In 1964, Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson said that “a week is a long time in politics.” That is true even in normal times, but under present conditions it is like a year.
The Tories’ half-baked coronavirus strategy has in only four days ago come apart at the seams as they frantically try to keep up with angry public opinion and they face relentless pressure from the science community.
News from northern Italy and the numbers of patients already being dealt with by an overstretched NHS, have made it clear that the UK response to the outbreak is woefully behind the curve. Even this obtuse government is being forced into the realisation that hospital admissions and treatment are likely to be far higher than they previously admitted. It is only a matter of time before schools are closed, after we have been told for a fortnight that it was “not necessary”.
Even Tory MPs are getting restless. “They have changed their policy, whatever they say”, said one ‘senior’ Tory backbencher, “it was all going well until last Thursday, but now the whole thing is a disaster”. (Financial Times, today)
We are NOT “all in this together”
Comparisons are being made all round between the conditions we now face in the coronavirus pandemic and what was faced by our parents and grandparents in wartime. Those comparisons are valid, but we must not forget that during both of the two great world wars of the twentieth century different class interests did not disappear. We are not “all in this together”.
In all the measures announced from one day to the next by this panic-driven government, we can see its main concern is big business and it is supporting working class people only reluctantly, partially and grudgingly, if at all.
Rishi Sunak announced yesterday a massive package of financial support, mostly in the form of loans to big business. Although the Tories are facing a huge barrage of criticism and demands for the financial support of workers affected by coronavirus, their first priority is to support their friends in the boardrooms of big business.
Big business demanded hand-outs
Since it became obvious that the pandemic was going to have a big effect on business, the big firms have been beating a path to Ten Downing Street to make their various welfare claims. Hospitality UK, which represents businesses like hotels, bars and restaurants said the industry was weeks away from “hundreds of thousands of redundancies”. The British Retail Consortium urged the government to “urgently consider a financial package to support these businesses”. The chairman of the Virgin Group – the very leeches who sued the NHS over the failure to win a contract last year – urged the government to provide up to £7.5bn support for the aviation industry.
They were all asking for cheap loans, tax and local business rate “holidays” or straight welfare. Chancellor Rishi Sunak has responded to this pressure from the top firms with a generous £330bn package of support, completely eclipsing tiny package announced only a week ago and kicking the budget into the long grass. Many big companies will use cheap loans to stay afloat, but will not necessarily use them to keep workers on the payroll and there are no conditions that tie the financial support to maintaining the workforce.
But so far, although the government have made noises about supporting lost wages and the lost income of self-employed workers – and the difficulties of renters – there is nothing concrete coming out. A separate package of support to help workers ill or quarantined is being “drawn up”, we are told, but that clearly doesn’t have the same priority as support for businesses.
No closures – nationalise companies laying off workers
Where big companies are laying off workers or threatening to do so, the position of the Labour Party must be clear – the Party must fight for these companies to be nationalised and the workforce made responsible through their elected representatives for managing production and any reconfiguration of products to meet public health needs, if possible.
For the Labour Party, the historic significance of this crisis has to mean a historic shift in its policy. Just as the privations and sacrifices of the Second World War led to the most radical Labour policies since the party’s foundation, Labour must now anticipate social and public needs and demand that policies are introduced For the Many and not the Few. Capitalism and the so-called ‘free market’ is a failed and a failing system and it cannot provide for the needs of the majority of the population, least of all in a public health emergency.
Just over a third trust Johnson
Opinion polls on the epidemic are not going well for the Tories. Their management of the crisis is turning into an omnishambles. An Opinium poll for last Sunday’s Observer showed that only just over a third (36%) trusted what Boris Johnson said on the subject, while just 37% trusted the information given by the health secretary, Matt Hancock. (Guardian March 14). A YouGov poll found that 49 per cent of people thought that government advice was either ‘fairly unclear’ or ‘not clear at all’. Not surprising, again according to YouGov, 72 per cent thought that people couldn’t live on the statutory sick pay level of £94 a week. Those numbers will go further south in the coming weeks and months.
ALL workers must receive a decent living wage
Labour should demand that the level of statutory sick pay should be raised to at least the level of other countries in Europe, to a proper living wage and that it should be made available to all workers affected by illness or quarantine, and to all those on welfare benefits.
Labour must oppose any free hand-outs or loans to big businesses, most of whom are sitting on piles of cash anyway. Labour must fight for the public ownership of land, the big banks, insurance companies, engineering, pharmaceutical, transport, utilities and service industries that dominate and control the economy. Labour’s 2019 Manifesto pledges must be a starting point; it included policies that were very popular according to all opinion polls.
A planned economy, organised democratically by government and workers, can be directed towards the fight for public health; it could mean a freeze on all rents as well as mortgages for the duration of the crisis, a guarantee for workers of their full normal wages and it could pour resources into the NHS to build it up. The crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic must be a call to arms for labour movement resistance to profiteering and greed and for a socialist programme that will benefit all.
March 18, 2020
