THE top 10 per cent of Britain’s population has more wealth than the other 90 per cent combined, according to TUC analysis of official Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures released today.
The huge inequality between rich and poor has widened under 14 years of Tory rule, which saw an “explosion” in insecure work and a decline in living standards.
Under the Conservatives, real wages grew by just 0.3 per cent a year — compared with 1.5 per cent from 1997 to 2010 under Labour.
The TUC estimates that the average worker would be £117 a week better off had pay increased since 2010 at the same pace as between 1997 and 2010.
Pay growth during Conservative-led governments from 2010-2024 was worse than for any other period of government since the 1920s.
The Tories also oversaw the worst fall in living standards since records began in 1955, the TUC said.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAGenocide denying UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy says that UK is suspending 30 of 350 arms licences to Israel. He also confirms the UK government’s support for Israel’s Gaza genocide and the UK government and military’s active participation in genocide.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite trade union, leads steel workers down Whitehall last year to demand more support for the industry. She says the British economy is broken. Photograph: Guy Smallman/Getty Images
The demand from Britain’s second biggest union will test truce with Labour at next month’s TUC conference
Britain’s second biggest trade union is calling on the new Labour government to introduce an emergency 1% wealth tax on the assets of the super-rich to pay for 10% pay rises for public sector workers and fill more than 100,000 NHS vacancies.
The demand from Unite is in one of several motions to the Trades Union Congress, which meets in Brighton next month, that will expose tensions between Keir Starmer’s government and sections of the union movement. It comes as Rachel Reeves is preparing for her first budget as chancellor, on 30 October.
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Other key trade unions are preparing to press for further policy changes from Labour, including abandoning the two-child benefit cap, which Starmer has so far resisted, and the reversal of the recent decision to end winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners, which has been causing a serious backlash among Labour backbenchers.
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Unite’s plan is for a tax of 1% to be applied on the assets of those worth more than £4m, which it says would raise £25bn a year to fund investment in public services and avoid a return to austerity. Under the plan, someone with assets worth £6m would face a 1% tax on the £2m above the £4m threshold. These assets would include property, shares and bank accounts but would not include mortgaged property.
Unite points to research showing that the richest 50 families in the UK now have assets worth nearly £500bn.
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, said: “Unite’s resolution to the TUC on the economy calls things by their real name. The British economy is broken.
The Supreme Court building, Parliament Square, London
A CARE worker victimised at work for taking strike action has humiliated the government in the Supreme Court today.
In a case brought by public-sector union Unison, Britain’s highest court ordered the government to outlaw the victimisation of workers for striking as part of a landmark ruling today.
Unison general secretary Christina McAnea said the case was the “most important industrial action case for decades” while the TUC hailed it as “monumental.”
The judgement is a slap in the face for former business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who had ordered an appeal against a previous court decision upholding the worker’s claim.
It is also a victory for millions of workers who will be protected from victimisation by vengeful bosses if they take strike action in the future.
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TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said: “This is a monumental victory for Unison and the whole union movement.
“And it represents yet another crushing legal defeat for the Conservative government’s oppressive strike laws.
THE cost-of-living crisis is still hammering households in every corner of the country, the TUC warned today, as inflation figures remained unchanged and Britain is believed to have slipped into recession.
The union body called for ministers to extend cost-of-living payments which are set to end by March after figures by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation remained at 4 per cent in January.
Food prices fell for the first time by 0.4 per cent since September 2021, with the cost of bread and cereals, cream crackers and chocolate biscuits falling, the ONS said.
The costs are still 7 per cent higher than a year ago.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak insisted that the economy has “turned the corner” following the data.
But the ONS is due to publish gross domestic product (GDP) figures for December on Thursday and is predicted by experts to reveal that Britain’s economy contracted for the second quarter in a row in the final three months of 2023.
