LABOUR will win the next election — but soon be engulfed by mass unrest over economic decline and falling living standards unless it radically changes direction, North of Tyne Mayor Jamie Driscoll warned on Thursday night.

At a Morning Star North East Readers’ & Supporters’ public meeting at Newcastle’s Tyneside Irish Centre, Mr Driscoll slammed the cruelty and economic blindness of policies like retaining the two-child benefit cap, saying it stored up poverty and misery that would cost communities for generations.

And a Labour Party that ordered MPs not to stand on picket lines, and even disciplined those like Sam Tarry who do so, would soon find itself facing disaffiliation moves from trade unions whose wave of industrial action will continue when Labour refuses to invest in public services and bankrupt councils, he argued.

The meeting heard that Mr Driscoll’s campaign for election to the enlarged North East mayoral role as an independent, following his disbarment as Labour’s candidate for sharing a platform with iconic socialist film-maker Ken Loach, was meeting enthusiasm across a north-east where people are sick of both Labour and the Tories.

His campaign had 600 volunteers out on the streets last weekend, dwarfing the mobilisation efforts of other parties.

The meeting, which looked at where the labour movement was headed 100 years since the first Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald, heard Women Against Pit Closures’ Heather Wood slam Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer for betraying the working class and People’s Assembly North East’s Anya Cook stress the importance of community organising.

Mick Bowman, who last year walked to Palestine to raise solidarity funds and was in the West Bank until February this year, also spoke of Labour’s shameful complicity in Israel’s war on Palestinians.