‘Parallel universe’

Prime minister Theresa May closed the Tory Party Conference with a speech today (October 4) that symbolised the continued failings of a party at the end of its tether.

May struggled to get through her speech amid a prank, a persistent cough and the slogan behind her on stage falling apart, but it was the content of her speech that Unite general secretary Len McCluskey said “sorely over-promised and seriously under-delivered.”

“Theresa May spoke of a ‘British dream’, of opportunity and fairness down the generations,” McCluskey noted.”The truth is that her party’s policies have meant that millions of people are living in a Tory nightmare of ever-rising living costs and ever-shrinking incomes,” he added.

“Her claims to stand up to ‘vested interests’ will be news to those of us who saw her shrink time and again from tackling fat cat pay and abusive zero hours contracts.

“Yet again, a Tory prime minster has praised our NHS and emergency heroes, but still cannot see fit to end the pay cap that has made them thousands of pounds poorer.”

Indeed, amid a mounting public outcry, the government announced last month that it would ease pay restraint in the public sector, but has so far only pledged a pay rise to police and prison officers — leaving the health staff and other emergency workers she praised in her speech in continued limbo.

McCluskey slammed the way May trumpeted so-called “Conservative compassion” at a time when food bank use is at an all-time high. What’s more, the Tories this week have pledged to continue their rollout of Universal Credit, which has been beset with failures and have left families for weeks — and in some cases months — out of pocket, unable to pay their rent or put food on the table.

This, McCluskey said,  “simply confirms a Tory party existing in a parallel universe.”

The Unite general secretary noted that “jaws will have hit the floor” when May claimed in her speech that it was the Tories who secured justice for the victims of Hillsborough.

“The people who have been fighting for justice for the 96 are the people of Liverpool, with little or no help from the Tory party,” McCluskey said.

One of the few new pledges announced in the prime minister’s speech was a housebuilding programme — but the devil was in the details and May gave very few. She pledged ÂŁ2bn in extra investment for ‘affordable housing’ that councils and housing associations can bid for to “provide certainty over future rent levels”.

But following the speech, May’s team in a press huddle confirmed what this would actually entail: only 25,000 new social homes over five years, embarrassingly short of the figure needed to keep up with skyrocketing demand — at least 240,000 new homes each year according to Unite.

McCluskey said that while more money to build more affordable housing is welcome, he said “the sum announced today is a long way short of what is urgently needed to address the crisis. It doesn’t even replace the funding Osborne slashed in 2010, which did so much to cause rents to spiral and super-charge the shortage.”

McCluskey went on to say that the while the prime minister may have apologised to the Tories for her electoral failure, “it is to the people of this country – exhausted by austerity and tired of Tory failure – to whom she should really be saying sorry.

“The prime minister is right about one thing though: Britain can do better than this,” he added. “Labour will reverse the Tories’ tired, failing approach to build a better and fairer Britain.

“With the Tories it is more senseless austerity, a stagnant economy where big business profits on the backs of low-paid workers, and a party that squabbles over Brexit while workers’ jobs and rights are placed in peril.”

“This is now about the best future for the country and the people of our country,” McCluskey affirmed. “Only Labour can act in the national, not narrow party interest.  And only Labour can deliver for the many, not the few.”