THE latest government U-turn on exam results shows that they can be made to change course. Of course, they cannot even perform that without leaving chaos and huge disruption in people’s lives, in this case young people either going on to further studies or about to enter the workforce. This simply confirms their bias in favour of the rich and very highly paid and their disregard for ordinary people.

Even so, there is now a string of these U-turns and we must draw the most important conclusions from them — that if we oppose this government effectively, if we put forward policies to benefit ordinary people and if we mobilise a movement around them, we can win. The stakes are very high, as both lives and livelihoods are at risk.

The current political situation is we have a government elected with a huge majority with one aim, “to get Brexit done.” That was always going to be a difficult project, as the latest set of British negotiators are now finding out for themselves.

Because what the Tories plan is so deeply damaging to the British economy, to jobs, living standards, workers’ rights and the environment, Boris Johnson purged the Tory Party of all dissent.

However, there are issues in the world more important than Brexit. A global pandemic killing hundreds of thousands of people is one of them. It has killed tens of thousands of people in this country, one of the worst per capita outcomes in the world. Sage now thinks the “R rate for the reproduction of the virus may be above 1.” And cases are rising once more, as this government has not pursued an effective lockdown.

Against this backdrop the government has to deal with a series of lesser crises, what Harold Macmillan called “events, dear boy, events.” Some of these crises were avoidable, others relate to the Brexit and coronavirus crises and others are entirely of this government’s own making.

In general, it is on these very important, but lesser issues that the government has been to forced to change course. The exams fiasco was not an accident. Tory ministers and right-wing think-tanks have denounced for years what they call “grade inflation,” which is nothing more than the natural rise in performance of hard-working pupils outside the public and grammar schools, aided by dedicated teachers.

Ministers were clear, “grade inflation” would lead to students from working class and ethnic minority communities being over-promoted and unable to do their jobs. This is rich, coming from this bunch of charlatans.

Along with one of the worst death tolls in the world they have also presided over the worst economic crisis in the G7. These two catastrophes go hand-in-hand. The worse the public health crisis the greater the obstacles to economic recovery. People will return to work only if forced to (which is now government policy) and remain extremely reluctant to resume their social lives.

It was the same brutal disregard for poorer families which led to the policy of ending free school meals during the summer holidays. It is already a scandal that so many families rely on free school meals in what is still, despite this government, one of the richest countries in the world. The talk of “levelling up” when you try to cut free school meals and institute algorithms to penalise state school pupils’ exam results and improve those in public schools is completely false.

Forcing any government to backtrack is not easy. But it happened. On exams and free school meals, it was clear that campaigning by the school students themselves and by Marcus Rashford and others played a huge part in both U-turns.

Campaigning can help to tap into public opinion but it can also help to formulate it. The role of politicians who want to see positive change and therefore who understand you need to oppose this government, is to use their platform to highlight these issues and to support all those who take action. The victory of the waiver of NHS fees for migrant medical workers shows the same pattern.

But there are big fights ahead. The government is just about to remove the ban on evictions of people who cannot pay the rent. This affects hundreds of thousands of people. It cannot be justified during a global pandemic which is now deteriorating once more.

Similarly, there are a number of unions which are being forced into industrial action because of their employers’ fire and rehire tactics, which are designed to achieve a permanent reduction in pay, terms and conditions for the workforce.

Part of the government’s push to force everyone back to work is ending the furlough scheme prematurely. It is also an encouragement to unscrupulous employers to engage in these deplorable tactics.

In other countries such as Germany, their furloughs are being extended. The drive to get everyone back to work also includes fully reopening the schools, despite the fact that many schools in Scotland have had to shut almost immediately after their reopening because of outbreaks of new cases.

We need to oppose the government on all these policies. Their unifying theme is that they disregard the public health risks of their policies. As Jeremy Corbyn has confirmed, they are actually advocates of “herd immunity,” which means letting many people die.

Other countries have effectively eliminated the virus, many of them based in the Asian Pacific. Where cases are rising once in many countries, the ones who prevent it leading to an enormous death toll will be those who impose stringent lockdown and effective tracking, tracing and isolation measures.

In the labour movement, we should be clear we cannot allow people to be forced back to work to risk serious disease or even death. We know that that death toll has been borne by the vulnerable and the elderly. Among workers, it is black and Asian people who have experienced hugely disproportionate deaths. We cannot allow this to get even worse.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North.