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<\/p>\nWe know from experience that when Labour politicians start talking about a ‘New Deal’ it’s time to count the spoons.<\/p>\n
With Tony Blair, it presaged a \u00a35.6billion-a-year tax raid on final-salary pensions from which the industry never recovered.<\/p>\n
The result has been that virtually the only defined-benefit pension schemes left are those in the public sector, which are directly funded by the taxpayer.<\/p>\n
Angela Rayner’s New Deal, outlined at the TUC annual congress yesterday, is not such a direct assault on private savings, but could ultimately prove just as costly.<\/p>\n
To cheers from the comrades, the party’s deputy leader promised that a Labour government would bring forward an employment rights bill in its first 100 days.<\/p>\n
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Striking, said Angela Rayner, is ‘a fundamental freedom that should be respected’. She might try telling that to passengers who have given up travelling by train because of constant walkouts<\/p>\n
More power to unions, more collective bargaining, an end to zero-hours contracts. Plus, inevitably, the scrapping of laws requiring minimum levels of service to be maintained during strikes in key industries such as the railways.<\/p>\n
Perish the thought that unions should have to show any sense of responsibility to those who pay their wages.<\/p>\n
Striking, said Ms Rayner, is ‘a fundamental freedom that should be respected’. She might try telling that to passengers who have given up travelling by train because of constant walkouts.<\/p>\n
Or the hundreds of thousands of patients left in pain and discomfort as their operations were cancelled because of strike action first by nurses and then by doctors.<\/p>\n
What price their fundamental freedoms?<\/span><\/p>\n We learned in the 1970s what happens when the combination of a socialist government and over-mighty unions take control of British industry.<\/p>\n Productivity crashes, profit becomes a dirty word, growth and eventually business viability are crushed.<\/p>\n By 1979, Britain was universally regarded as the sick man of Europe. It took the courage of Margaret Thatcher to stand up to the union militants and administer the necessary economic medicine.<\/p>\n Significantly, New Labour did not repeal any of the union laws that she brought in when the party came to power \u2013 including the legislation that outlawed secondary picketing.<\/p>\n But this is not New Labour. Despite Sir Keir Starmer’s attempts to shift to the centre ground, it remains the party of Jeremy Corbyn, for whom Miss Rayner was one of the main cheerleaders.<\/p>\n This New Deal for workers is straight out of his hard-Left playbook.<\/p>\n Keir’s migrant muddle<\/span><\/p>\n Labour has also revealed its big idea for stopping illegal migrants crossing the Channel in small boats \u2013 give the National Crime Agency more money to set up a unit dedicated to smashing trafficking gangs.<\/p>\n However, such a unit already exists. And while it is doing its best to stem the flow of migrants, the NCA admits law enforcement alone will never solve the problem.<\/p>\n The only way to break the business model, it says, is to make clear that illegal entrants will be removed, rather than allowed to stay in Britain.<\/p>\n As ever, Sir Keir Starmer is quick to trash Government policy, but when it comes to alternatives he has nothing to offer but posturing and empty words<\/p>\n This is the whole point of the Rwanda scheme. So why does Labour oppose it so implacably?<\/p>\n As ever, Sir Keir Starmer is quick to trash Government policy, but when it comes to alternatives he has nothing to offer but posturing and empty words.<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/i.dailymail.co.uk\/1s\/2023\/09\/12\/23\/75356403-12511081-image-a-9_1694558633530.jpg\")
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