'Starmer should pay close attention to TUC congress and bold, popular tax plans'

10 September 2023 , 20:14

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Keir Starmer will be expecting some passionate but constructive opposition from union leaders this week (Image: Getty Images)

If it's bold, radical plans you’re favouring to build a better, fairer, decent, vibrant and prosperous Britain, then heed this week’s TUC annual Congress.

Trade union brothers and sisters in Liverpool will promote decisive solutions that many would dearly love Labour to embrace. The surge in strikes is working Britain fighting back against squeezed living standards when another world is possible. It doesn’t have to be decline, doom and despair – the choices exist to revive Britain.

Take the wealth tax, which TUC chief Paul Nowak says could deliver £10.4billion for public services by requiring 140,000 loaded individuals, the richest 0.3% worth in excess of £3million each – excluding pensions – to contribute a modest levy. Keir Starmer and Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves are having none of it, alas, despite polling finding over six in 10 back the move, including just over half of 2019 Tory voters.

How about equalising Capital Gains Tax with Income Tax so landlords, speculators and bankers no longer pay lower rates than plumbers, electricians and white van drivers. That would raise upwards of £12billion and is favoured by three in four, including more than two-thirds of 2019 Tories. Good luck to Tories who worship the gilded elite, kneeling before them with glittery gifts, as only 4% think wealthy people should pay less tax.

Starmer’s backtracked on his capital gains vow and Reeves ditched wealth taxes, so no wonder both will be accused of not being straight over where money will come from to transform lives and public services.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade

Paul Nowak, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (PA)

Economic growth is a necessity, as the pair argue, but so are fairer taxes. Condemning incompetent, useless Tories is the easy bit. Painting a vivid, credible and hopeful alternative is missing. Yet undeniably the single, most significant advance for working people and trade union members would be a Labour government. Publicly or privately, union heads I meet readily acknowledge this.

Starmer’s the turn at this week’s TUC private dinner and his deputy, Angela Rayner, speaks to the representatives of grafters from shop and factory workers to nurses and teachers via train drivers and posties. Unions are Labour’s best, truest friends and a significant affiliated force are part of the fabric of the party.

By comparison, bosses in record numbers buying £2,520 tickets for access to Starmer and Reeves at next month’s Labour conference, also on Merseyside, are fair-weather friends. Sold-out notices and waiting lists signal boardroom Britain’s beating a path to power, lobbyists sensing a changing of the Westminster guard plotting to invest time and money to neuter Labour’s progressive instincts for their own self-interest.

Union chiefs will be critical, often noisy and punchy, but that’s healthy for Labour’s political leadership, democracy and the country when they are tribunes of Britain’s workers. Bosses bearing gifts are in it for themselves, as always. The TUC speaking with confident voice gives Britain hope.

Kevin Maguire