KEIR STARMER’S speech setting out a “fresh start for Britain” claims Labour will “end” the cost-of-living crisis — without once mentioning wages in almost 3,000 words.
We are seeing a widening gulf between the party of labour and the trade unions which founded it.
Just two days and 13 miles separated the Durham Miners’ Gala from Starmer’s speech in Gateshead today, but the themes were worlds apart.
While key workers and union leaders highlighted the blindingly obvious reality that only above-inflation pay rises can protect people from rocketing prices, and that workers need to act collectively to secure such rises, Starmer has nothing to say about this.
Nothing to say either on the disputes that have dominated the news over recent months, whether the national rail strike to defend jobs, pay and the future of our railways, the success of workers at British Airways in securing a higher pay offer after a strike vote condemned by the Labour front bench, the huge vote for action at BT, the ongoing ballot at Royal Mail.
Some on the left argue that we need a general election after the resignation of Boris Johnson so the British people rather than Conservative Party members alone can decide who leads our country next.
The demand, whatever its merits, was notably absent from the podium speeches in Durham, with both rank-and-file workers and union leaders detailing the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on households right now and the need for sustained, co-ordinated industrial action to address it.
When Labour was mentioned, it was told to stand with workers taking action or get out of the way. The content of Starmer’s Gateshead address shows us why.
The Labour leader does not even acknowledge, let alone support, the demands of unions for restorative pay awards to make up for years of real-terms contraction (and decades in which wages have fallen and profits grown as proportions of Britain’s GDP).
So no wonder many unions cannot see what role the party could possibly play in delivering for their members, or what purpose would be served by focusing their campaigning energies on getting it elected.
When addressing the Big Meeting, RMT leader Mick Lynch warned: “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”
Key aspects of Starmer’s speech show which he is.
The tired appeal to “partnership” between “state and market, business and worker” needs to be demolished by trade unionists at every public forum we get, whether in strike ballot campaigning, town hall meetings or on platforms resulting from joint work with community organisations like tenants’ unions or even foodbanks.
Through privatisation and outsourcing, the introduction of the “market” has involved the plunder of public resources by profiteering companies. It has undermined services — Starmer talks about “revitalising” these, but not nationalisation or bringing staff back in-house — and facilitated a race to the bottom on pay and conditions.
And devastating analysis from Unite, largely ignored in the mass media, has demonstrated the direct link between soaring profits — profit margins for the FTSE 350 were 73 per cent higher in 2021 than pre-pandemic levels in 2019 — and inflation.
The cost-of-living crisis is the result of corporate greed, which is driving inflation. Bills are rising and wages are falling because companies are increasing profit margins. This is a class war and claiming business owners and workers are all in it together as Starmer does won’t wash.
There are other problems in Starmer’s “vision,” from his boasts about having imposed “unshakeable” support for Nato on the party to the repetition of vile smears against his predecessor.
But it is this tired Blairite reboot, so divorced from the immediate struggles of workers today and so blind to the forces responsible for the immiseration of Britain’s workforce, that reveals how little today’s Labour has to offer.
