Labour has always come to power with a bold vision and a set of “big ideas” that, once enacted in government, have stood the test of time. As we stand on the threshold of a chance to win the next general election, ending the modern-day scourge of in-work poverty must be Labour’s next big mission in office.
In postwar Britain, with Clement Attlee’s Labour government, that mission was the delivery of free universal healthcare, with the introduction of the NHS by that great socialist Aneurin Bevan.
Harold Wilson’s Labour governments in the 1960s and 1970s presided over the introduction of comprehensive education, the launch of the Open University, pioneered by Jennie Lee, and the Equal Pay Act for women, championed by Barbara Castle.
Similarly, Labour’s election in 1997 saw the introduction of a national minimum wage, and an end to the diabolical practice of rogue employers paying workers as little as £2 an hour during the Margaret Thatcher and John Major eras.
Gordon Brown’s work as chancellor in lifting 1 million children out of poverty, and Labour’s rescue plan for the NHS in the late 1990s, after nearly two decades of Tory neglect, loom large from our last period in government.
For a Labour government to end in-work poverty during its first full term would rank alongside those historical achievements by our party in power.
At the last general election, I was proud to stand on a manifesto pledge to end in-work poverty within five years in office. It’s the biggest sadness of my political life that Labour was not elected, and therefore unable to eradicate poverty among those struggling on low pay.
By the time Labour unveiled the policy in the summer of 2019, 4 million British workers were recorded as living in poverty. More than three years on, living standards, wages and incomes have been absolutely battered by the Covid pandemic and the Tories’ cost of living crisis. So much for their levelling up pledge to voters.
It’s now commonplace to see people in work clothes queueing at food banks at the end of their day’s shift, due to their wages not being enough to even afford the basics. Nurses, firefighters, rail workers, teachers and postal workers are among those routinely forced to rely on the generosity of food bank donors and volunteers from charities and faith groups.
Yet the abject response of this Tory government is to unleash more austerity on public services that are already cut to the bone, and to further hold down the wages of hard-pressed workers. This multimillionaire prime minister and his similarly wealthy chancellor are making poverty-stricken families pay for the crisis caused by the Tory government’s disastrous mini-budget.
Moreover, the Tories are deliberately picking a fight with trade unions representing the key workers who were Britain’s Covid heroes by fiercely resisting entirely reasonable pay claims. There is genuine desperation out there among these workers who can’t afford the basics of food, clothing, housing and privatised utility bill payments.
That’s why rail, postal and education workers have gone on strike, and that’s why as a Labour MP I’ve been proud to stand in solidarity on the picket line with them. I’ll support the nurses in their action later this month, and also midwives, ambulance workers, paramedics and firefighters, if they vote in favour of strike action too.
There’s palpable and highly justified anger among voters about working people living in poverty. It’s that anger that could see the Tories evicted from office, and Labour swept to power. Once in power, ending in-work poverty in five years is entirely realistic by increasing the living wage, driving the creation of well-paid quality jobs, extending free public services and providing a strong social safety net.
No two general elections are ever the same, and it’s absolutely right that Labour constantly updates and adapts its offer to the electorate; but, sadly, in two years’ time I have little hope of the Conservative government fixing its own mess.
Rebecca Long-Bailey is the Labour MP for Salford and Eccles, and was shadow secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy from 2017 to 2020
