After the Tories left us with the lowest investment in G7 countries, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham says the time is now to invest in Britain and create a viable future for industry
The last Tory government left the country in a mess. Of that there is no doubt. Record NHS waiting lists, nowhere near enough teachers, crumbling infrastructure, millions without a home of their own and record energy prices. A catalogue of misery.
But that government is gone and it’s now Labour’s job, whether fairly or not, to pick up the pieces and deliver the change that was promised. Progress has been made. At long last the old fiscal rules have been binned to free up more cash, but now better choices need to happen. Starting with serious public investment to mend our broken services and economy.
The Tories left us with the lowest investment rate in the G7 and no industrial strategy whatsoever. Two facts that have led to yet more crises within our shrinking industrial base.
In Grangemouth, Scotland’s last oil refinery has been put on the chopping block by a combination of the Chinese state and a British oligarch. A man more interested in football stadiums than national infrastructure. To invest in Britain, we need capital spending now and government intervention. There is nothing wrong with stepping in when the private sector fails.
The dogma of “private good, public bad” that has captured our politicians for generations, is out of date. We can’t leave everything to corporations. They will always put shareholders first, not communities or our national security. That’s why it is time for change. It’s time to back Britain.
In 1964, Harold Wilson’s Labour government wanted to deliver growth through supporting new industries – using what he called “the white heat of technology”. But he didn’t just leave it to the private sector, Wilson understood that the role of government was to ensure that people as well as profits, stood to gain from change.
His government brought in training boards, expanded technical education and introduced the Open University. An active industrial plan was developed so workers would benefit. It was far from perfect, but it was a strategy with money and vision behind it.
And that is what Labour needs to do today. We can’t have a situation where hard-wired net zero commitments are not matched by jobs, planning or cash. Without a real industrial strategy, tens of thousands of jobs will be lost – 30,000 jobs in the North Sea alone.
Do we really want to be ever more reliant on overseas manufacturing and energy firms to supply our basic needs?
The challenge for Labour is to develop a real plan for the future of industry. There have been positive steps, like committing £1billion for carbon capture, developing critical 10-year budgets for research and development institutions, and promising to speed up the roll-out of the charging network needed for electric vehicles.
But it’s now time to supercharge that change. It’s time to make very different choices.
Defending our homegrown talent
Tens of thousands of decent, well-paid jobs in this country depend on our defence industry. With Labour’s commitment to raising defence spending to 2.5% of GDP, we want to see real investment here – in Britain. It does matter where things are made.
If we choose to give contracts out to companies overseas, then all Labour will end up delivering is a hollowed-out skills base and redundancies. And all while making our defence industry less secure. Labour needs to commit to British-built aircraft, the Typhoon, the New Medium Lift Helicopter (NMH) contract, and to securing multi-year funding for the Tempest programme. Jobs and security go together.
PM must stop picking pensioner pockets
When the cut to winter fuel payments was originally proposed by Theresa May, Labour called it the “single biggest attack on pensioners in a generation in our country”. In total, around two million in poverty will now lose the payment under Labour.
These include low-income pensioners just above the £220 threshold, and those who can’t avoid high energy usage because of disability or illness. With the cost of energy set to go up again, this is no time to rob Peter to pay Paul. Not when there is a massive untapped wealth in Britain. The 50 richest families in Britain own a combined £500billion in wealth – the same as half the UK population. A 1% wealth tax on the richest 1% would raise £25billion.
That sum dwarfs the £1.5billion Labour hopes to raise by picking the pockets of pensioners. The party needs to remember whose side it is on. With both the winter fuel and the decision not to compensate the Waspi women, it is on totally the wrong side.
Farage looms if Labour falls short
Last week’s tracker poll put Reform at 22%, only a few points behind Labour, and confirmed what most of us already know. Nigel Farage will be a threat to Labour at the next election. The only question that remains, is how big a threat will Reform be? Particularly in Labour heartlands?
Farage may be selling snake oil but pointing that out won’t be enough to remove his appeal. The only answer lies in developing a real alternative for workers. A political plan that deals with the bread-and-butter issues that matter to people. Jam tomorrow won’t be trusted. Labour needs to deliver and fast.
Fatcats put profit before good service
We’ve had enough of sewage in our rivers and mega profits in the boardroom. Last week, Thames Water announced half-yearly profits of nearly £250million – up by 20%. At the same time the CEO defended the top brass getting £770,000 in bonuses, while the firm pumped out even more sewage and looks set to hike customer bills by an eye-watering 59%.
Most people can see this is not working. How did we expect a private firm to deal with our water industry? Did we really think they would put investment before profits? None of this should be a surprise. It’s just an example of one of the more madcap privatisations of the last 40 years. Nationalisation is not a dirty word, but decimating our infrastructure should be.
Unsurprisingly, few countries have flogged off their water and hardly any of them leave their water supply in the hands of overseas states. But that is the absurd situation we find ourselves in, with the ultimate -shareholders of Thames Water including the China Investment Corporation.
We have sold the family silver. Let’s get it back and own our future again.
