After hearing Andy Burnham’s excellent presentation in Bristol last weekend about his vision for the Labour Party, I had, at last, begun to get over my despair following the General Election. I felt, and still do, that Burnham could give us something different and create a vision of what Britain could look like under Labour. But yesterday’s Tory budget has brought back my despair, with interest. Not despair at Osborne’s trickery and sleight of hand, his plotting, his permanent politicking, but despair at Labour’s reaction. So far it has been pitiful.
Osborne did not choose the timing for his budget by accident. It has come just before the summer recess, so people will soon forget about it, and it has come at a time when Labour has been, not for the first time, navel-gazing, trying to pick a new leader.
I wonder why I bother with a Labour Party that supports the Tory benefit cap. The illusion is that there is a real problem with people raking in huge amounts of benefits, more than they could ever get through work. Osborne wants to cap the amount at £20,000 a year, but the truth is that the vast majority of this sum represents Housing Benefit, paid to landlords, not benefit claimants. The whole thing is extremely complex and it is simply not good enough for the so-called people’s party to lamely go along with it and sustain the myth. Their attitude to public sector pay has persuaded me to not rejoin Labour. Here’s why.
The Tories represent themselves as the party of aspiration but that aspiration does not apply to public sector workers. Having restricted public sector workers to real pay cuts in the last five years, following on from Labour’s pay freezes after the worldwide financial crash, Osborne announces that they will get real pay cuts for the next five years as well. And make no mistake, it is five years, not four because this year’s pay cut has already been imposed. So our frontline public sector workers will be worse off financially. And what does Labour do? It supports Osborne. Say it again: Labour supports the public sector pay freeze until at least 2019.
Granted, the pay freeze will not greatly affect some government departments like the MOD which get round the situation by regularly promoting staff into higher paid jobs and by paying bonuses and so called retention payments, but for most workers it means more cuts, a higher workload and lower pay. Now I am sorry, but that’s not fair and if Labour is not in favour of fairness, then what is it for? If it goes along with so many Tory policies, then people will think, “What’s the point in voting for them? I might as well vote for the real thing.” And that is exactly Osborne’s tactic.
“Britain deserves a pay rise”, said Osborne, but he didn’t mean it. But then, Labour was saying the same thing before the election. Now it says that the likes of nurses, police officers, the armed forces and social work staff don’t.
Nine years of below inflation or no rises at all for public sector workers, many of whom earn very low wages already. Sorry, but that is not good enough and whichever Labour leader emerges in September, he or she will never enjoy my support, or indeed my vote, if public sector workers, on whom this country hugely depends, see their standards of living slashed again. My vote will go to none of the above.
People have said, wrongly in my opinion, that there is no difference between the main parties, but that could be about to change. We know what the Tories are about, as we saw from yesterday’s huge Con trick (get it?) but if Labour supports the continued attacks on ordinary low paid people, as they seem to, then they might as well give up and we can resign ourselves to a lifetime of cruel Tory misrule.
