Nothing To Lose But Our Chains

It is astonishing, and yet somehow not, that in 13 years, New Labour never legislated for John Smith's signature policy, namely that employment rights should begin on day one of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked. Ed Miliband should signal once and for all that, unlike his brother, he intends to give us the government that we would have had in those 13 years if Smith had lived, by legislating to create that fitting monument to the Great Man. Places like that consistently out-perform us. Have you ever been to Germany? We have had 30 years of the other way of doing things. Look where it has ended up.

Now that the Government has put on the agenda the deprivation of employment rights for which Tony Blair and David Miliband have always longed, Ed Miliband should renew John Smith's promise, and make his own to build on the statutory right of every worker to join a trade union and to have that trade union recognised for collective bargaining purposes, by giving every trade unionist so recognised the statutory right to take industrial action in pursuit of a legitimate grievance, including strike action, and including solidarity action of a clearly secondary character (such as a work to rule in support of a strike) within a single industry or corporation.

Intimately connected with all of this, he should promise to abolish all remaining vestiges of Compulsory Competitive Tendering, of the capping of councils, and of the power of central government to rule local services ultra vires, as well as to defend council housing wherever tenants or local communities wish to retain it.

We need a permanent body of MPs who could hold him and his successors to those commitments.