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Daily Mirror
an hour ago
- Daily Mirror
Rayner slams Tories for spreading 'made-up nonsense' on so-called banter ban
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said Labour workers rights' reforms were designed to protect employees from harassment and abuse, and would not police free speech Angela Rayner has accused the Tories of 'spreading made-up nonsense' about a so-called banter ban in workplaces. The Deputy Prime Minister said Labour's workers' rights reforms were designed to protect employees from harassment and abuse, and would not police free speech. The Employment Rights Bill contains a duty on bosses to take 'reasonable steps' to prevent third parties from harassing their staff. Ms Rayner rubbished claims from top Tory Andrew Griffith that "innocent office banter will be spied on by wokerati thought police" and denied businesses forced to hire diversity officers to monitor speech. She told the Mirror: "Nobody should be abused while doing their job, but we've seen a horrific rise in violent abuse and harassment of shop workers and other public facing staff. 'The Tories can't defend their opposition to the action this Labour government is taking to protect workers, so they've resorted to spreading made-up nonsense. 'It's the same old Tories – they're on the side of bad bosses, zero-hours contracts and fire-and-rehire.' Right-wingers and big businesses have mounted a concerted push to resist the Government's plans for stronger protections for workers. But a recent poll of 5,000 people for the TUC found eight in ten (79%) people support the plans to protect workers from harassment. Only 14% of respondents said they did not support the idea. TUC General Secretary Paul Nowak told the Mirror: "This is truly desperate stuff from the Tories. 'They're insulting people's intelligence by pretending that protecting workers from harassment is the same as banning banter. 'Stopping harassment at work is one of the most popular policies in the government's Employment Rights Bill. 'But yet again the Conservatives are siding with bad bosses over working people and showing how woefully out of touch they are. This is about basic decency and common sense.' A Government spokesperson said: "No business would be required to hire staff to monitor speech or diversity under the Employment Rights Bill. "The Bill will not affect anyone's right to lawful free speech, which this government stands firmly behind. "Upsetting remarks do not fall within the definition of harassment. "We are strengthening workplace protections to tackle harassment and protect employees from intimidating and hostile abuse as well as sexual harassment."
Telegraph
2 hours ago
- Telegraph
Have no sympathy for Labour's ‘grown-ups', they brought this on themselves
The pattern for life under Labour has been set. Ministers, hopelessly out of their depth, try to save money, fail, reverse, ending up spending more, and yet the Left calls them closet-Tories and swans off to Jeremy Corbyn. The excess of lefty MPs in the Commons hasn't brought order to Labour but, like an experiment involving overbred mice in a cage, they've started to eat each other. No 10 will try to make a virtue of this. They will say: 'Keir Starmer is where the public is. He is trying to fix the mess left by the Tories in a fair way – balance the books, control the borders – and opposition from both Corbyn and Reform proves he is the non-ideological man we need.' He's the human version of the BBC. Everyone hates it, so it must be good. Except no one watches the BBC anymore, just as dwindling numbers vote Labour, and the vision of Starmer as a man patrolling the middle-ground doesn't ring true. It's more accurate of Rachel Reeves. For all her sins, she's been saying the same things for over a decade (loudly, through a fixed smile). As shadow work and pensions minister, she promised to be tougher on benefits than George Osborne. She did not serve under Corbyn. She called for immigration to be curbed after Brexit. By contrast, Starmer's career is built on a series of U-turns he believes it is our patriotic duty to forget. Forget that he was a militant Remainer, that he knelt for Black Lives Matter or that he won the Labour leadership calling Corbyn's manifesto 'our foundational document' stuffed with 'radicalism and hope'. Starmer, who said 'the free market has failed', stood for a 'moral socialism' that 'opposes austerity'. Left-wing activists had spent the 2010s alleging that welfare reform amounted to murder; John McDonnell quoted someone saying they wished to 