Politics

Billions for Boris Johnson's Brexit brinksmanship should be spent on the basics


When I was summoned to Downing Street to see the last Prime Minister, I had a central message on Brexit: no Brexit will be successful unless you tackle the underlying reasons why people voted to leave in the first place.

The last PM didn’t learn that lesson, and the current one couldn’t figure it out if it smacked him over the head.

And now the Treasury – who can’t free up money for the basics – is planning to waste billions preparing for Boris Johnson’s reckless Brexit brinksmanship.

It’s needless, and it’s based on Tory Party divisions not the needs of working people.

People in working class communities aren’t without ambition for themselves, their families and their communities but this important new report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report shows how hard the system is making it for low income workers.

GMB General Secretary Tim Roache with our Mirror Chicken

Life is too hard for too many people, with more working people and families living in poverty than ever before. It’s astounding and utterly heart-breaking in a country like ours that people who work full time are going to food banks; that kids are going hungry in the school holidays without their free school meals.

I hear this from GMB members and the experiences I listen to whether from their workplace, families or the local communities they are active in.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Political choice after political choice has made it this way, so no wonder many people are not confident politics can change things for the better.

The thing is, most of what people want is common sense to anyone who has lived a ‘real life’. If you pay people enough to live a decent life on, then they’ll spend money in their local shops (most of us don’t off shore money to tax haven bank accounts).


If you’re sick you should be treated. Everyone should have a roof over their heads and our streets should be safe. When you’re down on your luck you should be given a helping hand.

Our young people are more likely to succeed if they have a good education, supported and valued teachers and school support staff, if they have opportunities for decent jobs, apprenticeships and university.

And at the end of our lives, everyone should be treated with dignity and care. Too many senior politicians, especially in the Tory Party, haven’t lived a life where they have to concern themselves with such things – when you have enough money, and there’s an NHS waiting list you can just pay for private care. Laid off? It’s fine, plenty in the trust fund.

Maybe, just maybe those who already have vast amounts of wealth should be made to help out the rest of the population whose backs they’ve made they’re money on.

Look at Amazon – Jeff Bezos is literally the richest man in the world. He has warehouses in the Midlands where workers leave in ambulances and have to urinate in plastic bottles because their targets are so impossible they don’t have time to walk to the toilet. Is that the sort of world we want?


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It seems like every week now we have skilled workers’ jobs at threat – from shipyards, to steel and across manufacturing – people are seeing long established industries, on which communities were once built, close with nothing to replace them but low pay and insecurity.

If politicians do not address the everyday worries of large swathes of the public – or if the outcome of Brexit is to makes things worse, not better for working people then politics itself will be in peril.

We need to rebuild the UK with practical plans addressing people’s real concerns.

Working people throughout the country are crying out for hope and change. This report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation should keep politicians on their toes – and rightly so. GMB will be at the forefront of that fight for fairer deal for working people who contribute so much and don’t get enough back.





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