Sir Keir Starmer’s New Labour spent the election campaign endlessly repeating that they would have to make ‘tough choices’ in office. Now they are doubling down, claiming to be surprised at the terrible £22 billion ‘black hole’ the Tories have left in the public finances.
In reality, it was clear to everyone that Sunak’s Tory government was acting in the interests of the super-wealthy capitalist elite when it made its spending decisions, and not the working- and middle-class majority. The new government’s theatre about ‘tough choices’ is designed to prepare us that they intend to behave in fundamentally the same way.
“Because if we cannot afford it, we cannot do it”, was chancellor Rachel Reeves’s repeated refrain, announcing cuts to pensioners’ winter fuel payment, rail and road infrastructure projects, hospital rebuilds and scrapping the planned adult social care funding cap.
But ‘we’ can afford it! There is no lack of wealth in Britain. During the Tories’ time in office, the wealth of the country’s ten richest people alone grew from £47 billion to £182 billion, an increase of 281%. Yet New Labour are telling us there is no money to ensure parents can feed their kids.
The refusal to reverse the Tories’ 2017 two-child benefit cap, when doing so would immediately lift 330,000 children over official poverty levels, is one example of their determination to dampen the expectations of millions that ‘change’ will come with a new government in place. Suspending seven MPs from the Parliamentary Labour Party for daring to vote for the lifting of the cap is another.
The suspended seven
The suspension of the seven is more draconian even than under Blair’s first ‘New Labour’ government. Then, 47 MPs rebelled against the government’s cut to lone parent benefits, but no action was taken against them. Today, after the capitalist class was shaken and alarmed by the anti-austerity mood in society finding a reflection in Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, Starmer is determined to smash even the smallest left opposition within Labour.
As a result, few of even the small number of Labour MPs still affiliated to the left ‘Socialist Campaign Group’ found the courage to vote for the amendment. Some abstained or were not present, including Diane Abbott, who did make a public statement that she would have voted for the amendment had she been there, but shamefully some allegedly left MPs voted with the government, including Dawn Butler, Clive Lewis, Kat Smith and Tahir Ali.
The seven who had the courage of their convictions will need to draw the necessary conclusions from this week’s events, as will the workers’ movement as a whole. The letter from Sir Alan Campbell, Labour’s chief whip, to the seven suspended them for six months and said that a judgement at the end of that period on restoring them to the Parliamentary Labour Party would be made based on their “conduct during the suspension” and “willingness to comply with the whip in the future.”
The worst thing the seven could do would be to succumb to this pressure, bow down, and vote with the government when it fails to deliver for working-class people.
Unfortunately, there are going to be numerous other issues where the same principled stand that they took on the two-child benefit cap will be required: perhaps including, for example, aspects of the 2016 (anti-)Trade Union Act which Labour fails to withdraw, the failure to introduce rent controls, regressive changes to student financing, doing a rotten deal with Tata Steel instead of nationalising, or the failure to withdraw arms export licences to Israel.
Jeremy Corbyn and the other four independent MPs have written to the seven suspended Labour MPs offering to work closely with them. That offers the possibility of a bloc of MPs in Westminster fighting to represent the interests of the trade union movement and the wider working class. Most importantly, the trade union movement should learn lessons from these first experiences of Starmer’s New Labour in government.
Public sector pay
Millions of health workers, teachers, civil servants and others have been hoping that they will be offered a pay rise which restores the 10%-plus cut in their real wages over the last decade.
Labour has made an agreement with BMA leaders for a 22% junior doctors’ pay increase over two years, subject to members voting to accept. ‘Striking works’ will be confirmed again in many worker’s minds.
The government has put public sector pay award body recommendations to union members too. 5.5% has been offered to teachers and many NHS staff, and the pay remit for civil servants has been set at 5%, for example. Members of most local government unions have already voted to reject the offer put to them by the Tories (£1,290 a year – 5.7% for the lowest paid).
Reeves admitted the top of her reasons for considering any pay rises was “the cost of industrial action”. In other words, it is the ongoing effects of the 2022/23 strike wave – the biggest in over three decades – and the threat of further action, which could still win more.
Reeves puts the cost of funding the pay awards at £9 billion. But will it be funded? Only about two-thirds of it. Government departments have been given until the 30 October Autumn Budget to find £3 billion of cuts. Teaching unions have been told teacher pay is fully funded, but that doesn’t look to be the case. Unions must demand full funding.
The workers’ movement will not win anything from Starmer’s Labour by quiet words in ministers’ ears, but only by being prepared to fight. The National Shop Stewards Network will be lobbying the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in September, demanding that this combative approach is adopted.
A workers’ voice
That fight will be strengthened if it has its own voice in parliament, campaigning for workers’ demands. Many trade unions have a parliamentary group which is meant to do this. Most are mainly made up of Labour MPs, with very varying records on campaigning or voting for trade unions’ policies. How many members of those groups voted against the two-child benefit cap being lifted, despite it being TUC policy to do so?
Across the trade union movement, a discussion needs to take place on ensuring members of parliamentary groups actually campaign for trade union demands. Better a small group of MPs who fight for workers’ interests than fictional ‘allies’ who vote for the pro-capitalist policies of Starmer’s Labour government. Back in 1906, the Labour Representation Committee, precursor of the Labour Party, only had 29 MPs, but it was still an important factor in putting pressure on the Liberal government to carry out some reforms and remove anti-trade union rulings.
Already, in the first month of Starmer’s Labour government, the reasons that the working class needs its own party, armed with a socialist programme, are being demonstrated very clearly. If you want to help build the socialist opposition to Starmer’s Labour – join the Socialist Party today.
