On 16 and 17 January, the Tories could lose Commons votes on their Bill trying to save their “send them to Rwanda” asylum policy. Even if they win, they have a battle to work the bIll, which tries to instruct courts Rwanda must be reckoned safe even if it is not.
From 30 January, train drivers are striking. As yet, the government and the Train Operating Companies (TOCs) hesitate about deploying the new Minimum Service Law, which allows for the TOCs to issue “work notices” instructing drivers to turn up sufficiently for 40% service, and to get the whole strike ruled unlawful unless the union tells members to comply.
Suella Braverman as Home Secretary tried to get the big Gaza ceasefire protests banned, but they continue big. Just Stop Oil (JSO) has people in jail, on sentences or remanded for defying bail conditions, but only a small fraction of the 670 JSO people arrested last November alone. The Public Order Act and the Police Act have not quelled protest.
That the Tories are likely to lose the coming general election does not make them as “weak” as some of us on the left say. They have pushed through the Minimum Service Law, the Public Order Act, and the Illegal Migration Act. They have resisted public service pay strikes more stubbornly than most private bosses have resisted wage demands.
They stonewall on the funds needed to revive the NHS and other public services. They are forcing many local councils into “section 114”, legal declarations that they can’t balance their books which legally entail further big cuts.
They have pushed Labour into conformity, offering only bland talk of “growth” and “reform”, and mostly just criticising the Tories over “competence” and “chaos”.
The labour movement can push back. The Tories are not so strong as to be able to prevent that.
The job of socialists is to inspire that push-back with a positive agenda:
• Tax the rich
• Take the utilities into public ownership under democratic control; reverse privatisation in the NHS
• Restore public services
• Take the whole energy industry into public ownership under democratic control; switch from fossil-fuels to renewables and nuclear; electrify everything
• Reassert the right to protest and strike, repealing restrictions back to the 1986 Public Order Act and anti-union laws back to the Thatcher era
• Welcome refugees, open borders.