EVEN Liz Truss doesn’t believe her “growth through tax cuts” plan is going to work, according to Labour’s Barry Gardiner.

The Brent North MP accepts that the “mini-Budget” announced by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng is ideological. 

“What Truss is saying is you can achieve economic growth simply through tax cuts.

“And perversely, that tax cuts are the way to incentivise the rich while benefit cuts are the way to incentivise the poor. It’s madness and we all know it.

“But it is a particular ideology that she is following. And it’s been seen not to work. And that leads you to only one conclusion: not that she thinks that this is a long-term sustainable solution for the ills of the country.

“But that she knows damn well that there are only two years left of the Conservatives in power and she’s going to maximise the cash cow of the people in this country to the benefit of her rich friends in the time she has.”

While attention has focused on Kwarteng’s tax cuts for the richest, Gardiner is just as concerned about the attacks on some of the most vulnerable announced at the same time — his plan to penalise those in part-time work who don’t seek additional hours, for example.

“The Chancellor says these people need to do more work. But some people can’t. They are doing all the work they possibly can.

“For some that’s because we don’t have a proper care system in this country for elderly people. So they can’t do more than 15 hours a week because they’re changing the filthy diapers of their parents. Or because we don’t have  a universal childcare system in this country so they might have to look after their kids.

“There are all sorts of reasons why people can’t do what the government says they must do and is prepared to penalise them for not doing.”

Of course, a major reason people are reliant on benefits such as universal credit in the first place is because pay in Britain is so low.

Despite ministers claiming to want people to seek higher-paid work, their response to workers coming together to demand higher pay is ferocious repression.

“Look at the statutory instruments that came in just before the [parliamentary] summer recess.

“The first said that if a union made a technical error in balloting for strike action, the penalty for that would increase from £250,000 to £1 million.

“What’s that designed to do? It’s designed to put the fear of God into unions that if they take industrial action they might go bankrupt in the process.

“The second was to say employers can employ agency workers to come in and do the job if the workers are on strike — to strike break, effectively.

“The agencies that employ agency workers wrote to the Chancellor with the TUC to say this was madness, this is going to harm employment.

“The government paid no notice because this was about breaking strikes. It made no economic sense, for employers if you’re employing those agency workers it is costing you more than your original workers.

“You’re paying a premium and actually proving the case to the workers who have withdrawn their labour that the company can afford to pay more.

“Look what they’ve done now. The talk about service standards — that if you strike there are minimum service standards that must be maintained. 

“But the point of a strike is to make it difficult for your employer to function at a proper service standard. So the employer says OK, if I want to operate to a decent standard I have to improve the safety conditions in the factory, or pay the workers a higher rate, or adopt a different shift pattern to the one that I would ideally like which might be 20 hours a day, seven days a week.

“They are simply trying to undermine the very purpose of a strike. And the government does this with the implication that these unions, these big militant unions, they are trying to undermine the economy, stop our children being taught, stop people getting to work on time.

“They’re not. It’s not ‘the unions’ doing this. Look at the CWU where they had a 97 per cent strike vote on a 72 per cent turnout [at Royal Mail.] 

“That’s incredible. That is 70 per cent of the entire workforce, including people who didn’t vote. That’s not because they suddenly decided they wanted to bring the entire postal and parcel delivery service to a standstill. 

“It’s because they think management is not listening to what they are saying about the way in which modernisation should happen, the way in which shift patterns should be adapted and to very legitimate demands about how to maintain their own wage levels, which have declined.

“Across our country wage levels are now 3.5 per cent lower than they were 12 years ago and now we’re facing 11 per cent inflation. These are not people trying to bring down society. They’re simply saying look, I need to live, I need to feed my kids and pay my rent.”

How would Labour get us out of the cost-of-living crisis? 

“The fact of the matter is there is easily enough money in our economy to see us through this crisis and generate real growth, but it’s not being distributed in the correct way.

“Let me give you three examples. If we were to levy National Insurance not only on employed income but on income that people get, say, from being a landlord, that would bring £30 billion into the Exchequer every year.

“If we were to put capital gains tax — which only hits the rich, only the rich have the Picassos to sell — if you put that to the level of income tax so you paid it at the level you paid income tax, that would achieve £16bn a year.

“If you were to move the tax take on oil and gas producers to the global average — not above it, not as high as Norway let alone Indonesia where it’s something like 90 per cent, but to the global average, even allowing for the windfall tax you would get an extra £13bn a year.

“So there is an extra £50-60bn in the economy already there that could be taken which would not affect income tax but would disproportionately target wealth.

“Redistribute that within the economy and you can do the things necessary to create future jobs and growth. Training gas fitters to install hydrogen boilers, training garage mechanics how to fix not the internal combustion engine but electric motors.

“This is the sort of retraining, restructuring of apprenticeships, that needs to be happening and government should be doing it. We need these skills now. Nineteen million houses in this country need retrofitting.

“Say to the people in work, the companies, we will pay a day’s wage for that worker to come and retrain one day a week for the next six weeks. You get the economy moving. Not by increasing income tax, not by penalising people at the bottom but achieving growth through redistribution.”

But can Labour actually win people to this pitch? There is little sign that the party grasps the depth of people’s alienation from a political system that has let them down, and the party leadership has not supported workers taking action to defend themselves.

“Well, every Labour politician must show they are four-square behind working people in this country, and those who are not able to work for whatever reason, disability or being a single parent or whatever.

“These are the people we need to show we are behind and they are the majority of the population.

“How? I go on picket lines and show that solidarity, yes. 

“But I also argue for the policies that are going to bring about the changes that will make a difference to their lives.

“When it comes to the next general election, people are going to say, who is going to ensure that I can afford to live?”