By John Pickard, Brentwood Labour Party, personal capacity
The Tories under Theresa May are hanging on for dear life for one reason only. They may be completely split on Brexit, but they are absolutely unanimous that they do not want a new general election for fear that the Labour Party will be swept into power.
Theresa May thought she was delivering a knock-out blow to Labour in calling a snap general election a year ago, but she made a huge mistake.
Labour’s manifesto was so popular that they came within a whisker of winning and in the end the Tories only clung to power by an unprincipled deal with the DUP.
Despite the most hostile press for any Labour leader in living memory, the policies of the Labour Party—policies ‘For the Many, not the Few’ – proved to be enormously popular and the Labour Party made the biggest jump in its election showing since 1945.
Tories have nothing to offer
The Tories have nothing to offer working people—the vast majority of the population—except more austerity and more cuts.
All Theresa May’s promises about helping the ‘JAM’ families—the ‘just about managing’ – have gone up in smoke. Like her promises to rehouse the victims of the Grenfell fire. Like her promise to make good the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation of immigrants. All empty promises.
The Labour Party is a government in –waiting and that is why the Tories are so desperate to hang on, despite their splits.
Under Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour membership has increased to become the biggest political party in western Europe. But the real appeal of Labour is not for individuals but for popular policies.
Labour must make good its promises to implement policies in the interests of ordinary working-class people. Labour must renationalise Rail, Royal Mail and the utilities, all of which were sold off cheap to the business friends of the Tory Party.
A crash housing programme
Labour must end the pay cap on public sector workers and the draconian clamp-down on welfare benefits to the disabled and the sick.
Labour must implement a house-building programme, based especially on local authority social housing, so that young people can have a decent home of their own that really is affordable.
Rent controls should be introduced in the privately-rented sector so that families are not paying half their income in rent. Tenants should be given proper security of tenure and landlords should be made to improve damp and inadequate housing.
About all, Labour needs to go back to the old Clause 4 of the Party constitution and carry out socialist economic measures to bring the commanding heights o the economy into public hands.
The enormous wealth, know-how and resources of this country should be planned for everyone’s benefit, not for the benefit of a few rich and super-rich.
While the rich get richer, the rest face more austerity.
Even according to the ‘Centre for Social Justice’ which is a think-tank on the right of the political spectrum, the wages of the 10 million low-paid workers have stalled for twenty years and face another decade of standstill.
A fifth of British workers earn £15,000 a year or less and when the limit is put at £23,200, it covers half of the British workforce of 33 million. Tory Britain offers no future for these workers and their families.
According to the CSJ, only one tenth of workers earn above £53,000 a year, a level which can be considered to be a ‘good’ wage. Increasingly workers—particularly young workers—are being pushed into insecure low-paid, low-skill jobs, with little prospect of advancement or training to get better jobs and wages.
Regions like the north-east of England, where there used to be a sound basis of manufacturing, mining and engineering, have been particularly hard hit. Many cities, towns and villages have not recovered today from the economic blitzkrieg of Thatcherism in the 1980s.
This is the reality of Tory Britain today. Meanwhile, the rich and the super-rich make more money than they can spend, using their massive surpluses to make money from money.
The Labour Party must dedicate itself to policies that are in the interests of working class people, even if it means the rich and powerful—the 1 per cent of the population who control and own the economy—have their noses pushed out of joint!
July 6, 2018
