April 1 will see a 6.7% rise in the minimum wage that will put extra cash in the pockets of an estimated 1.9 million low-paid workers under a new Labour drive to increase wages
April 1 is no fools’ day for low paid workers, who will tomorrow earn a 6.7% rise in the minimum wage to £12.21 an hour, worth £1,400 a year to full-timers. The hike will put extra cash into the pockets of an estimated 1.9 million low-paid grafters under a Labour drive to make work pay.
We can expect ministers to make a big deal of it, which they should. Because to date Keir Starmer and his team have been absolutely lousy at selling worthwhile achievements. New job laws will be the best for a generation, protecting employees from exploitation by bad bosses.
Pay packets are growing faster than prices and are projected to continue doing so over the next five years, albeit at a slower pace. Interest rates have been cut three times since the general election in July and should continue to fall.
Fresh money is beginning to revive the ailing NHS, with waiting lists falling in each of the past five months. More house building and improved rights for renters should mean people are more likely to find and keep a roof over their head.
School breakfast clubs and, eventually, extra teachers will enhance life and learning for kids. A return to public ownership is the route to improved rail services after the privatisation great train robbery made Ronnie Biggs look as benign as Thomas the Tank Engine.
Hereditary peers are finally to be sent packing from the House of Lords, aristos no longer voting on laws the common people must obey. I am no naively enthusiastic Pollyanna and rage against the winter fuel allowance cut, Waspi women betrayal and a callous benefit axe plunging another 300,000 people, 50,000 of them children, into poverty.
David Cameron was forced into a £4.4billion PIP disability cuts u-turn in 2016, and the resentment on the Labour benches against Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Liz Kendall will be poisonous if MPs are whipped into kicking away the crutches for society’s most vulnerable.
One prominent rebel told me he knows they cannot win a Westminster vote, but they are winning the public and political argument. And a government minister has revealed that dozens of Labour members have already quit her local party over the welfare scythe.
Labour’s best strategy would be to reverse their kamikaze policies, remembering who and what the party is supposed to represent.
But for balance Starmer, shaking up his spin machine, must also start communicating effectively the good things his government is doing.
Or they will be quickly buried by the bad things… with no way back.
Unflappable and slowly getting to grips with a migration mess left by the Tories, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s experience makes her one of Starmer’s most effective ministers.
She’s in the dog house, but Parliamentary officials wrongly advising Taiwo Owatemi to register £900 “dog rent” for her cockapoo Bella on her expenses raises questions about how many more MPs are claiming for pooches. We should be told.
Nigel Farage singled me out for a dig in a room of political journalists. Reform winning a spectacular election victory would, he said, delight many and upset me. True.
But I bet you a tenner, Nige, that you will be the one distressed — because whatever else happens, I am confident you will never be PM.