Skip to main content
Advertise with the Morning Star
"We are living out the cost of austerity during a global health pandemic"
LAURA PIDCOCK talks to the Morning Star about Covid-19, the Tories and why we need to keep fighting for socialism
Organising strategy: Laura Pidcock

“THEIR ideology prevents a recovery.” Laura Pidcock is not convinced that Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s six-month minimum wage placements or £10 eating out discounts are going to stop the scale of post-lockdown damage.

“I’m so sceptical,” the former North West Durham MP, now national secretary of the People’s Assembly, says. “There is huge insecurity because the messages from the government and the schemes it puts in place don’t correspond with the behaviour of employers.

“And all the issues around PPE [personal protective equipment], the inadequate PPE, the inability to manufacture our own, the impact of privatisation meaning we just don’t have the capacity to commission and deliver PPE.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Telling ‘Silk Road stories’ for a multipolar world
Features / 19 September 2025
19 September 2025

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports from the start of Kunming’s Belt and Road media forum, where 200 journalists from 71 countries celebrated a new openness and optimism, forged by China’s enormous contribution to global development

Protesters marching in Epping, Essex after a temporary injunction that would have blocked asylum seekers from being housed at the Bell Hotel, was overturned at the Court of Appeal, August 31, 2025
Anti-Racism / 13 September 2025
13 September 2025

Morning Star editor BEN CHACKO reports on TUC Congress discussions on how to confront the far right and rebuild the left’s appeal to workers

Paul Nowak, general secretary of the TUC speaking at the TUC congress at the ACC Liverpool. Picture date: Monday September 11, 2023
Workers' Rights / 10 September 2025
10 September 2025
Similar stories
CWU leader Dave Ward
TUC Congress 2025 / 8 September 2025
8 September 2025

CWU leader DAVE WARD tells Ben Chacko a strategy to unite workers on class lines is needed – and sectoral collective bargaining must be at its heart

Joanne Thomas campaigning for safe shopwork
Durham Miners’ Gala 2025 / 12 July 2025
12 July 2025

Incoming Usdaw general secretary JOANNE THOMAS talks to Ben Chacko about workers’ rights, Labour and how to arrest the decline of the high street

Alan Mardghum, author supplied
Features / 17 May 2025
17 May 2025

Ben Chacko talks to ALAN MARDGHUM of the Durham Miners Association about Reform UK‘s dangerous inroads into Durham’s long-standing Labour county council; why he cancelled his party membership; and the political class’s disconnect from working people

Communication Workers Union (CWU) general secretary Dave War
Features / 4 December 2024
4 December 2024
Communications Workers Union general secretary DAVE WARD says combatting a resurgent far right means uniting the working class behind a positive vision for change – with collective bargaining at its heart