As voted for by the Socialist Students National Conference, February 2026
British capitalism in crisis: we need a youth fightback for socialist change
1. The decaying state of capitalism today, and the need for an alternative socialist system, is graphically illustrated in Britain.
2. For the vast majority in Britain, the struggle to live a decent life is intensifying. NHS waiting lists remain near record levels. Unemployment is rising, with youth unemployment at its highest rate in a decade. The cost of housing has never been higher, as average household income falls even further behind real living costs. Summing up the current trajectory of British society under capitalism, life expectancy for the poorest section of the population has gone back since 2010.
3. The Conservatives were crushed at the last General Election, punished by voters for overseeing 14 years of brutal attacks on workers’ and young people’s living standards. Keir Starmer’s thoroughly pro-capitalist Labour government is widely hated for delivering yet more of the same and is on the path to a similar fate, having already extinguished the hopes of millions that a Labour government would mean some improvement in their lives. The Labour Party currently sits at less than 20% in opinion polls, a new low for a British governing party.
4. This government is therefore weak and can be beaten back. At the General Election, Labour received the lowest vote share of any incoming government for over a century. In the 18 months since, the Labour government has been forced to climb down over a number of unpopular austerity policies, including over keeping the two-child benefit cap, cutting pensioners’ winter fuel payments, and cutting disabled people’s benefits. Starmer was forced to pay lip service to recognising the idea of a Palestinian state – going against the wishes of Trump and US imperialism – reflecting pressure from the massive anti-war movement that has re-emerged in the past two years against the genocidal onslaught on Gaza.
5. Despite facing working-class opposition at every turn, Labour is compelled to continue attacks on the living standards of working-class and young people, owing to their attempts to manage decaying British capitalism. Britain’s GDP has only expanded in one of the past seven months, and the economy is currently slowing even further, with the prospect of a new global economic crash on the horizon to which Britain would be especially exposed. Starmer and Co. therefore hope to encourage investment from the capitalists by driving down the share of the economy taken up by workers and young people, leaving more to be siphoned off by big business. For example, by talking up plans to force young people receiving benefits into low-paid work, Labour hopes to reduce public spending while in the process offering more cheap labour to the bosses.
6. Labour and the capitalists’ continued attacks on young people, against the backdrop of an increasingly volatile and insecure world, is laying the ground for new youth movements and mass struggles in which young people will be pushed to the fore. This includes the potential for climate strikes, anti-racist movements, campaigns for good jobs and homes, struggles against sexism, and the resurgence of the Palestine solidarity movement and other anti-war movements. In whatever struggles break out, Socialist Students aims to give a lead with a socialist programme that corresponds to the demands of that movement while pointing to the need for socialism as the means to end all the horrors of capitalism in this era. This includes striving to win the leadership of 3 developing student movements against cuts, fees and the cost-of-living crisis on campus, linking the struggle for free education to the need for a mass working-class movement for the resources we all need. Importantly, a new generation of young people has experienced the power of working class collective action in recent years – for example, through the 2022-23 strike wave, and the ongoing Palestine anti-war movement. Surveys consistently show a clear majority of young people supporting strikes, trade unions etc., showing the potential for new emerging youth movements in this era to be strengthened through forging links with the organised workers’ movement.
7. For students, Britain’s crumbling education system is a constant reminder of the failures of this capitalist system. Cuts to courses, soaring class sizes, rising student poverty and sky-high tuition fees are all consequences of swingeing cuts to education by successive capitalist governments. Socialist Students stands for students getting organised alongside workers in the education unions to fight for a free, fully publicly funded and democratically run education system, available to all at any age.
