‘Right-wing moaners want key workers to play humble Oliver Twist’

Columnist Kevin Maguire says that denouncing the Labour government as being in the unions’ pocket, simply for clearing up a Tory mess, is politics for the ignorant

It did not take long, of course, for the inner Mr Bumble to come out in many Conservatives, right-whingers, reactionaries and their media cheerleaders.

When they smear as greedy rogues our junior doctors and train drivers – who not so very long ago they clapped as key workers – it is because they want them to play humble Oliver Twist, subsisting on thin gruel in the workhouse. And denouncing the Labour government as being in the unions’ pocket, simply for clearing up a Tory mess, is politics for the ignorant. Facts never bother Cons, right-whingers, reactionaries and their Fleet Street mouthpieces. But for the record, the British Medical Association, representing England’s junior docs, is not affiliated with Labour or any political party.

The barrage of abuse directed at Labour ministers isn’t really about 22% over two years for the medics, or increases worth around 15% over five years for train drivers, which is below that timeline’s inflation. What we’re witnessing is the extreme anti-trade union hostility of ideological Trumpists, who despise organised labour.

Working people banding together to give themselves individual and collective clout terrifies those who seek to divide and rule. Whether it is worker v worker, working v workless, workers v migrants and refugees, all they seek to do is protect their own power, privileges and wealth.

For this elite, every worker is supposed to know his or her station in life and not get above it, particularly Aslef members in train cabs. The politics of envy among Cons, right-whingers, reactionaries and their media tribunes means any worker demanding a fair wage is fair game.

Strike and they are automatically scapegoated, blamed for everything wrong in the country. The outrage of the reactionaries grows as their impotence becomes clearer, the popularity of doctors and nurses’ strikes under the dumped Tory regime illustrating most people aren’t hostile to unions – even though too often they don’t join.

Better wages boost living standards – along with, incidentally, state pensions under the triple lock. Keir Starmer is refreshingly union-friendly, free of Tony Blair’s hang-ups.

New, improved employment rights are promised. The Tory mob will scream against those too. These shrieking Mr Bumbles are stuck in the Dickensian past, unable to escape the shackles of their own doomed prejudice. Paying people what they’re worth and operating public services without disruption deserves to be the Labour way forward.