Michael Meacher MP

Nobody emerges well from the heated exchanges at PMQ yesterday in the Commons.   The Guardian that morning had argued the Treasury estimated that the Budget would cost 1.3m jobs.   In the ensuing mele’e Cameron responded to Harriet Harman’s taunt in two ways by claiming that (a) “unemployment will be falling during this Parliament” (words that he may well come to rue) and (b) the rise in unemployment would have been worse under Labour.   He is vulnerable on both counts. (more…)

The expected BA cabin crew strike, prompted by unilateral cuts in crew members, is a classic example of an impasse brought about by over-confident macho management. The airline says it is losing £1.6m a day in the present difficult economic circumstances and expects to lose 1bn in the next 2 years. Operating with fewer cabin crew members is intended to be part of a cost-cutting drive to save £140m. However, by imposing these staffing changes from last month unilaterally, BA has provoked a strike which will cost the airline some £200m on top of already expected operating losses. It has also done so at the most sensitive time of the year when BA usually carries about 65,000 passengers a day over the Christmas season, thus sparking the suspicion that it has forced these cuts on staff at a time when management believed tthat public reaction might make it very difficult for the union to launch strike action. By refusing to roll back the changes, the pugnacious chief executive, Willie Walsh, is taking a huge risk for the airline, not just in the potential costs of the strike, but even more in extensive loss of customers to other airlines in the medium term.

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So what’s the Tory response to soaring unemployment? Force the banks to lend to businesses, when such lending is at present flat or even negative, in order to preserve jobs or create new ones? Forget it. Launch a big public investment programme in housing and infrastructure, manufacturing, energy conservation, skills training, public services, or green jobs in industry? You must be joking. Cut taxes on the rich and hammer the poor? You’ve got it. The ‘new’ plan is being unveiled at the Tory conference tomorrow. Actually it’s virtually a carbon copy of New Deal plans already tested to destruction by New Labour – but let that pass. What matters is that almost everything about it is wrong. It won’t work, it’s class-ridden, it’s punitive, and it’s a privatising ramp at the expense of the unemployed.

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