Don't cheer too quickly

The movement has been united for years on the sort of changes that it would like to see in government policy, while the government has been united in rejecting them.

TUC congresses and Labour Party annual conferences have voted in favour of rail renationalisation, justice for pensioners, the fourth option for council housing, a trade union freedom Bill, a strategy for manufacturing, a halt to privatisation in the NHS and other public services and equal rights for agency and temporary workers.

And, each time, new Labour has dismissed these potential vote-winners.

As with the 5 million poorest taxpayers in society, who lost out over the abolition of the 10p tax band, Mr Brown's calculation was that trade unionists have nowhere else to go.

And many trade union leaders have comforted him in this cynical view by cheering wildly at any vague comment that can be passed off as suggesting a change of government direction, only to end up with egg on their faces when the neoliberal juggernaut rolls forward.

At last year's Labour conference, Mr Brown was portrayed as accepting the need for a council housebuilding programme.

The reality? No council housebuilding programme and no fourth option to make government finance available for council house modernisation without the requirement of stock transfer to private landlords.

The draft Queen's Speech envisages an increase in shared equity schemes and putting up £200 million to buy homes from developers to offer for sale or rent to first-time buyers.

What use are these cosmetic proposals when five million people are on council house waiting lists and find the prospect of ever owning even part of a home utterly beyond them?

The PM continues to ignore health professionals, patients and the trade unions over his approach to the NHS. It will press on with private finance initiatives that are inefficient, profligate and designed only with private contractors' profits in mind, rather than patients' wishes, as he claims.

And even his latest big idea, an NHS constitution, is meaningless window dressing filched from the Tories.

Mr Brown has the gall to suggest that he is on the point of bringing in legislation to give rights to agency workers. This was part of the 2004 Warwick agreement with union leaders and his ministers have twice filibustered such a Bill into oblivion.

The fact is that Mr Brown continues to take more notice of the right-wing media than he does of the left and the unions.

Anyone who claims to believe that the panic reaction to furore over the 10p tax band abolition was the result of labour movement agitation is living in cloud cuckoo land.

It was simply in response to an awareness that new Labour was in electoral meltdown. And, despite this measure, it could still be in that position unless it changes direction.

The role of trade unions at present must be to make the government listen to the labour movement rather than to act as cheerleaders for an administration that cannot conceal its contempt for them and their members.