Labour’s new deal for working people
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Angela Rayner’s speech to the TUC (and I don’t mean the cheesy biscuit)[/url]:
“I come here with one message today – that the next Labour Government will build an economy that works for working people with a New Deal for Working People. And Labour will start by bringing forward an Employment Rights Bill to legislate for this within the first 100 days of entering office. That is a cast-iron commitment.”Well, it’ll have to be, then, now she’s said that: but there was precious little in the speech about what would be in this latest new deal. This says it all, though: “I make no apologies that we will work hand-in-hand with trade unions as we will work with business to deliver a real partnership based on mutual respect, cooperation, and negotiation.” Well, we’ve heard of this sort of corporatism before: but it’s clear from her message that she is trying to sell labour to the Union bureaucrats, with a series of tinkering reforms that will put them in the room.
Really, though, we’re back to Blairism: “The State will take a more strategic and active role in our economy by fixing the UK’s broken labour market, giving businesses the confidence they need to invest in our infrastructure and people once more.” As I said at the time, Blair sought to nationalise the workforce, and I think this is where they are headed again.
It’s a mix of authoritarian social controls, education and making the workforce competitive to attract inward capital investment (backed up by a good dose of national pride). Possibly the Singapore model – there seems to be a lot of attraction to Singapore’s methods in Westminster.
“I come here with one message today – that the next Labour Government will build an economy that works for working people with a New Deal for Working People. And Labour will start by bringing forward an Employment Rights Bill to legislate for this within the first 100 days of entering office. That is a cast-iron commitment.”
The cast-iron commitment of course is to introduce an Employment Rights Bill not to “build an economy that works for working people”. A Labour government can do the first but we can say with cast-iron certainty that they cannot do the second. For the simple reason that that’s not possible.
As Labour supports the capitalist system this is a pledge to make the capitalist economy work for the benefit of wage-working majority and their dependants. But capitalism is a profit-making system that can work only for the profit-taking few. Both the theoretical knowledge of how capitalism works and the experience of over a hundred years of failure of reformist governments to make it work in any other way demonstrate this.
This empty promise that “the next Labour Government will build an economy that works for working people” has been taken down in writing and will be used in evidence against them.
The Labour Party’s pronouncement today to the trade unions is a load of nonsense. Sadly the audience applauded. The Labour Party has never been in favour of working class emancipation. Unfortunately this is our world. I’m particularly annoyed about the Labour Party’s failure to promise a decent standard of living to pensioners, tenants, children, students, carers, disabled, unemployed and everyone else.
We can not expect that a pro capitalist political party is going to defend the interests of the working class. They are doing what they must do, they can not do anything different. The promises and the reforms made during the post war period are gone, and everything is going to be reversed and also they have a bunch of wages slaves defending and supporting them. It is not only the Labour Party, all capitalist parties are doing the same thing
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