"Jamie Driscoll is an excellent Mayor who works cross-party," said Bim Afolami on Politics Live. Of course, Afolami also suggested that the four-day week would result in lower productivity, but he just needs to talk more to Jamie. 25 years ago, and even a lot more recently than that, the four-day week was advocated only by the Socialist Labour Party of Arthur Scargill. And the working class voted to leave the EU. That used to be dismissed as Scargillite madness, too. Like support for a British coal industry, support that the Right is now affecting to have invented. Other than the 85-year-old Scargill, the most prominent figure in the SLP is Chris Williamson, of whom more anon.
Both the four-day week, and the working-class rising that was Brexit, are being dismissed by the people who are back running the Labour Party. Yet my trade union, Unite, has invited Keir Starmer to address our Policy Conference next month, even as he is refusing to support strikes, even as he is proposing to ban new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, and even as he is purging our members from the longlists for Labour parliamentary candidacies. There would be none of this if I were General Secretary. There would be none of a lot of things if I were General Secretary. Join Unite Community here.
And when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.
To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not. It was a coalition with the Conservatives that secured the Leadership of Derby City Council for Chris Williamson. "Jamie Driscoll is an excellent Mayor who works cross-party," says Bim Afolami. We could all do that. So we must.
How serious are you about going for General Secretary?
ReplyDeleteIn principle, completely.
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