselves to be increasingly out-of-touch from the lives of ordinary people, consistently failing to connect with the real mood of anger and radicalisation that exists across society.

Jan Duperre in Elgin, Moray: "I don't know what planet Osborne woke up on this morning, but it's not the one I live on. If we are so much better off, why has one in nine people been forced to use a food bank in the last year? Many of them folk who work full time. Zero-hour contracts and minimum wage, 20-hour-week part-time jobs might make his figures look good, but that's the only thing that does."