Delegates during the first day of the TUC congress (Picture: Socialist Worker)

Keir Starmer said Labour is “going to have to be unpopular” over its decision to snatch winter fuel payments from ten million pensioners.

It certainly was unpopular among delegates at the TUC union federation conference, which began in Brighton on Sunday.

Starmer said Labour MPs should back the move in a key vote on Tuesday night. 

Sophie, an NEU education union delegate, told Socialist Worker that Labour “is focusing on the wrong things”. “It should be focusing on taxing the rich and corporations rather than going for pensioners,” she said. 

“I think this is only going to be the first round of cuts—I can envision more.”

She added, “Labour says the economy is in a bad place after Tory governments, but I feel like that’s an excuse. It’s not prioritising important things such as the cost of living crisis—energy prices are going up and Labour’s just increased the cap on energy bills.

“It’s going to impact workers, not those who have big businesses or inherited money.” 

Sophie argued that Labour “has gone down the wrong path to start off with”. “You’ve heard Keir Starmer say it’s going to be a difficult budget in October,” she said. “But does it need to be difficult? 

“Or is he just pandering to the rich while hurting the working class who are already struggling?” 

Michelle, a PCS union delegate, told Socialist Worker, “In my workplace there are people going to foodbanks who haven’t got enough money to properly feed the kids, who are finding childcare expenses hard to afford.

“You are going to get people who fall outside of the means-tested criteria but are still struggling. It should be a universal payment.” 

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Michelle said she saw parallels between Keir Starmer and former Labour prime minister Tony Blair. “Blair made all these promises but then he was just a watered-down version of Margaret Thatcher,” she said. 

“My fear is that we might have a similar sort of thing. Politics seems to be going in the direction of ‘If we sit in the middle of the road, we’ll get the most votes’. But that’s not what politics should be about.” 

This anger and disappointment among many delegates finds an echo at the top of the unions. 

But there are differences about how to relate to the Labour government. The TUC and wants to work closely with Labour, relishing a “seat at at the table” after 14 years of Tory rule. That means giving Labour the benefit of the doubt based on illusions in “social partnership”—not campaigning for more from Starmer’s government. 

Paul Nowak, the TUC general secretary, gave the most muted criticism of Labour at a press conference on Sunday morning. He did have “real concerns about the cuts to winter fuel allowance” 

But he had begun by repeating Starmer’s excuse, saying, “The government has been left with a really toxic economic legacy by previous Tory governments.”

He didn’t make demands on Labour, but said he hoped it would do the right thing in the end. “I hope that we’ll go into the budget in October with the chancellor setting out what support is going to give to those pensioners,” he said. 

“I don’t want any pensioner going into the winter frightened to turn on the heating. It means in the budget making real the aspiration that those with the broadest shoulders do the heaviest lifting.”

Nowak suggested taxing capital gains—profits from selling shares and property—at the same rate as income. 

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“I don’t see why somebody in a supermarket pays a higher effective rate of tax than someone who derives income from renting flats or from shares,” he said. 

Unite union general secretary Sharon Graham was much more open in her criticism—and made demands on Starmer. She said that it was the “wrong choice” and the government needed to be “big and brave enough” to admit it had made a mistake.

“We think it’s wrong that the government has made a choice to cut the winter fuel allowance,” Graham said.

She argued that Labour is “leaving the very rich and wealth untouched” and called for a wealth tax. 

Tensions between Labour and Unite this early into the Starmer’s government show how little it’s offering working class people. Only a fightback will force Labour to shift. 

PCS general secretary Fran Heathcote said, “I can see a situation where, if Labour continues along the line that it is heading, there will be a real backlash. And that could take the form of industrial action.”

A motion from the PCS union argues that public sector wages have decreased by an average of 1.5 per cent annually since 2011. It calls for a pay restoration to be “a key feature of our campaigning with the new government”

An RMT regional organiser slammed Labour’s move. “The super rich trying to blame teachers getting a 5.5 percent pay rise for pension cuts is sick,” he said. 

He argued that Labour “is robbing one working class person to help another”. “But we can’t let it divide us. We need to fight this Labour government. Not by appealing to a better nature but by calling strikes.”

It will take turning such words into action to hit back at Labour’s pro-boss policies. 

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