'lynch' Esther McVey. Starmer's Labour might have turned on the Corbynites, but it drew from the same pool of assumptions and resentments. Torsten Bell called the two-child benefit cap immoral. David Lammy said his constituents were 'ruined by austerity, left hungry by Universal Credit'. Angela Rayner apologised for calling Conservatives 'homophobic, racist, misogynistic… scum.' Starmer ran ads that suggested Rishi Sunak was soft on paedophiles and his wife was a tax dodger. He called Boris 'pathetic', a man who 'had no principles, no integrity' (I 'loathed' him, he later said). Having abandoned a coherent critique of Tory economics – which, to be fair, had no coherence anyway – Starmer reframed politics from Left v Right to Good v Evil, and this is what a new generation of MPs presumably believed when they won in 2024. Everything the Tories had done was wicked and unnecessary, a choice born of greed. So, what happened when Reeves took over the Treasury, found Rishi had in fact spent too much money, and announced that 'Dickensian choices' had morphed into Labour necessities? Hurt and panic. Akin to a Puritan discovering their mother is a lush and daddy frequents a drag bar. And so the children rebelled – and we should have no sympathy for the adults who once claimed to be back in charge. Why? Because their moral tone before entering office implied that any effort to limit the state was class violence. Another example from Torsten Bell (there are many): in 2021 he wrote that revising the Covid-era uplift to Universal Credit, worth £20 a week, might damage not only 'family finances' but people's 'mental health'.Tory policy could drive you mad. Of course, the Left has well established in the popular mind that mental health is as serious as physical, so must get PIPs; that Britain is a nation of immigrants and human rights, so we can't deport lawbreakers; and the Earth is on fire, so we can't use new sources of fossil fuel. Many of the problems Labour inherited are the by-products of assumptions Labour has helped embed within British institutions (including within the Tory Party, which is why it did little to reverse the trend). Why was Starmer shouted at when he laid a wreath for the victims of the Southport killer last year? Why has Reeves been derided for crying in the Commons? Because most voters do not see Labour as a change agent with Fairy-soft clean hands, but rather as the latest iteration of a grubby establishment that has run this country for decades, and which shares as much blame as the Conservatives for where we are – arguably, more. New Labour bound Westminster with legal restraints, such as the Human Rights Act or the Climate Change Act, while empowering quangos that operate as watchdogs against elected officials. Whoever you vote for, policy options are narrowed so far that we can really only travel in one direction. Thus the economy is in constant crisis because spending is axiomatic, frugality penalised and alternatives for growth shut off (ask Liz Truss). Reeves, in her first year, found herself testing what this political system would tolerate with her modest mix of tax hikes and savings. Last week's welfare rebellion rules out further cuts, while her fiscal rules render it harder to borrow, leaving only taxes on the table, which will kill the growth that grows the pie that makes progressive government feasible. Changing course will be difficult. Starmer and Corbyn have profound differences, but they share the psychological defect of seeing themselves as Very Good People – a condition that makes it easy to give criticism but hard to take it. Good People cannot accept they are wrong because their rightness, or righteousness, is the rock upon which they construct a life. Sitting in Westminster, it's fun to hear Labour MPs bitch about each other. The Starmerites truly loathe the Corbynites; they are 'professional activists 'who harm the people they're meant to help'. The Corbynites say the Starmerites will never fix a capitalist system they don't understand, and thus haven't learnt to hate. Out of power, this conflict was barely worth a column in the Morning Star, but as we enter Year Two of the revolution, journalists must study every nuance, unpack every conference motion, to see where this civil war is taking us. If you want a vision of the future, Winston, it is pro-Gaza activists glueing themselves to a truck at London's Pride parade on Saturday. Black flags v rainbow flags. A family row with consequence, because the entire country is stuck in the traffic behind, pumping the horn, waving our fists, but going nowhere.
