Labour on the backfoot: Trade unions must step up action now

Editorial of the Socialist, England and Wales edition, issue 1323

After repeatedly defending their unpopular policies of maintaining the two-child benefit cap and ending pensioners’ universal winter fuel allowance, the Labour government appears to be U-turning.

The partial retreat comes after the humiliating defeat in the English local government elections, backlash from voters, rebellion from their own backbenches, and the ongoing falls in opinion polls.

But the damage is already done. Keir Starmer’s government has already exposed itself as being on the side of big business and the super-rich, and the deeper austerity planned will only display that more starkly.

Recent surveys indicate that Starmer’s personal favourability rating fell to -31 in May, representing a 38-point drop since the general election. This situation echoes the dilemma faced by politicians defending the capitalist bosses’ interests, as former President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker once put it: “We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”

The government has faced huge anger over its decision last July to axe £1.5 billion in winter fuel payments for about 10 million pensioners. But any hopes of its reinstatement will have been dimmed by Rachel Reeves’s refusal to give a clear timeline or say how many will have it restored this winter.

The trade unions should be demanding it is restored immediately to all pensioners, linking this to the demand for nationalisation of the energy companies, to bring down bills for everyone.

The Labour government has been struggling to hold back rebellion on its backbenches, fuelled by public anger. Starmer hopes that these retreats will give him some time. In fact the U-turns should give confidence that the government can be forced to row back on disability benefit cuts and other anti-working class policies.

It is also not an accident that Starmer received some ‘friendly’ advice from former chancellor Gordon Brown to remove the two-child benefit cap. The government had already delayed publishing its child poverty strategy – because it would further fuel the anger. About 4.8 million children are forecast to be in poverty in 2029-30 with the two-child limit in place, including half of children in large families, according to the Resolution Foundation. Removing the cap would immediately would reduce child poverty by approximately 360,000 children. This can’t wait.

Splits within Labour

It’s been less than a year, but Labour splits and fractions are already emerging. For example, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner’s apparently ‘leaked’ memo to Reeves before the Spring Statement in March, calling for very modest tax increases on the rich.

Although Rayner has ruled out ever running to replace Starmer, the possibility of his replacement is not ruled out in the future as a way to try and steady the sinking ship of Labour. But Rayner, as local government minister, is responsible for the threatened savage cuts to Birmingham bin workers’ pay, as well as organising strikebreaking. She is another pro-capitalist politician.

Any government that defends the interests of British capitalism will attempt to force through austerity and thereby will be unstable.

The government bragged about ‘ending strikes’ in the public sector last summer, but national action is posed again. The government has made offers in line with the public sector pay review bodies’ recommendations – 4% for doctors, teachers and prison guards, 4.5% for armed forces, 3.6% for NHS workers, 3.25% for civil servants, 3.2% for lower-paid school staff such as teaching assistants and caretakers. These are without adequate funding – meaning service cuts and job losses – and with RPI inflation at a 15-month high of 4.5% in April.

We can fight

But the U-turns prove the government can be forced to move under pressure. Now is the time for the unions to act. Socialist Party members are fighting for the unions to undertake ballots for national action, linking pay with funding, pointing to the possibility of future coordinated strike action.

Together with an industrial strategy to resist austerity, the unions should be leading the fight for a political alternative too. The Socialist Party welcomes the move by 25 current and former members of trade union national executives in launching a petition, ‘Time for trade unions to take the lead in forming a new working-class party’.

A working-class, anti-austerity, electoral challenge to this Labour government – with the authority of the trade unions – would represent a real threat to Starmer’s Labour acting in the interests of the capitalist class.