Voices: Rebecca Long-Bailey: Britain won’t accept Jeremy Hunt’s new age of austerity

Jeremy Hunt’s threat of a “new age of austerity” is an insult to working people and society’s most vulnerable. Britain has endured 12 years of food banks, widespread in-work poverty and public services cut to the bone after brutal cuts under successive Tory prime ministers.

Against the backdrop of an economy ravaged by the Covid pandemic, the cost of living crisis and rocketing energy bills, families face some of the most severe hardships since the Second World War. Yet this multimillionaire chancellor, who co-authored a book calling for the NHS to be replaced by an insurance system, oversaw years of cuts and historically low funding as health secretary, and was part of David Cameron’s original austerity gang, wants even harsher cuts.

The Independent has launched a petition calling for a general election

How dare this Tory government seek to make the people of this country pay for the toxic mix of callousness and incompetence that was Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini-Budget?

It’s an abject betrayal of our nurses, paramedics, hospital cleaners and workers across rail and post, among many others. These were the Covid heroes, who were quite rightly lionised for keeping our public services going by placing their own health at risk at the height of the pandemic.

The same is true of the entire British public, who made so many sacrifices during lockdowns imposed by a Tory prime minister who partied in Downing Street while ordinary folk suffered.

For more than a decade, our public services have been driven into the ground by Tory cuts. In my own constituency, Salford council saw its support grants slashed from £450m to £203m, severely affecting frontline services.

As a result, lives were destroyed: life expectancy stalled for the first time in more than 100 years and even fell for the most deprived people in society. Austerity didn’t deliver the promised economic benefits; the UK sank into a double-dip recession and productivity growth was the worst since the 18th century.

We have endured a lost decade that failed to deliver any improvements in living standards and, as a result, it’s now commonplace to see working people forced to queue to collect parcels from food banks at the end of their shifts. And the new chancellor is planning to inflict more cuts on working people and the most vulnerable. What planet do the Tories live on?

Let’s be very clear, this is a crisis caused by the Tory government. It’s a direct result of a pernicious attempt by Liz Truss to give tax cuts to the wealthiest during the most severe cost of living crisis in decades. The abomination that was the so-called mini-Budget sought to prioritise the richest at the expense of the rest of everyone else. Low-paid workers, pensioners, those forced to exist on meagre benefits, middle-income families, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, were all ignored in the now abandoned measures.

The same is true of Hunt’s so-called “rescue package”. There’s nothing for emergency and key workers who kept Britain running during Covid, many of whom are now forced to rely on food banks to survive. Hard-pressed families who are struggling to cover mortgage payments and soaring fuel bills have been ignored. MPs from across the political spectrum will have heard accounts from food bank volunteers about families, once considered relatively affluent, coming in for help because in-work poverty is so rife.

But it’s not just public sector workers and the most vulnerable who will suffer. The new age of austerity Hunt is planning to unleash in yet another Tory budget on 31 October will hit all of us who rely on public services.

In the wake of the chancellor’s austerity threat, I’m already being inundated by constituents telling me “no more”. People will not tolerate more years of Tory austerity. For months now, rail and postal workers have refused to accept real-terms pay cuts and attacks on their jobs and conditions by taking strike action.

As a Labour MP, I’ve been proud to stand on the picket line in solidarity with these members of the RMT and CWU unions. Now members of the NEU teaching union have voted for strike action in pursuit of fair pay.

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There’s no appetite for more austerity and people are fighting back. Liz Truss’s resignation after 45 days in office makes the case for an immediate general election even stronger, so that voters can have the chance to reject this rotten Tory government and its planned new age of austerity.

The tide of overwhelming public opposition to Tory austerity can help Labour return to power. Funding public services through higher taxes on oil and gas profits, introducing a wealth tax, as well as a £15 per hour living wage to tackle in-work poverty, uprating pensions and benefits in line with inflation, would be an election winning platform for Labour.

To solve the crisis caused by the Tories, Britain needs a long-term plan to grow and rebalance the economy by investing in quality well-paid jobs, infrastructure and public services through a “Green New Deal”.

The forthcoming general election looks set to be a watershed one, in which voters decisively reject Toryism and turn their backs on more than a decade of austerity. Not accepting a penny of Tory cuts to public services and making the wealthiest pay for this crisis – as part of a transformative socialist programme for government – can help deliver that Labour victory.

Rebecca Long-Bailey is the Labour MP for Salford and Eccles and the former shadow secretary of state for business