Scottish Sun
2 hours ago
- Scottish Sun
I know why Rachel Reeves cried at PMQs – and it's a frightening scenario for our country
Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) RACHEL REEVES was crying at PMQs last week. What was significant was that it was in full public view, on the floor of the House of Commons. Sign up for Scottish Sun newsletter Sign up 4 Rachel Reeves crying during PMQs is a frightening sign 4 The waterworks on display from her this week were more about the future than the past Credit: AP She seemed hot and bothered. The atmosphere in the house, particularly in the summer, can be oppressive and the chamber of the Commons is not a comfortable place, even at the best of times. To my mind, however, Reeves was under a different kind of pressure. The waterworks on display from her this week were more about the future than the past. Her plan to cut spending by reforming welfare has been sabotaged. She will have to find more money. This includes £1.5billion to pay for Labour's winter fuel U-turn. Sheer helplessness And a £4.5billion gap after Sir Keir Starmer ditched plans to cut disability benefits. Coupled with sluggish growth, we all know what is coming. In the words of Fagin's song from the musical Oliver!, she will 'have to pick a pocket or two', entirely legally of course, to make the sums add up. Kwasi speaks out after being sacked & reveals he 'fled' after being ousted The impact of high immigration, low growth and already high taxes means that we can barely afford to pay for our welfare state. Her crying, I am sure, was a sign of the frustration she feels in her job. I did the job for some short turbulent weeks and I know the feeling of helplessness that it often entails. There is the feeling of being besieged. In politics, you are never in control of events, but the sense of sheer helplessness often does occur when you are in a senior position. At times like that, you have to adopt the old English 'stiff upper lip', in my view. Senior figures have to hold things together, when things are getting sticky. Nobody was better at that than our late Queen. She never cried, never got teary or outwardly sentimental, even under the most extreme provocation. Yet, as I saw Reeves on the front bench on Wednesday, I totally understood her predicament. The left-wing backbenchers in her party despise her. 4 The Chancellor's plan to cut spending by reforming welfare has been sabotaged Credit: PA They haven't even bothered to conceal their contempt. They want her out. Left-wing outrage is now being expressed by the creation of a new party. Jeremy Corbyn has said 'there is a thirst for an alternative' and 'a grouping will come together'. Time will tell if any of Labour's left wing — the usual awkward squad — actually join Corbyn's 'grouping'. Now Zarah Sultana, another left-wing firebrand MP, is going to join. Reeves is entirely dependent on the goodwill and patience of the PM Kwasi For all these types, Reeves is the scapegoat for everything they think is wrong with Labour in power. For hard-left MPs, Reeves and Keir Starmer stand for nothing. There is no love lost between them and the Labour leadership. In addition to the trouble from the Left, we read that some of Reeves's Cabinet colleagues have been briefing against her. She had warned them on Tuesday that tax rises in the autumn budget will be needed to cover the costs of the welfare U-turn. While the Institute for Fiscal Studies says she could be facing a £30billion black hole. Clearly, the welfare climbdown has made Angela Rayner more powerful. Reeves's position is obviously weaker. It is obvious that Reeves is a totally isolated figure within the Labour Party. Reeves's weak position is made worse by the fact that the prospects for the economy and taxes remain grim Kwasi Her position is similar to the school swot shunned by her peers in the playground. She provokes their antagonism and distrust. She is entirely dependent on the goodwill and patience of the PM. I know how that feels. Based on my personal experience, I think Starmer would be mad to get rid of her. Such a move would merely shorten his shelf life. His critics within Labour would feel emboldened to come after him. Yet I can tell you Prime Ministers, under extreme pressure, can do crazy things. He may well yet kick her to the kerb. Reeves's weak position is made worse by the fact that the prospects for the economy and taxes remain grim. Failing to get the welfare bill through in its original form means the £5billion savings won't materialise. Taxes, she has hinted, will have to go up. Even Reeves knows in her bones that higher taxes will kill our prospects for economic growth, for greater prosperity Kwasi Nobody knows which taxes will go up, but increases are on the way. All this pressure, and the prospect of more challenging days ahead are clearly weighing on the mind of the Chancellor. I know what the pressure feels like. I never felt like crying but we all deal with pressure differently. I won't condemn her for her tears. 'Doom loop' It's the substance of what they are doing and the tax-and-spend policies which I object to. There doesn't seem to be an end in sight. More spending and higher taxes. When she was in Opposition, Reeves spoke about the 'doom loop' we faced as a country. Low growth accompanying high spending and even higher taxes. Rinse and Repeat. That's the doom loop. A world where Britain spirals downwards, economically, to reach a point where living standards decline. Even Reeves knows in her bones that higher taxes will kill our prospects for economic growth, for greater prosperity. It is this frightening scenario, I suspect, which caused the teary outburst from the Chancellor.
