Ian Lavery – Class Politics Needed to Defeat the Reform UK Threat
By Ian Lavery MP
I have on numerous occasions given credit to the Leadership of the Labour Party for citing the need to redress the unequal balance of power between workers and employers when explaining the reasons behind the current Employment Rights Bill.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, who has responsibility for this policy area, has said that Trade Unions representing workers need to be given more power to rectify the unfair disadvantages they have had since the Trade Union Acts of the Thatcher era. This is a clear message of the Labour Party acting in the interest of the people it was founded to represent. Unfortunately, it is not one of the Leadership’s primary messages (some even seem a bit embarrassed by it).
The working class of this country know through years of stagnating living standards that the current system is unfair and needs changing. They feel they have no voice and that nobody recognises their frustrations. This is proving to be good politically for the hard right populist Reform Party who articulate working class feelings of disenchantment, whilst dangerously pointing the finger at vulnerable people and those who seek to defend them as being the source of their problems. Reform’s message to the working class is that Labour and its supporters amongst the urban progressives and so called cultural elites only care about immigrants and other minority people; it no longer care about the more longstanding working class communities who had traditionally voted for the Party. There have been a number of recent polls that provide disturbing evidence that this messaging is gaining traction with support for Reform growing rapidly.
The Populist Right use an effectively simple deplorable message. Labour should counter it with an equally straightforward response by declaring that the working class is hurting because the current economic system benefits the super rich who have seen their wealth skyrocket since the financial crisis on 2008-2009 at the expense of rest. Labour should loudly proclaim that its goal is to right this injustice. For instance, Labour should state that the super rich have benefited from Thatcher’s laws that weakened Unions, which even the International Monetary Fund states has led to wage stagnation and household indebtedness, and that the Employment Rights Bill is a first step to putting this right.
The NHS and other public services are on their knees because of decades of low rates of taxes on the very wealthy and Labour’s simple message should be it will rectify this by a Wealth Tax and other similar methods. Labour can prove its support for all working class people by clear messaging and policy implementations based on the politics of class.
With my history of trade union activism, one would not be surprised by my use of this argument, but I am pleased to say that others not usually associated with the Labour Left agree with me. Polly Toynbee, writing in “The Guardian” on 3rd December 2024, urges in the strongest of terms for Labour to attack wealth inequality in order to fund the policies needed to improve the lives of ordinary people. She illustrates the recent grotesque accumulation of wealth by the richest in society gained mostly through inheritance, postulating that taxing that wealth is essential if Labour is to fund the policies required to satisfy the working class demands for fairness.
Toynbee writes that taxing wealth is a good message “if Labour tells that with fiery class war radicalism so that people understand”. Instead, Prime Minister Starmer and the Chancellor say they have a stance that is equally “pro business and pro worker”, which is leaving both sides feeling unsatisfied. Business leaders say Labour’s support for them in weak when raging against the recent increase in the employers’ National Insurance contributions, whilst many working class people point to measures such as the abolition of the pensioners’ Winter Fuel Allowance to build on the perception that Labour no longer cares about them. An unambiguous message that Labour’s primary mission is to rapidly improve all working class lives, regardless if they are in urban communities or in the former deindustrialise Labour heartlands, whilst offering support for business on the condition that workers are treated fairly and that wealth inequality drastically diminishes, would be politically more effective.
Polly Toynbee’s recent article is an indication that there are people in many sections of the Labour Party who understand that Labour must quickly change its message and policies to counter the rise of Reform and that the core of that new message has to be the need to lessen inequality in the UK. Concentrating on a technocratic, managerial approach to Government I fear will fail, opening the door to right wing extremism. Polly is right: “fiery class war radicalism” is always worth a try.
- Ian Lavery is the MP for Blyth & Ashington. You can follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X.
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