8. The state of Britain under Starmer’s Labour is having a profound effect on an entire generation of young people in particular, who can only see a future of insecurity and instability on the basis of this current system. Looking on at the Tories and now Labour, many have seen through bitter experience that the crises in our lives are not just the product of this or that capitalist government in Westminster, but of a more all-encompassing ‘system’ that these governments serve. During our lifetimes, public trust has eroded in all the institutions that capitalism relies on to enforce its rule: the police, the legal system, the media etc., and this process is only reinforced by the attacks of pro-capitalist politicians and parties who take office in this era. Faced with capitalist crisis in Britain and internationally, there is a growing search among young people especially for something fundamentally different to what has come before.
9. Reflecting the growing search for a socialist political alternative, more than 800,000 people signed up to find out more about Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ initiative in the Summer. However, that early potential has not been matched by what has been formed since then. Socialist Students agrees with the aspirations of Your Party, summarised in its founding statement, for “the transfer of wealth and power, now concentrated in the hands of the few, to the overwhelming majority in a democratic, socialist society”. However, given the lack of orientation of all the contesting groups within the Your Party leadership towards the organised power of the 6.5. million workers currently in trade unions, as well as the undemocratic exclusion of socialist organisations from its structures, the potential for Your Party to live up to its goal of a “democratic, socialist society” is currently extremely limited.
10. A section of young people are currently looking towards the Green Party as an alternative. Membership has almost tripled since Zack Polanski – a self-described “eco-populist” who has called for a wealth tax and other left-wing policies – became Green leader. With over 190,000 members, more than 800 councillors and four MPs, Polanski’s Green Party has a significant potential platform for mobilising working-class opposition to Labour and the capitalist system they defend. However, that would require a break with the Greens’ past and current record of accommodating to the demands of capitalism – as seen, for instance, in local authorities across Britain, where Green councillors are administering major cuts to public services, as well as internationally where Green parties have formed pro-capitalist governments making attacks on the working class and young people.
11. Socialist Students has long campaigned for the formation of a new mass workers’ party in Britain, because we think the working class, through its day-to-day experience of keeping society running under capitalism, is the class with the potential to take the running of society into its own hands on a planned, socialist basis. That would mean workers at all levels of society democratically deciding how to use wealth and resources to meet the needs of all, not the profits of a few. The working class having a party ‘of its own’, through which it can collectively discuss and politically organise in its interests, would be a step towards workers seeing themselves as a potential governmental alternative, which is a prerequisite to the socialist society that Socialist Students fights for. Above all, the formation of a new mass workers’ party in Britain will depend on trade union activists fighting for those mass organisations of the working class to have a political voice. However, student socialists can also play a role in advancing a political voice for working-class and young people, not least by organising locally for an anti-cuts, socialist stand in the May 2026 elections. That should include Socialist Students societies working with the local trade union movement, other socialist organisations and community campaigners to organise ‘People’s Budget Conferences’ ahead of the May elections.
12. In the absence of any mass organisations putting forward the socialist alternative that could actually improve people’s lives, Reform UK is currently leading in some polls, posing as an ‘antiestablishment’ alternative to Labour. As demonstrated in the 2017 general election, when up to 1 million former UKIP voters voted for Jeremy Corbyn’s anti-austerity platform, building a genuine political alternative to austerity and capitalism will be key to cutting across the racism and division that Reform, Labour and all the establishment capitalist parties are fuelling. At the same time, students can play a role in exposing the reactionary and false ideas of Reform on campus – for example, by challenging Reform societies to an open debate on how to win a decent future for young people, or organising protests if Reform politicians are invited to campus. 13. The turbulent times that young people are living through will lead to new, potentially explosive movements of young people demanding an alternative to what capitalism has to offer. There will be an even fiercer searching for answers about what alternative there could be, and how to win it. Socialist Students aims to be the organisation bringing together all students in Britain who want to fight for a socialist future, maximising the potential for students to be a factor in how struggle develops in this period while allowing for the fullest-possible discussion and debate over what way forward is needed. The production of a new Socialist Students draft Constitution is a key part of preparing students to lead the struggle for socialist change under a Labour government and in the years ahead, which will bring even greater opportunities for building a socialist youth movement in Britain.
Socialist Students 