Sunday, January 08, 2023
The anti-democratic instinct at the heart of this Tory Government
According to the Guardian leaked government emails have revealed that Rishi Sunak considered banning thousands of workers from joining a union, in proposals that have been described as potentially the “biggest attack on workers’ rights and freedoms” for decades:
The messages, shared between senior civil servants and seen by the Observer, reveal that the prime minister contemplated banning Border Force (BF) staff from trade union membership under its anti-strike legislation announced last Thursday.
Union leaders fear the extreme measures – not even known to be under consideration until now – could have also been considered for other sectors, theoretically leading to more than a million workers banned from joining unions.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “These emails reveal that while the government publicly is saying: ‘We want to resolve the dispute’, behind the scenes they were preparing the biggest attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms that we would have seen in this country for generations.”
Apparently, the most extreme model – banning workers from trade union membership – was rejected only because it might “be difficult to justify” because the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed UK workers the right to join a union.
The messages, shared between senior civil servants and seen by the Observer, reveal that the prime minister contemplated banning Border Force (BF) staff from trade union membership under its anti-strike legislation announced last Thursday.
Union leaders fear the extreme measures – not even known to be under consideration until now – could have also been considered for other sectors, theoretically leading to more than a million workers banned from joining unions.
Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union, said: “These emails reveal that while the government publicly is saying: ‘We want to resolve the dispute’, behind the scenes they were preparing the biggest attacks on fundamental rights and freedoms that we would have seen in this country for generations.”
Apparently, the most extreme model – banning workers from trade union membership – was rejected only because it might “be difficult to justify” because the European Convention on Human Rights guaranteed UK workers the right to join a union.
Either way both that proposal and the one they are going with - enforcing “minimum service levels” in public sectors such as the NHS, with employers able to sue unions and sack staff if minimum standards are not met- amount to a fundamental attack on democratic values taking us back to Victorian times.
It is also worth considering the conclusions drawn by Jonathan Freedland in yesterday's Guardian in judging exactly where this government is at as it flounders in the face of its own incompetence. He draws comparisons between the Trumpian disorder seen in the US Congress' attempt to elect a speaker, and the post-Brexit Tory Party:
In the UK, it looks different: we have a prime minister in Rishi Sunak whose pitch is technocratic competence. But that should not conceal two things.
First, the post-2016 Tory party delivered just as much parliamentary turmoil and intra-party division as McCarthy and co served up this week. Whether it was the Commons gridlock of the two years preceding the 2019 election or the psychodrama of the three years after it, Brexit-era Conservatism has proved every bit as unhinged as Trump-era Republicanism. When it comes to burn-it-all-down politics, the Republicans’ craziest wing are mere novices compared with a master arsonist such as Liz Truss. The US and UK are simply at different points in the cycle.
Second, even with Sunak in charge, and though painted in less vivid colours, Brexit-era Toryism is just as paralysed as its sister movement in the US. The five-point plan unveiled in the PM’s new year address consisted mostly of the basics of state administration – growing the economy, managing inflation – rather than anything amounting to a political programme.
And that’s chiefly because his party, like the Republicans, cannot agree among themselves. Consider how much Sunak has had to drop, under pressure from assorted rebels. Whether it was reform of the planning system, the manifesto commitment to build 300,000 new houses a year or the perennial pledge to grasp the nettle of social care, Sunak has had to back away from tasks that are essential for the wellbeing of the country. True, he has avoided the farcical scenes that played out this week on Capitol Hill, but that’s only because he has preferred to preserve the veneer of unity than to force a whole slew of issues. The result is a prime minister who cannot propose much more than extra maths lessons lest he lose the fractious, restive coalition that keeps him in office.
None of this is coincidence. It’s in the nature of the rightwing populist project, in Britain, the US and across the globe. Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence.
As Freedland suggests, the Tories have ceased to govern, instead they have become a natural party of opposition.
It is also worth considering the conclusions drawn by Jonathan Freedland in yesterday's Guardian in judging exactly where this government is at as it flounders in the face of its own incompetence. He draws comparisons between the Trumpian disorder seen in the US Congress' attempt to elect a speaker, and the post-Brexit Tory Party:
In the UK, it looks different: we have a prime minister in Rishi Sunak whose pitch is technocratic competence. But that should not conceal two things.
First, the post-2016 Tory party delivered just as much parliamentary turmoil and intra-party division as McCarthy and co served up this week. Whether it was the Commons gridlock of the two years preceding the 2019 election or the psychodrama of the three years after it, Brexit-era Conservatism has proved every bit as unhinged as Trump-era Republicanism. When it comes to burn-it-all-down politics, the Republicans’ craziest wing are mere novices compared with a master arsonist such as Liz Truss. The US and UK are simply at different points in the cycle.
Second, even with Sunak in charge, and though painted in less vivid colours, Brexit-era Toryism is just as paralysed as its sister movement in the US. The five-point plan unveiled in the PM’s new year address consisted mostly of the basics of state administration – growing the economy, managing inflation – rather than anything amounting to a political programme.
And that’s chiefly because his party, like the Republicans, cannot agree among themselves. Consider how much Sunak has had to drop, under pressure from assorted rebels. Whether it was reform of the planning system, the manifesto commitment to build 300,000 new houses a year or the perennial pledge to grasp the nettle of social care, Sunak has had to back away from tasks that are essential for the wellbeing of the country. True, he has avoided the farcical scenes that played out this week on Capitol Hill, but that’s only because he has preferred to preserve the veneer of unity than to force a whole slew of issues. The result is a prime minister who cannot propose much more than extra maths lessons lest he lose the fractious, restive coalition that keeps him in office.
None of this is coincidence. It’s in the nature of the rightwing populist project, in Britain, the US and across the globe. Brexit is the exemplar, a mission that worked with great potency as a campaign, as a slogan, but which could never translate into governing, because it was never about governing. It was about disrupting life, not organising it – or even acknowledging the trade-offs required to organise it. It offered the poetry of destruction, not the prose of competence.
As Freedland suggests, the Tories have ceased to govern, instead they have become a natural party of opposition.
