No time for complacency

The GMB leader is not telling tales out of school when he says that Labour is seen as dominated by a political elite.

This is not an academic issue. When working people conclude that there's not much political difference between parties, they find other things to do than vote.

Labour's leadership would be ill-advised to become complacent in light of current opinion polls and rely on public hostility to carry them home at the next election.

Ed Balls's "austerity-lite" economic approach does not enthuse working people battling to defend their jobs and living standards against the most rapacious conservative government in modern times.

Moreover, his refusal at TUC annual conference to criticise the coalition's public-sector pay freeze will reinforce the view of all politicians as pawns of big business.

Unless the Labour leadership rethinks its priorities, it is likely to be on the wrong side of the argument that Unison general secretary David Prentis initiates at party conference in moving a motion condemning the pay freeze.

Of course, there is a history of decisions being taken at Labour Party conference - such as on returning the rail industry to the public sector - and then ignored by the party leadership.

Anti-trade union laws and measures to make recourse to employment tribunals unaffordable are other matters vital to trade unionists but are relegated to the fringes by dint of new Labour attachment to policies acceptable to the City.

Trade unionists are patient people - too patient some may say - but patience is not endless even among solid Labour supporters.

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey told the Morning Star fringe meeting at the TUC that he had asked Labour leaders what the point was in his union giving substantial finance to the party if workers in Britain remained the worst protected in Europe.

"What is the point?" he emphasised, suggesting that time was running out before unions started to consider how best to ensure political representation of working people in Parliament.

These sentiments were voiced earlier this year by the Communist Party in its open letter to the labour movement noting the scandalous comments of Labour frontbenchers on public spending cuts, public-sector wages and pensions and on welfare benefits.

General secretary Robert Griffiths highlighted the crisis of political representation for the working class, urging "broad, inclusive and intensive discussion" within the labour movement and especially the trade unions.

The nearer we get to a general election, the more strident will be the calls to set aside policy differences for a later date and simply whip up as big a Labour vote as possible to defeat the Tories and their Liberal Democrat allies.

Workers who sacrifice time and energy to oppose the cuts to our NHS, our welfare system and other essential public services will not take kindly to being treated merely as bag carriers for plausible politicians who bank the electoral benefits and then carry out similar policies to those of the government they replace.

That means that there is little time to be lost. It's make-your-mind-up time.

Labour has to either echo the coalition cuts agenda - though "slightly less fast and less deep" - or side openly with the resistance and champion working class political concerns.