New PM Andy Burnham's slogan "Hope Again"is a bit like the religious promise of "pie in the sky when you die". Or to be more precise, just before you die, given his announcement of a National Care Service in honour of his late "dad". But only in 10 year's time. So please, wait for it (if you can)!

    That said, Burnham is a politician with some experience under his belt. So in his version of "New" Labour 30+ years after Tony Blair, the words of the song are very carefully chosen.

    It contains a sprinkling of hints of many good things to come. Like for instance, the re-nationalisation of (some) greedy water companies. But only if they don't behave themselves in the future... As if Thames Water hasn't created enough of a stink already, to fully warrant immediate confiscation, without compensation!

    Andy's list includes homes for the homeless; a public electricity grid, with energy sorted... But in the meantime we face the biggest rise in energy bills in 4 years! The average dual fuel energy bill will rise by 16% to £1,999 per year on 1 January 2027!

    That said, even the hard-nosed media gave Burnham good marks for his speech. Especially for the "emotion" - evoking tears from delegates. Because yes, if he puts on a convincing show and brings the increasingly - and rightly - cynical working class electorate back to the ballot box, it's a "good" result for the establishment: good for the capitalist system, and particularly good during this imperialist, war- mongering phase of degeneration, when it tries to justify the unjustifiable!

    So it's no coincidence that conference speakers paraded their patriotism and "love for our country" beginning their oratory with a stream of "thank-you's" for the armed forces, including pledging to keep fuelling war in Ukraine with great weapons' sales.

    And never mind that the absurd false alarm over "terrorists" at RAF-US Fairford base only further exposed the dodgy relations with Donald Trump that Burnham/Streeting will continue to defend, regardless.

    True, Foreign Secretary Miliband, after certifying his Jewish credentials and his anti-Semitism, mentioned Gaza and the Israeli settler terrorism which Palestinians face on the West Bank. But the US- British special relationship - which places this government behind "war" capitalism and against those who rebel against it - is never in question.

    So no, however they may try, they cannot convince working people - whose ever-rising cost of living and precarious employment says it all about this pitiful and pitiless profit system which, incidentally, is not "proudly British", but international! Yes, we are certain we need to overthrow it, and all of the politicians with it, from London to Paris, to Berlin and Washington!

Andy Burnham has now added his name to the long list of PMs promising to solve the social care crisis, with a National Care Service, "free at the point of use". He announced it during his speech at the Labour Party conference on Tuesday, re-hashing his own National Care Service proposal from 2009, when he was Health Secretary under Gordon Brown.

    Inevitably, social care has seriously deteriorated over the decades during which it become a money-making business - taken away from Local Authorities and put in the hands of private sharks.

    It's a lucrative "market" for big and small business - worth £30bn a year: a place in a care home costs an average £5,000 a month! Who can afford that?

    But whether Burnham is actually proposing to cut out the thousands of small and large companies that are profiteering from elderly care, he didn't say. Instead, he left it to the ongoing "Casey Review" (expected to be published next summer!), to come up with a proposal for how to organise the new service.

    Needless to say, this latest review will likely have as much impact as Blair's "Royal Commission on Long Term Care", Cameron's "Dilnot Report", or Boris Johnson's promise to "fix the crisis in social care once and for all" (remember that?)! And as everyone agrees, picking the pension "triple lock" to make it a double lock instead, won't pay for it. It will simply add many more pensioners to the 2m elderly who already live in poverty, despite the triple lock!

    On the other hand, it's estimated that the government hands over £200bn to private companies (including social care companies!) in subsidies, grants, tax relief, etc... So why not cut that? Or tax the rich? Well, because they "promised" not to.

    Indeed, if Starmer and Reeves hadn't promised not to raise taxes, they wouldn't have been elected. Capitalists first, is the pledge all governments honour and will continue to honour in this class society - until their system is pulled down around their ears. "All together now" (to quote Andy)... for revolution!