The Tories have shown exactly whose side they’re on

Today is May Day (otherwise known as International Worker’s Day), when Socialists all over the world try to uncover injustice.

And right on cue, the Tories have shown exactly whose side they are on.

By voting against the crucial paragraph of the Culture, Media and Sport select committee report that states “Rupert Murdoch is not a fit person to exercise the stewardship of a major international company”, the Tories have fallen in behind a media baron, preferring to bash Murdoch’s former underlings rather than lay the blame squarely at the feet of the man in charge, Murdoch himself.

Ever was it thus. The Conservative Party stands for the vested interests of the powerful and the status quo, the Labour Party exists to challenge the existing order of things. That’s why we need to at all times be restless for change. The status quo isn’t good enough if you’re a Labour person – if you thought it was, you’d be a conservative. The clue’s in the name.

There are times when it was easy to feel that Labour fell short of this lofty aim. Sometimes in government it felt like we were comfortable with the status quo – or even (especially for young people) that we were the status quo. We didn’t look like a party who could bring about change and the Tories were able to hamfistedly snatch the mantle of change from us.

They promised change, but instead they doubled down on the status quo. Less growth, more unemployment, tax cuts for the rich, service cuts for the poor and a manifest failure to stand up to vested business and media interests who corrupt our society, our economy and our politics.

Of course as I argued yesterday (and for a week beforehand) the economy should be the only issue in town. But today’s revelations speak to the divided priorities of this Tory government. If only the government had tried to spend as much time saving the economy as they have trying to save Hunt, Brooks, Coulson and Murdoch (junior and senior), then perhaps we wouldn’t be in quite such a mess economically. And yet…

We’re in recession again.

Unemployment stands at 2.65 million .

Youth unemployment stands at 1.03 million.

And it’s workers and families who will pay for that, not the Rupert Murdoch’s of this world. The rich are still getting richer, tax cut or no.

So on this day, International Worker’s Day, we should of course remember whose side the Tories are on. But we should remember too whose side we are on. The change makers. The workers. And those people who need a Labour government most. They’re restless for change. They need it most.

And unless we’re it, someone else will be.