AFTER another night of Brexit votes in Parliament this week, it feels like the government is no closer to finding a way forward. 

After dragging us into this mess in the first place in the name of party management, this week has been about nothing more than patching up the Tory Party once again so it can limp on in government. 

For all the triumphalism about being able to win a vote in Parliament, Theresa May is now heading back to Brussels with a plan that the EU has already rejected. The reality is that we are now closer to a cliff-edge, with a Prime Minister at the mercy of the hard right of her party. 

This is all a result of May’s choice to put party unity ahead of the country. If it’s good for a Tory, you can bet that it won’t be any good for the rest of us. 

May’s refusal to budge on any of her so-called “red lines” is responsible for the deadlock in Parliament; Labour’s alternative is the only sensible way through. 

But it’s not just Parliament that is stuck in deadlock. Morning Star readers know that we live in a country that is failing millions of its citizens. 

In London, the fifth-richest city in the world, rough sleeping is up by 13 per cent. Across the country, two-thirds of children in poverty live in a working family. 

We are told that employment is at its highest level for decades, but workers are being paid less and doing more.

We need to get back to basics. Millions of people in this country are not paid what they deserve, they work too many hours simply to line the pockets of bosses, and they can’t afford a home in the town or city they grew up in. 

The expectations that I grew up with — that if you get a job and work hard you will be able to afford a decent home, raise a family, get to the football or take the occasional holiday — has become an impossible dream for too many.

Whatever happens with Brexit I cannot help but feel it has become a distraction from the fundamental problems we face in Britain. 

And let’s be honest, when it comes to workers’ rights, none of the Brexit options being looked at in Parliament come close to addressing the explosion of insecure employment we have seen in recent years, or to changing the balance of power in workplaces across the country. 

I firmly believe that we need to make the world of work the number one political issue. First and foremost, I’m a trade unionist and in my view our political judgements should flow from our industrial experience and understanding. I value the Morning Star precisely because it puts the issues that way round.

We should be deeply concerned that collective bargaining coverage has collapsed to around 20 per cent of workers and that our movement has around six million members out of some 30 million workers in the UK. 

Collective bargaining not only raises wages but is central to a properly functioning economy and democracy. 

So we need to be reaching areas where workers aren’t organised. We should stop competing for the same pool of recruits, and look at co-operating to strengthen and grow the movement itself. I know good work is being done to organise workers in precarious sectors by unions including Unite, GMB, the BFAWU and others and I welcome the militancy we’re seeing among young workers in the fast-food, hospitality and delivery industries.

We have to do more to support this. We need to look at what we can learn from the Labour Party’s move to mass membership and from Momentum’s online campaigning. Better still, we have much to learn from the campaigns that are cutting through in other countries. 

The Fight for 15 in the US has had an impact, raising awareness of the importance of joining a union for a huge number of poorly paid workers. 

In Australia, the Change the Rules campaign is highlighting job security and better pay and linking them with the fight for a Labour government. The campaign is already having a real political impact across the country.

That is why the CWU is campaigning for a new deal for workers here in Britain. We had a positive start with the rally under that banner on May 12 last year, but this year we need to step up a gear. 

We need to see unions agreeing common bargaining agendas on a sector-by-sector basis, looking at the issues that affect all the workers in an industry and identifying where we can apply pressure on employers collectively.

Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have always raised the voice of workers in Parliament. Now we need to empower working people to raise their own voices in their workplaces and communities. 

We need to work together to build towards a day of action after the conference season to demonstrate the importance and relevance of trade unionism to the whole country — especially for the majority of workers who are not unionised.

We have never been handed our rights on a plate and we know that we have to fight for them. In broadening that fight beyond Westminster politics, we can create a campaign that delivers real change.

That doesn’t detract from our fight for a Labour government, because it’s an integral part of it. The Tories have run out of road and it is only by shifting the agenda on from what is going on in Westminster, to what is happening in the rest of the country, that we can expose this. 

Our political priority must be to fight for a general election and a Labour government led by Jeremy Corbyn. By fighting for a new deal for workers we can deliver this. 

Dave Ward is general secretary of the CWU.