THIS weekend thousands will protest in Manchester against the Conservative Party conference.

This year’s demonstrations have a new urgency — and not just because the Tories are descending on the Labour-run city shortly after insulting it by announcing the long-awaited HS2 high-speed rail line may not extend to the city after all, shutting out northern England.

For one thing this government has no mandate. Rishi Sunak is not, like Boris Johnson, a prime minister chosen in a general election. He is not even, like Liz Truss, a prime minister elected by the members of the party that won that election. He is an unelected leader whom polls make clear the British people do not want.

Britain doesn’t have a presidential system, the Conservatives can retort. They were elected in 2019 and can hold office for five years. But the Tories since then have broken nearly as many pledges as Keir Starmer.

The HS2 retreat is a nail in the coffin of “levelling up” promises already broken, given regional inequality has continued to widen since 2019.

A Tory Party dominated by Thatcherite relics quickly turned its back on the offer of an end to austerity and higher public spending that Boris Johnson pitched to the electorate to counter the appeal of socialist-led Labour. 

Manifesto pledges like an employment rights Bill have been delayed more than 20 times. Instead, the Tories have pushed through sweeping attacks on protest and strike rights that were not run by the voters. 

Have unforeseen events like the pandemic forced a change of course? No; Chancellor Jeremy Hunt’s determination to repeat austerity and hold wages down show a dogged refusal to address any of the reasons Britain’s death toll from the virus was among the highest, proportionally, worldwide.

Sunak presents himself as a steady hand at the tiller, a sober professional compared to his predecessors. The difference is one of style rather than substance. 

Sunak’s government is hard right. It has continued the worst authoritarian features of the Johnson regime. 

It has ratcheted up the war on refugees to the extent that the originator of the “hostile environment” policy, Theresa May, now condemns its cruelty. It declines to tackle the damage of 13 years of Tory cuts, even while schools literally crumble and a tenth of the population are now waiting for NHS treatment.

The speed with which it is trying to erode our rights reflects its own judgement that its days are numbered. All the more reason pressure for a general election should be raised. Another year of this government will see labour rights, rights to demonstrate, dissent and boycott, and rights to asylum, weaker than they are today.

There is another reason the whole movement should embrace the People’s Assembly mobilisation this weekend.

It will not just voice calls for the Tories to leave office, but involves days of sessions promoting peace, climate justice, trade union rights, socialist media and more.

The radical vision projected in the last two Labour Party manifestos has been abandoned by Labour, which in most fields, from spending to policing to war, is now committed to continuing Tory policy. 

A concerted effort is being made by both parties to suppress the street and the grassroots, to respond to the shocks of 2015-19 by restricting politics to a hidebound, corrupt and dishonest professional caste.

If Labour will not voice the concerns of the public, we need campaigns that will. That will raise and fight for political demands regardless of which party is in office.

The People’s Assembly remains a non-sectarian and democratic campaigning organisation with national reach. It needs to be strengthened in the wake of the left’s retreats in recent years, and support for it should be promoted through union branches, conference resolutions and trades council activity. 

Support this weekend’s protests — for an end not just to Tory rule, but to Tory policies.