AT THE start of every year, we all hope for a better year for ourselves, for our friends, families, colleagues and wider society. 

But as I write, our communities face two immediate crises — a public health crisis now entering its third year and a cost-of-living crisis affecting those who can least afford it.

Both are hitting working-class communities hard. There is the immediate health risk of Covid as cases hit an eye-watering three million per week, as well as the wider impact on healthcare provision as waiting lists soar and hospitals declare “critical incidents” — their highest level of alert. 

At the same time, soaring energy bills and wage cuts are leaving many having to choose between heating or eating. 

It’s not the start of the new year that any of us wants, yet I remain optimistic that 2022 can be a year when progressive solutions are advanced. 

Why? Because the left has answers to these crises and poll after poll shows that the public increasingly backs our solutions. Our task in 2022 is to organise to ensure these demands are won. 

The immediate challenge we face is taking on the government’s “ride-it-out” approach to Covid. This seems little more than the herd immunity strategy suggested at the start of the pandemic. 

Of course, we now have the vaccines, thanks to the huge public funding that went into them, which alone should mean that the vaccine companies are forced to share the technology so that developing nations can produce the vaccines themselves to drive up their vaccination levels. 

Nonetheless, despite the vaccine rollout, the damage caused by the government’s reckless strategy is clear — including bringing our health system to the point of collapse. 

There are a series of concrete demands that our movement must now lay out to mitigate the effects of this. 

We need to be demanding measures that reduce the caseload — not just accept high levels of infection. 

The Labour government of Wales is putting in place sensible public health measures from which we can learn. 

Beyond that, increasing sick pay to real living wage levels for all workers must be a core demand. Pathetically low levels of sick pay are again leaving millions of workers to choose between putting food on the table or self-isolating to protect their community. 

Experts suggest that exposure to the virus in a classroom or an office is 1,000 times higher than at a supermarket. Nothing sums up this government’s woeful Covid policies better than them promising just 7,000 air purifiers for schools when there are over 300,000 classrooms. 

We must stand with the teaching unions fighting for every classroom to be fitted with air purifiers and back this basic right in every other workplace. 

We also need to be demanding that the capacity of our health system is expanded. Omicron has clearly decimated current staffing levels but this NHS crisis goes way beyond immediate pandemic pressures. 

It is the result of permanent and dangerous staffing shortfalls that form part of the wider Tory underinvestment, privatisations and outsourcing in the NHS over the past decade. 

The 93,000 NHS staff vacancies and over 100,000 social care vacancies will only be tackled through proper pay rises. I fully back the demand from NHS staff for a 15 per cent pay increase — which would help address the real-terms pay cut experienced over the past decade. 

Undoubtedly Covid will continue to affect our society for as long as the government fails to put in place a proper public health strategy. 

Another variant is worryingly likely and we have to hope it isn’t one that evades vaccine immunity. 

But Covid will not be the only crisis to hit our communities. There is no shortage of economists warning that a combination of slow growth and high inflation will mean a big hit on living standards in 2022. 

A cocktail of falling real wages, higher taxes on working people, benefits at the lowest levels in decades and energy price hikes will all hit people in the pocket. 

The Resolution Foundation think tank says 2022 is set to be the “year of the squeeze” with families facing a typical income hit of around £1,200 a year.  

Paul Johnson, of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said many could face a squeeze this year that “could well be worse than the financial crisis.”

Such an attack on working-class living standards comes against the backdrop of the longest period of pay stagnation in 200 years, with real wages for millions still lower than they were before the bankers’ crisis in 2008.  

The labour movement must now step up our demands on the government for an emergency package to address this immediate social crisis including reversing the universal credit cuts, a £15-an-hour minimum wage and a windfall tax on oil companies to tackle fuel and food poverty.   

It’s great that Labour now has a poll lead over Tories for the first time in over a year. But we cannot rest on our laurels. Our lead has mainly come about as a result of falling support for the Conservatives after their corruption and rule-breaking hit home in the run-up to Christmas. 

Our own polling support remains pretty much where it was a year ago. 

To build on this poll lead, as a party we must lay out a clear policy vision, showing how we are on the side of the vast majority of people. 

There is no shortage of bold and progressive policies that could form part of this — from public ownership of energy to tackle rip off bills to wealth taxes so that the super-rich pay their fair share — that have popular support. 

But of course, change doesn’t automatically come about by just having the best ideas, but through organising and fighting for them. 

There was much to be disillusioned with in 2021, but the increasing fightback from the trade unions is a big step forward and we have seen big protest movements on climate change, against racial injustice and to address women’s safety over the past 18 months or so. 

If we build on that this year, then with the ideas we have and the power of our movements we can win the changes our communities need in 2022. The power is in our hands. Let’s fight for a year of victories.

Richard Burgon is Labour MP for Leeds East.