“That there is a Prime Minister who has finally stated that Britain has had the wrong economic approach for four decades has been widely welcomed; now the focus is on how this translates into actions.”
By Vincent Conquest
On Monday evening, ‘Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas’ held the final event of its solidarity hub in Liverpool. Recognising the opportunity of the moment and the scale of the crisis in the country, the event, ‘A Fork in the Road: for an Irreversible Shift in the Balance of Power and Wealth’, welcomed trade unionists, activists, left MPs and leading campaigners from across the labour movement. The same event at TUC Conference weeks ago had similarly attracted large crowds, with the theme clearly striking a chord.
That there is a Prime Minister who has finally stated that Britain has had the wrong economic approach for four decades has been widely welcomed; now the focus is on how this translates into action. This was a clear theme of many speakers, including Jo Grady, UCU General Secretary, Eddie Dempsey, RMT General Secretary and Andrea Egan, Unison General Secretary.
Public ownership as a necessary part of shifting power and wealth was also highlighted by many of those participating in the event, as it had been at the TUC, alongside the insourcing of public services, public investment and controlling costs that people are facing.
Fran Heathcote, PCS General Secretary, placed this within the context of the cost of living crisis, which Starmer had failed to prioritise, instead choosing to attack the incomes of pensioners, disabled people, and “having to be dragged kicking and screaming on the two-child benefit cap” and that Labour must now undertake its promised ‘biggest wave of insourcing’ and “let’s control rents, let’s control energy, let’s control water. Let’s have a Labour government that stands up for working people.”
Cat Hobbs from the campaign We Own It outlined the urgency of public ownership – not just “public control”. We need public ownership of our water companies, energy companies, Royal Mail, social care, the NHS, and we need a mass insourcing campaign with no bailout for private utilities that go bust.
Also focusing on public ownership and the insourcing of our public services was Andrea Egan, following the launch of Unison and RMT’s joint ‘Insource Now!’ campaign, explaining that “every Prime Minister since Thatcher has been stuck on the path she set: privatisation, outsourcing, cutting, and the claim that there’s no other way.” Yet this economic approach has led directly to the economic and social challenges we now face, including the dumping of sewage into our rivers and seas and the crisis of social care. Outsourced contracts awarded to private companies for services such as cleaning, catering and security were £3.5bn in 2024 and are already at £6.6bn in 2026, with workers on these contracts being very low paid, despite the importance of their work. This had also been demonstrated earlier in the day at a protest rally of outsourced workers, including migrant care workers. She called not just for an end to outsourcing and for insourcing now of these contracts, but also for rail, mail, water and energy to be owned publicly and for private equity to be forced out of social care with greater taxes on the very wealthy.
David Wilson from the NEU drew the direct links between the neoliberal policies that have been pursued, rising economic inequality and poverty – and how this then translates into educational outcomes and the danger that “if working class people do not see their lives improving, we are opening the doors to a Reform government which would be a disaster for the trade union movement and working people.”
How serious the moment is, and the threat of the far-right and Reform, was touched on by a number of participants, including Rebecca Long-Bailey MP. Reflecting on the May local elections, she said that “In that election, I felt something so serious. I felt that people thought that Labour didn’t stand for them, and the Labour Party didn’t know what it stood for.” But what it should stand for, she said, is lifting up people who struggle, rather than the powerful. Speaking passionately about council housing: “We need to see the money, we need to see the skills, and we need to see the infrastructure in place to build that – not in ten years’ time, but now”. She also backed the calls for rent controls and public ownership of essentials, including water. “Public control has to mean public ownership”.
Eddie Dempsey highlighted the need, as part of restructuring the economy to rebuild manufacturing and productive industries to create wealth for the country and that achieving a shift in power includes the labour force – as the last forty years has seen our class lose its ability to collectively organise to improve pay and living standards, with the need for sectoral collective bargaining to be rebuilt.
Simon Fletcher had spoken earlier in the event, providing the backdrop of the conflicts with its own social and electoral base the Labour Government had run into, due to its animosity to public ownership, taxing the rich and other progressive economic policies. The result could be seen in the deep unpopularity the Labour Government had sunk to under Keir Starmer. While the focus is now on what policies Burnham will take forward, these underlying issues have not gone away, and the necessity of standing shoulder to shoulder with people on the sharp end of racism, as well as how it’s necessary to oppose rising military spending.
This was a theme taken up by Jo Grady, who focused on the Wages not Weapons motion, which passed Congress last year and was reaffirmed this year, criticising the normalisation and acceptance of increased military spending, and instead the desperate need for public investment in education, railway, infrastructure, social security, climate resilience- rather than redirecting public spending to weapons.
FBU General Secretary, Steve Wright, spoke from the perspective of the firefighter, after a summer of climate-linked heatwaves and wildfires. “We’re making demands that we need to see more firefighters on the frontlines to deal with wildfires, flooding, and terrorist incidents”.
Asad Rehman from Friends of the Earth built on this, “We know that this winter when the floods come it’ll be the same working-class communities who’ll lose everything and be affected.” In a passionate reality check to the room that hope by itself doesn’t change anything; it’s about who has power. “We know that our economy is going to change, our communities are going to change. The only question is what kind of change will it be. For us, the question is who will pay the price for that change?” calling on people to campaign to make polluters pay, and to tax the wealthy.
This was also the call of Richard Burgon MP, who ended the meeting by underlining that “the principle is simple: tax wealth, not work.”
The urgency of restructuring the economy so that it not only delivers for people, but also builds for climate resilience, adaptation, and tackling the climate crisis. Nadia Whittome opened her remarks on the point that “Extreme weather is hitting our food supply, bringing up prices and putting public health at risk”, meaning that “it’s working-class communities in this country and across the world who will be hit hardest by the impacts of climate change.” The need for public ownership and measures such as retrofitting homes, supporting farmers and heavy industries, and, importantly, making polluters pay so that “this idea that net zero is anti-worker is a false dichotomy – one we cannot afford to get trapped in.”
- Vincent Conquest is an Arise – a Festival of Left Ideas Volunteer and Young Labour member. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
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