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LABOUR mayors must boldly face up to the problems before them if they are to honour their promises to disabled people, TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said yesterday.
Opening the trade union centre’s disabled workers’ conference in London, she rallied delegates to “fight the politics of hate” and warned that disabled benefits claimants had been smeared as scroungers and that scapegoated migrant workers were being used for little pay.
“What a victory it was when, in the face of such a dirty and racist campaign, last week London voted to put a Labour mayor in power in City Hall,” Ms O’Grady said, “a victory that, along with the new Labour mayors in Bristol, Salford and Liverpool too, gives us new opportunities to make lives better for disabled people.”
Labour will find increases in the state pension age are unacceptable, just as cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, personal independence payments and universal credit are — it needs to change direction immediately, writes PCS general secretary FRAN HEATHCOTE
CLAUDIA WEBBE argues that Labour gains nothing from its adoption of right-wing stances on immigration, and seems instead to be deliberately paving the way for the far right to become an established force in British politics, as it has already in Europe
DIANE ABBOTT MP warns Starmer’s newly declared war on foreigners and scroungers won’t fix housing or services — only class struggle against austerity can do that, and defeat Farage in the process