No Budget for Workers
Rishi Sunak’s Budget has been hailed as groundbreaking, but for workers it meant tax increases not pay rises – and little if anything to tackle the insecurity which the pandemic threatens to make normal.
4 Articles by:
Howard Beckett is assistant general secretary of Unite the union, responsible for politics and legal affairs. He is also Unite's representative on the Labour Party's National Executive Committee (NEC).
Rishi Sunak’s Budget has been hailed as groundbreaking, but for workers it meant tax increases not pay rises – and little if anything to tackle the insecurity which the pandemic threatens to make normal.
At a time when Keir Starmer could have united the Labour Party around a bold socialist response to the pandemic crisis, he is instead waging a factional campaign – with disastrous results.
Fundamental changes to how members’ representatives are elected in the Labour Party should be made by conference – not behind closed doors in this week’s NEC meeting.
Now is the time for the labour movement to lay down the gauntlet to the political class with a clear set of economic and social demands that can respond to this historic crisis, argues Howard Beckett.