Tories Not on the Side of Working People

We keep hearing from leading Conservatives that ‘even in tough times’, they are on the side of ‘people who work hard and want to get on in life’. Well, they had a good chance to put that into practice recently with regards to a meagre 1% pay-rise for nurses and midwives. This was an opportunity for the party ‘for hardworking people’ to, literally, put its money where its mouth is and reward hardworking nurses and midwives by giving them more money for the excellent job they do. Instead, they refused to contemplate even a 1% rise – at the same time as handing themselves an increase of 11% – claiming that it was unaffordable despite the NHS Pay Review Body stating otherwise.  When the strike took place, the government condemned the industrial action. 

Cameron’s idea of rewarding hardworking people appears to be offering an unrealistic, unfunded and ill-thought out set of tax cuts which in reality would cause a reduction of funds available to the exchequer, resulting in redundancy for thousands of people. This would affect not only public sector workers - including the nurses and midwives on strike on October 13 - but also private sector services commissioned by the government through the public sector, rendering ‘hardworking people’ suddenly unemployed. Surely it would be better to maintain taxation levels and fund a genuine increase in peoples’ wages, no matter how small, to keep the nation working. Indeed, Edwina Currie showed the Tories’ true colours when she branded striking midwives as ‘disgraceful’. The attitude of the Conservative Party regarding this issue is proof, if it were ever needed, that they are not, and cannot be, the ‘party for hardworking people’; they never have been and they never will be.