By Steve McKenzie – Unite Community member
The election results have been a complete and utter disaster for Labour. A fourteen and a half thousand majority was thrown away as they lost the Runcorn parliamentary by election to Reform UK. This comes as no surprise given the appalling performance of the Labour government, that was elected less than a year ago.
Instead of using their landslide victory at the general election to introduce measures that benefited the working class the Starmer/Reeves leadership have done precisely the opposite.
They refused to lift the two child benefit cap, condemning hundreds of thousands of children to continuing poverty. They cut the winter fuel allowance leaving many pensioners with the choice of heating or eating. They betrayed the WASPI women denying them compensation for the non-payment of pension to which they were entitled. They are attacking the disabled with their outrageous proposals to cut PIP payments.
They have done nothing to stop or even curb private companies from bleeding the health service dry, as the NHS is systematically run down. They are ideologically and financially wedded to private healthcare firms and fiddle while the NHS burns and Britain moves ever closer to a US style healthcare system based on ability to pay.
They refuse to renationalise the water industry as private companies continue to increase bills at the same time as they pour raw sewage into our rivers, lakes and coastal waters. Local authorities are starved of cash. Litter strewn streets, the homeless, boarded up shops and potholes are features of today’s run down Britain.
In the local council elections, Labour lost two-thirds of the seats they were defending, mainly in shire counties all over England – and that was from a 2021 base which was already a terrible set of election result, which almost led to Keir Starmer resigning. Labour are reduced to just 4 councillors out of 98 in County Durham, a council which it controlled for 100 years up to 2021. Reform won 65 councillors and now control the council.
Even where it clung on, in three mayoralty elections, its share of the vote collapsed. It was only saved by the opposition to it being split in our weird electoral system.
The Tories were humiliated and defeated even more so than Labour. They lost 676 council seats and control of 16 councils. In Kent alone they lost 57 councillors in one night.
The right wing populist Reform UK party are the main beneficiaries and are clearly the winners in these elections, by a country mile. Reform won 677 council seats, gained control of 10 councils and won 2 mayoralties.
Reform offers nothing for working people
While promising change, in reality Reform offers nothing, and once again the working class are being led up the garden path. Despite the populist rhetoric Farage and Reform UK will do nothing for working people in Britain.
A closer look at their policies will reveal that they want to make the NHS an insurance based system. A health service based on the ability to pay. They do not want to resolve the crisis in the water industry by bringing it back under government control. They have no plans to ensure that local councils are properly funded.
They offer nothing but bigotry and blame, attacking migrants for workers economic problems when it is clearly the impoverishment created by a grotesquely unequal society in which wealth is siphoned off by the people they really represent – the rich elite.
Unless Starmer and Reeves are removed and Labour’s pro-business policies are reversed, this could be the last Labour government for a long time, or even full stop.
We are witnessing fundamental political changes taking place. All the indications are that the tweedle-dee and tweedle-dumb domination of the Tories and Labour parties dominating the democratic facade in Parliament is coming to an end.
It certainly looks like coalition government is a distinct possibility at the next general election. A weak coalition government reflects a weak economy.
Therefore it is very significant that the same big business puppeteers will still be pulling the politicians’ strings in Parliament whatever happens.
[featured image comes from Labour List]
