Editorial of the Socialist issue 1328
“Sir Keir Starmer hopes he has averted the biggest rebellion of his premiership by agreeing to dilute his controversial welfare reforms, but he will be left counting the political and financial costs for years to come.” So began the Financial Times’ reporting of the Labour leadership’s climbdown over its hated policy of removing access to disability benefits from hundreds of thousands in the face of a rebellion by 123 Labour MPs.
But Starmer’s ‘hopes’ that he’s dodged rebellion may still be dashed. The changes expected to be announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall would still mean removing Personal Independence Payments (PIP) and other disability benefits from future claimants – causing continued alarm for Labour MPs that they could lose their Parliamentary seats at future elections in the face of mass public anger.
Rebellion
All of a sudden, the government’s much-lauded majority achieved at the general election a year ago is looking extremely fragile. Latter-day Tory government-style rebellions, crunch votes, and backbench sniping at government leadership are back in the press. An unpleasant one year anniversary present for Starmer and Rachel Reeves after a rocky honeymoon!
The reality however is that this latest round of crisis for the Labour government, like the many rounds of crisis for the Tories before they were kicked out of office last July, is rooted in the deep crisis of British capitalism in whose interests they seek to govern. In an interview with the Observer, titled “the private trials of Keir Starmer”, Starmer tries to blame the crisis on a lack of “constructive dialogue” with backbench MPs, and being too focused on defending British capitalism’s interests in the midst of the unfolding Middle East crisis.
But this episode is by no means down to individual political miscalculation. It’s a reflection of the policies demanded by British capitalism – determined to make the working class pay for terminal low economic growth and an overreliance on foreign capital.
Neither is the scale of the rebellion of Labour MPs and the government’s subsequent climbdown motivated by concern for the welfare of disabled people. It was this government that tried to carry through the attack in the first place!
Why are so many Labour MPs prepared to vote for the remaining attacks which will leave future disability claimants unable to claim vital support? If the remaining ‘reforms’ are so unpopular, why not just scrap them altogether?
The answer to that last question is, for the same reason the government announced the attack in the first place – to attempt to address the crisis of British capitalism by making the majority in society shoulder the burden. Reeves’s original £5 billion cut to disability benefits was intended to help the government stay within its self-imposed ‘fiscal rules’, seeking to maintain the confidence of international markets to buy up British government debt.
Whatever the outcome of the vote in Parliament, due to take place just hours after the Socialist goes to press, more economic and political crisis is in store for the government, potentially of a more serious order. While war rages in the Middle East and the 90-day pause on Trump’s liberation day tariffs approaches its end, British capitalism can be plunged into deeper economic and financial storms. With Starmer’s Labour at the helm, this will mean more attacks to come against workers and young people.
Trade union lead
The workers’ movement now urgently needs to prepare the fightback against the devastating cutbacks to disability benefits which remain on the table, as well as Labour austerity in local government, planned ‘reforms’ (Labour language for cuts and privatisation) to the NHS and more.
The government’s climbdown has been forced by mass working-class outrage at the attacks, including the protests organised by disability welfare activists around the country following the government’s green paper announcement – with MPs looking towards potential future election defeats and moving to try and secure their positions in Parliament. Workers and young people everywhere can draw confidence from this debacle that this pro-capitalist government – like the Tory government before it – can be defeated.
But this defeat has been inflicted without barely a finger being lifted by almost all of the leaders of the trade union movement. During the cost-of-living crisis, the strike wave forced concessions on pay offers from a Tory government which, unlike Labour currently, was not split on the issue but unanimous in its imposition of below-inflation pay rises on millions of workers. Coordinated strike action defeated the Tories.
This fresh round of crisis for Labour is a huge opportunity for our movement to go on the offensive. What’s needed now is for the trade union movement to take the lead in the fightback against all the attacks of this government.
NSSN conference
The NSSN conference in London on Saturday 5 July is going to bring together workers in disputes from across the country – including crucially representatives of the striking Birmingham bin workers in Unite – to discuss how the trade unions can stand up industrially to Labour austerity. Part of this will be campaigning for the TUC (Trades Union Congress) to organise a weekend demonstration against Labour austerity as a launchpad for coordinated national trade union action.
This demo should be organised around a socialist programme of demands that brings together the needs of the different sections of the working class and cuts across the attempts in the government attacks to scapegoat disabled people as a drain on the economy. That requires discussion and debate among the trade unions, the movement of disabled workers, carers’ organisations, etc, and could include living benefits for all who need them, workplace organisation to win the adjustments needed, taking the wealth off the super-rich 1%, and for an end to austerity.
Again, the lack of a political voice for the trade union movement and the working class as a whole is brought into sharp relief by this week’s events. 123 Labour MPs tabled the amendment which would have made the government’s legislation unworkable, by and large trying to save their own skins while leaving brutal attacks in the pipeline.
Why don’t we have MPs who table amendments and legislation representing what workers and young people need? MPs who, accountable to the trade union movement which represents workers of all different backgrounds, put forward amendments and legislation hashed out by workers, young people, disabled activists and so on. Urgent discussions need to be had in the trade union movement to discuss how we can fight for such a political voice.
