Speeches at Trident rally and People's Assembly

Below I've included two speeches I've made in the past week or so - one at the rally against Trident, and the other at the Stop The War People's Assembly.

Trident rally

People's Assembly

The budget will exacerbate inequality

Below is an article on the Budget I've written for the New Statesman website.


Ten years in power affords any Government the opportunity of laying the foundations of the society it aspires to create. Ten Brown budgets have produced a society which is more unequal today than when New Labour was elected in 1997. Just look at the facts. In 1997 the richest 1% owned 25% of marketable wealth. By this year that had risen to 34%. Meanwhile the poorest 50% had gone from holding 6% of the nation's wealth in 1997 to just 1% today.

Today's budget will exacerbate the problem of inequality.

The Chancellor's announcement to cut Corporation Taxes will fuel even more obscene City bonuses and will be paid for by the cuts announced in the wages and jobs of public sector workers over the next two years. As part of this attack on public sector wages, the Government has quietly started the process of introducing local pay rates for public sector workers based upon an assessment of the local labour market. Public sector workers undertaking the same work will be paid less in vast areas across the country if local pay rates are low.

Vying with the Tories on tax cuts as an electioneering stunt may appear as a morale boost in the short term but in the longer term will undermine any strategy to create a society capable and willing to fund the public services our community needs and tackle the inequality and poverty which so disfigures our society. In practice this budget is at best neutral in terms of wealth redistribution but I fear that cutting the basic rate of tax to 20p by abolishing the 10p rate will hit the poorest earners as many are unable to find their way through the complexities and inadequacies of the tax credit system.

The failure to restore the link between pensions and earnings, to increase the basic state pension and to increase child benefit sufficiently means that Britain will still have two million of its children and three million of its pensioners living in poverty. How can we find it acceptable that 25,000 of our pensioners died last winter from cold related conditions after 10 years of a Labour government?

Where the Chancellor has announced continued increases in public spending on health and education the scale of the public expenditure growth is significantly less than needed to maintain the pace of investment to meet growing demand and expectations. In comparison with other European countries which have had long periods of Social Democratic government public expenditure in the UK is still amongst the lowest: 45.4% in the UK in comparison with 57.1% in Sweden, and 53.85% in Denmark.

In addition on Monday Gordon Brown and Tony Blair published the New Labour's policy documents committing the Government to more and extensive privatisation. Many fear therefore that any additional public investment will be laundered into private profits.

Where there has been a growing consensus on the key issue of climate change the Chancellor has taken a few small steps towards encouraging change in our polluting behaviour but these appear to many as mere tinkering at the edges. Much more radical change is needed in promoting a large scale programme of developing alternative energy sources and changing our polluting economy and lifestyles. How can we claim to be serious about tackling climate change when the Government is sanctioning the greatest expansion of airports in our history?

The budget is designed to raise the Chancellor's electoral standing. In the short term there may be an immediate lift but within days as the detail is unpicked it is likely that there will be a reaction to what will be seen as electioneering spin. I worry that this will undermine our longer term project of convincing our community that creating decent public services and a fairer society requires a progressive redistribution of wealth.

Whatever happened to equality as a Labour aim?

We published today the Left Economic Advisory Panel's (LEAP) alternative budget analysis, entitled "Whatever happened to equality?"

LEAP is a group which I founded and chair comprising socialist economists providing economic policy analysis and advice for the Left. It serves as our alternative to the Bank of England Advisory Committee but looks to the much longer term economic propects. LEAP publishes its Red Papers twice a year both prior to the autumn statement and prior to the budget. You can read and download LEAP's pre budget report on the Labour Representation Committee's website.

Ten years in power affords any government the opportunity of laying the foundations of the society it wishes to create. After ten years of New Labour Government and ten years of Gordon Brown's budgets it is valid and indeed timely to question the reality of the impact of the Chancellor's economic policies in shaping our community and the quality of life of our citizens.

The conclusion is that the most startling feature of our current society is the grotesque inequality which is disfiguring our community. Even the Financial Times today points out the difference that exists between the significant growth of GDP and the lack of matching growth in disposable income for many families suffering from low pay, long working hours, heavy tax burdens on the lower paid and rising housing costs, council tax and energy prices. Far from overcoming boom and bust what has been created over the last decade is an economy which is boom for some but bust for others.

In tomorrow's budget the Chancellor is hardly going to miss the opportunity prior a leadership election of making a great show of additional expenditure on education and some targetted benefit and expenditure increases but this will only be tinkering at the edges of inequality. Too many millions of our pensioners and of our children will still be going to bed in poverty tomorrow night because New Labour has refused to even accept inequality as an issue to be addressed over three terms of office.

Finally on a separate issue I spoke at the Stop the War assembly in Central Hall, Westminster today on the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, alongside Rose Gentle, a member of the military families who have lost relatives in Iraq. I thought what sadness and brutality Blair and Brown and all those who voted for this disgraceful war have brought into our lives. But it is not just the war for which this Government stands accused of inhumanity.

Before I spoke I had met Bob Holman, a Labour Party member for 43 years. Bob is an immensely respected community activist in Scotland, a writer, researcher and social policy expert. He showed me a report in today's Herald, the daily Scottish newspaper. It described how Mr Uddhav Bhandari, a father of two and an asylum seeker from Nepal, had doused himself in petrol and set himself alight earlier this month because he was facing a second legal hearing which could have resulted in him being forcibly returned to Nepal where his life was at risk. Mr Bhandari died yesterday.

The paper also reported that another asylum seeker, Mr Max Waku, who had fled from the Congo, was arrested from his home in a dawn raid. His children watched as their father was handcuffed and led out of the house to a waiting van. The children and their mother were then themselves removed one by one from their home and put into vans.

I find it hard to come to terms with the suffering that the Government is inflicting both at home and abroad.

That's why we need not just a change of leader but a wholesale change of the policies.

Campaign rally - 31st March

Many of you will already know about the national rally in support of the campaign that takes place in London on Saturday 31st March. It promises to be a packed day of speeches, music and entertainment. Above all, it will be a chance to meet other supporters of this campaign from across the country. For more details, click here. I want to thank all the activists who have put in so much work to make sure that it's a fun and successful day. I look forward to meeting many of you there!

As you will know, the date of the leadership election is fast approaching. If you have not already done so, I hope that you will think about joining or rejoining the Labour party now to ensure that you will have a vote for this campaign. Joining only takes a couple of minutes - you can do it online, by ringing 08705 900 200, or by downloading the form. I hope that you'll also consider encouraging others to do likewise.

Today we've put up the first sample of messages of support for this campaign. I really want to thank everyone for their words of support. From the very beginning, we've made it clear that this is a grassroots campaign embracing the whole labour movement right across the country - and I hope that these messages give a flavour of that. Above all, the comments show that there is a real appetite for a change in direction for our party and an alternative to New Labour policies of war and privatisation.

We'll be putting up many more endorsements from other supporting MPs, councillors, trade unionists, Labour party members, campaigners and ordinary activists on a very regular basis - so I hope that you will keep coming back.

Finally, please don't hesitate to email or ring the campaign office on 020 7529 8296 if you can help out in any way.