Prediction 5 – Labour Wins The Election and Attacks Workers
The prediction that the Tories would not go until the end of 2024, or into 2025, before calling the election was confirmed. The reasons set out as to why they would not do that were also confirmed, and have been further confirmed, since the election. As the UK debt crisis grows, inflation is ticking up, and growth, is flat to negative, all of which are inseparable from the effects of Brexit, which become starker by the day, and for which the Tories bear responsibility, but one that Blue Labour has now lifted from their shoulders, to bear itself.
In the prediction, I noted,
“The purpose of announcing a March Budget is to front-run a series of proposed tax give-aways, but without actually having to introduce them. They hold out the promise to voters, if they vote Tory, whilst putting Labour on the spot to say whether they would reverse them etc. Labour is already in a bind of its own making when it comes to tax and spending, as its sums don't add up, and the vague “aspirations” and “values” do not fill the gap in hard cash.”
That seemed pretty obvious to everyone, other than Blue Labour, and its Treasury team led by Reeves, who seemed blind to the existence of the £20 billion gap in the Tories budget that I, the IFS and many others wrote about on many occasions. Only after the election, did Blue Labour “discover” this “black hole”. But, as the prediction noted, having boxed themselves in, even to be able to fund their own meagre spending plans, having to, then, cover this additional £20 billion would, inevitably mean attacking workers, which they have done.
Even before they won the election, the nature of Blue Labour, as a reactionary, petty-bourgeois nationalist party, antagonistic to the interests of both workers and large-scale capital was clear. They represented a continuation of the worst aspects of the Tories, just in a different coloured set of clothes, most obviously symbolised by their continued adherence to the idea of Brexit.
The Tories have, of course, attacked Blue Labour for having “given” inflation-busting pay rises to “the unions”, nearly every word of which is untrue. First of all, the pay rises the government agreed to were those recommended by independent pay review bodies, which the Tories were failing to implement in order to cover their deficits at workers' expense. The actual cost of that, in the longer-term, was greater than paying up, because of the losses due to strikes and so on. Secondly, with a labour shortage, and workers simply leaving those jobs for higher paid jobs, elsewhere, Blue Labour was left with little alternative, as the pay rises simply amounted to rubber-stamping what was happening in reality. Thirdly, the idea that the pay rises were “inflation-busting” was also untrue, because they are multi-year agreements, which do not even, as an average, cover the inflation over the period involved, let alone make up for the fall in real wages of those workers over many previous years. Fourthly, the pay rises were not given to “unions”, but to workers doing those jobs.
So, the idea that this was Blue Labour, in some way, operating on behalf of workers, rather than attacking them, is false, and simply opportunism from the Tories, in line with the traps they had set for them. That Blue Labour allowed those traps to be set, by refusing to acknowledge, prior to the election, the existence of huge deficits, is just its own opportunism, in trying to avoid the question of the need to raise taxes, for fear of losing votes. Of course, the other option to that, was to address the question of Brexit, and the £40 billion cost to the Exchequer from it, but that would have gone to the heart of the petty-bourgeois nationalist nature of Blue Labour itself.
So, instead, we have had the removal of pensioners Winter Fuel Payments, which hits the poorest pensioners hardest, and we have the disgraceful betrayal of WASPI women that Blue Labour lyingly stood side by side with before the election, much as the Liberals did with Student Fees, prior to the 2010 election. We have also had the continuation of the two-child benefit cap. In addition, we have a continued freeze on income tax thresholds, which have fallen in real terms, significantly, as a result of the high levels of inflation over recent years. That means that income tax on workers wages rises as a result of fiscal drag. Yet, its clear that, even now, the sums do not add up, and Blue Labour will have to come back for further tax rises, and/or cuts in spending, which will result in further attacks on workers.
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