IT IS true that Labour have taken over an economy ravaged by 14 years of Tory austerity. But that should mean a profound opportunity to deliver change. Britain is broken, yes. But they cannot keep making everyday people pay.

Today MPs will be voting on the government’s despicable plan to cut disability benefits. Just as with every other wrong decision, such as scrapping the winter fuel allowance, rowing back on investment in British industry or failing to ensure proper local authority funding, the excuse will be the same — “we have no choice.” And again it will be absolute rubbish. Of course they have choices.

We are the sixth-richest economy in the world. But the way that wealth is divided is increasingly unequal. The richest 50 families are worth about £500 billion, the same as half the entire UK population. In 1990 there were just 15 billionaires in the UK, but since then their number has jumped to 156.

So, there is a choice. If we taxed the richest 1 per cent just 1 per cent, that would generate about £25 billion. That is a choice. We need a wealth tax now.

Wealth taxes are long established and successful in other countries. Switzerland has had a wealth tax since 1840, which currently raises over 1 per cent of its GDP. Worldwide, the tide is turning towards restoring taxes on wealth. Norway increased its wealth tax rate in 2023. In Spain, the national government introduced an additional “solidarity tax” on the very wealthiest. Last year, the governments of Brazil, Spain, Germany, and South Africa asked the G20 to draw up plans for an international wealth tax on billionaires.

I have said on many occasions that Labour needs to channel the spirit of the 1945 government. That Labour government was transformational.

We had over double national debt-to-GDP, yet we built the NHS and the welfare state. We went on to be prosperous. Nobody doubted whose side Labour was on in 1945. But Labour in 2025 has made decisions that have had workers and communities scratching their heads.

Workers and their families see every day that the economy is broken. Real wages are now lower than in 1997. After 15 years of austerity, our public services are collapsing: from the 7.4 million people on hospital waiting lists, to the dozens of local councils facing bankruptcy. Our industries are in crisis as infrastructure collapses, from transport and water to the electricity grid.

So along with a wealth tax, we urgently need investment to rebuild. Germany has a national investment bank worth £520 billion, and recently agreed a new £480bn infrastructure fund. Whereas so far our government has promised just £28bn for our new National Wealth Fund.

It took months to move on from the phony fiscal rules that prevented investment in UK infrastructure, despite the obvious problems — something that we had been warning about for two years. And they have still not gone far enough. Fiscal rules aren’t real. They’re self-imposed. You can change the fiscal rules if you want to, why would you hold back vital investment rather than do that?

This Labour government was elected on a platform of change. Now it has to deliver that change. Not jam tomorrow but change that working-class people can see and feel today. Good jobs, decent pay, a good standard of living. Labour needs to take those who have been at the back of the queue for 14 years and bring them right up to the front.

The stakes are high with democracy under attack and public resentment growing. Without a bold and positive Labour government more workers will turn to Reform and others like them or will turn their back on politics altogether and ultimately democracy itself.

Unions must also be part of the strategy. Collective bargaining remains the tried and tested method of pushing up pay. If we had the same collective bargaining coverage as 1996, we would see an additional 2.8 per cent rise in GDP. Workers — the working class — don’t send their money to banks in the Cayman Islands, they spend it on their local high streets. That is why the choices made in the upcoming Employment Relations Bill are missed opportunities. Access, recognition and sectoral bargaining all watered down. All ways for workers to have effective unions.

Workers and communities need to feel Labour change in the here and now. No-one should have to ask whose side is Labour on. Workers and communities should just know.

Sharon Graham is general secretary of Unite.