Build the socialist opposition

Bea Gardner, Socialist Party National Committee

As the Socialist goes to press, Keir Starmer faced a ‘showdown’ in parliament as the hated cut to the winter fuel payment for pensioners went to a vote.

It is being dubbed as his ‘first political crisis’. 53 Labour MPs didn’t vote with the government.

The government has little regard for the crisis facing the 10 million people who will no longer get the £300 fuel payment from this winter.

The real ‘difficult decision’ being made, is by the millions of older people who were already struggling to pay their bills, now having to calculate which, if any, rooms they can afford to heat.

Starmer is now governing a country with the sixth biggest economy in the world, and 165 billionaires. What does it say about in whose interests Labour is governing, when they decide we can’t afford to heat older people’s homes?

No one is fooled by the crocodile tears of cabinet members lining up to back Starmer’s claim that they ‘have no choice’. Deaths among the elderly fell by 10,000 following the introduction of the Winter Fuel Payment.

When Labour leaders say it is “right to target support to those who need it most”, why don’t they lift millions of children out of poverty by scrapping the two-child benefit cap?

The vast majority of Labour MPs voted as Starmer instructed them, for a policy not even in the party’s manifesto which will throw millions of older people further into financial hardship.

One voted against, risking being suspended like the seven Labour MPs who voted to scrap the two-child benefit cap before the summer recess. Under pressure, the rest either abstained or stayed away.

With Starmer talking to the trade unions about the need for ‘compromise’ and ‘partnership’ with the bosses, the fightback to defend our services and to demand full funding needs to be built. The trade unions should play a central role, leading struggles of workers and in our communities.

Those struggles would be strengthened by a workers’ voice in parliament – a socialist opposition. Jeremy Corbyn and four other anti-war independents have recently formed the ‘Independent Alliance’ parliamentary group. There are those suspended by Starmer’s Labour as well as four Green MPs too.

The trade unions have correctly opposed the winter fuel payment cut. They should appeal to the rebel MPs to act as spokespeople for our causes, to champion working-class interests in parliament. These MPs could act as a mouthpiece for the struggles developing outside parliament in our communities and workplaces, opposing Starmer’s cuts at every opportunity, campaigning for all the services we need and putting forward fighting, socialist policies. And could be an important step along the road towards the new mass party based on the trade unions that workers need.