My weekly column in the daily Plymouth Herald newspaper (19.9.24), in the week that the new Labour prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was exposed for taking personal gifts for himself and his wife, including tens of thousands of pounds in clothes, accommodation, holidays and an executive at the Arsenal football ground. At the same time, Starmer has withdrawn winter fuel allowances of £300 from over 10million elderly people, is spending tax-payers money on arming the Israeli genocide, more than 100 fossil fuel extraction licences whilst reneging on funds for renewable energy, and enforcing more pay cuts and Austerity measures. This is not a Government for the working class or indeed the progressive future of humanity. It is more of the same, a Tory government in red clothing (gifted by ruling class Tories), and they have to be deposed. But replaced by what?

News Flash! Our public services are in crisis. As if we didn’t know. 

Last week, Lord Darzi’s quick review of the National Health Service conveniently allowed the new Labour government to announce that the “NHS is broken”. Alongside all the other Government claims that “there is no money”, the NHS is the latest public service to be told it won’t be bailed out.

There is little surprise amongst our working class population, more than half of whom did not vote in the July General Election. ‘They’re all the same” was a common theme in every pollster report. Labour won a landslide despite their share of the vote hardly rising. People voted against the Tories, that is, for no more Austerity.

After 14 years of Tory rule our pay has been cut to a point where it is now at the ratio of spending power of 2008, 16 years ago. On average fully-time workers are over £4,000 a year worse off, given the rate of inflation. To achieve minimum subsistence levels, 5 million of us get top-ups to our wages from Universal Credit – itself a benefit designed to subsidise the rogue employers plying starvation wages.

The reduction in inflation to 3% doesn’t mean prices are going down – food prices are 30% higher than 4 years ago. Pay hasn’t gone-up that far.

So the Tory and far-right shouts that Labour has paid-off unions with “above inflation pay increases” is just their latest big lie. A 5% pay rise doesn’t touch the pay cuts of the past 15 years. One-in-five of us are living below the official (Tory) poverty line – that’s over 14million people in Britain, 2.2million of whom are pensioners.

The UK has one of the highest retirement ages in the world, the lowest State pension in Europe, some of the longest working hours for one of the lowest minimum wages, the highest energy costs, the biggest profits and the lowest taxes for the rich.

Sir Starmer offered very little and already is delivering even less. The Autumn Budget will only deliver cuts. And for the NHS this will be an acceleration of the privatisations planned by the Sunak government. Tory cries of Labour betraying the poor hang thread bare given their destruction of welfare state over the past 14 years.

Last week’s Trades Union Congress, the annual conference of Britain’s trade unions, saw elected delegates pulled by these tensions. On the one hand, a Labour government, supposedly the Party of the working class, was cause for celebration. On the other, the condition of the working class has worsened, except for a small strata of skilled workers able to improve their pay and conditions due to skills shortages.

Clearly, we’re not all in it together. The UK ranks the 9th most unequal society out of 38 richest countries. The richest 10% own half of all earth, the poorest 50% just 9%. 

The argument goes that 14 years of Tory cuts cannot be turned around overnight, or even in the 5-year span of a single Parliament. But that should not mean the continuation of Tory plans. Indeed, immediately raising taxes for the most wealthy, those who currently pay proportionally less of their income in tax than the poorest in society, would fill the alleged £22billion black hole and more.

Instead, Starmer goes further than Sunak ever dared, deleting the Winter Fuel Allowance. Universal benefits ensures that everyone is covered, helped and safe whatever their conditions. Means-testing creates a poverty trap for those who don’t quite meet the criteria, in this case, numbering into millions of elderly who will face a very challenging winter.

Trade unions are demanding a U-Turn. Indeed, we want a shift in economic power in favour of the majority. The influence of big business and the billionaires on government policy have to be swept away. But Labour is in the pockets of the lobbyists.

According to the parliamentary register of interests, Wes Sreeting, the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care, accepted donations amounting to around £175,000 from two donors with links to private healthcare firms. He has pledged to “fight the middle-class lefties who oppose expanding the use of private health providers.” 

Actually, Streeting, it’s the working class trades unions who collectively oppose private health services. The NHS is in crisis caused by the task-over by private firms making profit from our taxes, from healthcare, pharmaceuticals, health insurance companies, administration and estate management, a huge proportion being companies based in the United States of America. The hundreds of billions in private profit could be saved or spent on patients if the NHS was still a state run public Labour is set to privatise more.

The questions are begged, can we end the corporate plunder of our public services? Will trade unions fight a Labour government? Would the threat of “winter of discontent” result in the return of a Tory government, and if it did, what difference is there between the policies of these two parties fighting to serve the interests of those already privileged few? 

The Trade Unions must be prepared to act independently of any government hostile to the needs and rights of the working class. Labour is not withdrawing from the Tory anti-union laws, nor their new restrictions on the right to protest. This government will fight any collective trade union challenge, imprison strike leaders and workers on picket lines.

We must campaign now for redistribution of wealth to eradicate poverty, increasing benefits and pensions, not cutting and taxing them. A 2% tax increase on citizens whose private assets are worth over £10million, surely enough for anyone, would pull-in £24billion a year to the Exchequer. More than enough to fill that questionable black hole. 

If Labour is no longer the party for the working class then it’s time to build new socialist organisation in the workplaces and communities. Or suffer worse to come.