We Deserve Better
March 24, 2024
The Tories are toast. I’m not going to rehash the arguments why they cannot win the next General Election. Even in Rochdale where Labour withdrew their candidate, the Tories came third.
So the question isn’t who will win. It’s what happens afterwards.
The cost of living crisis is not temporary. People are still poorer than they were in 2008. 14 years of Conservative austerity has left 7.5 million people waiting for NHS treatment. 3.6 million children in poverty. Small businesses struggle against global corporations. Leisure centres continue to close. Local councils going bankrupt across the country. Devoid of credibility, the Tories are betting the farm on culture wars.
People want a Labour government to be the light at the end of the tunnel. What have the Labour leadership offered? The magic growth bunny. It will hop along, and Britain will boom.
No need to invest in public services. The magic growth bunny will fix the crisis in social care. The sick will walk. Greenhouse gases will chill out.
No need to equalise capital gains with income tax. No need for a 1% wealth tax on people worth more than £10,000,000. No need to stop our energy and water companies channelling billions of our money to overseas tax havens. The magic growth bunny will lay golden eggs. Don’t ask how, that’s just playing into Tory hands. Trust Keir. Keir would never lie to you. It’s all about economic competence, right?
Wrong. If it was, they wouldn’t have blocked me. An incumbent Mayor who’d created over 5,000 permanent jobs, built 2,000 homes, increased training courses from 22,000 to 35,000 year, and run child poverty prevention programmes in over 100 schools. All without a penny on council tax or any borrowing. My economic record had lifelong Tory voters writing to the local paper saying they’d vote for me.
Labour HQ had already decided to block me before I talked to legendary film maker Ken Loach about films. Months earlier, they emailed me denying my automatic right to contact Labour members, unless I promised not to run again as Mayor. There are lots of good people in the Labour Party. But they’re frozen out.
The go-to rationalisation is, “The worst Labour government is better than the best Tory government.” I get the logic. It even makes sense, if you think time stops the day after the general election. But it doesn’t.
Industrial unrest is a response to the arithmetic of your pay packet. When teachers, doctors, nurses, rail workers, posties, firefighters, ambulance drivers, civil servants, council workers and, well, just about everyone else, sees that light at the end of the tunnel is just another train, they won’t be patient.
The danger of short-term thinking is it ignores long-term effects. Austerity was sold as balancing the books: take some pain now, and be better off in future. The reality is that a modern economy depends on effective public services. Or in real life terms, when teachers and nurses need food banks, our kids’ education suffers, people stay sick, and our long term national income stagnates.
A Starmer government that fails to quickly improve lives will till the soil for the far right.
Outside of Westminster elections people are already choosing another option. Independents, Greens, and a slew of local community parties are winning up and down the country.
To paraphrase Trainspotting: Choose life. Choose jobs. Choose NHS workers not too exhausted to work. Choose fair rents. Choose a wealth tax. Choose utilities run in the sustainable interests of the people of Britain, not overseas billionaires.
That’s why I’m backing Green New Deal Rising and We Deserve Better. Farage pulled the Tories to the right, and Labour with them. Someone needs to pull back.
Electing me as North East Mayor on May 2nd to bring public transport under public control, free for everyone 18 and under, will reduce emissions, boost our economy, and reduce inequality.
Even if We Deserve Better candidates win all their target seats, Labour will still form the next Government.
But the sooner we upset the status quo, the sooner we will get a fair voting system, and start to run Britain in the interests of the people who do the work.