McAnea calls for general election and declares workers “can’t take any more”

UNISON general secretary Christina McAnea has called for a general election, accusing the government of “playing roulette” with the public finances and declaring that workers “can’t take any more”.

Addressing the annual TUC Congress today, the union leader said: “What a shameful period in our history. In-work poverty has spread right across our public services. Working people have struggled through austerity, a deadly pandemic and are in the middle of a devastating cost-of-living crisis.

“They now face a repeat of the penny-pinching austerity programme begun in 2010. Meanwhile, the government has been playing roulette, racking up debt on the public tab. Their gambling always ends with the same result – that working people lose.”

Jeremy Hunt warned on Monday that the government will have to make “difficult decisions” on tax and spending in coming weeks, adding that government departments would “redouble their efforts to find savings” and that “some areas of spending will need to be cut”.

The new Chancellor announced that the government will reverse “almost all” the tax measures unveiled in the mini-Budget, which was delivered by his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng last month.

Kwarteng was sacked as Chancellor on Friday amid the ongoing economic turmoil that has followed the fiscal statement. The pound crashed to its lowest level to date against the dollar, and government borrowing costs soared. Mortgage rates reached their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis in early October.

McAnea told Congress today: “The government has run out of people to blame. These are mistakes all of their own making. Ministers can’t blame the last government because they were part of it. They can’t blame the markets for overreacting, nor global events. It’s time for them to take responsibility.

“They must take responsibility for a decade of public spending cuts and depressed public sector wages that have run down essential services. Political choices that have made the economy weaker and working people poorer.”

The union leader added: “Liz Truss quietly apologised but only for bringing in her changes too quickly. While she chops and changes her Chancellors and policies, the chaos continues. It reeks of desperation. Not desperation to save the country. But to save the Tories.

“The party is sinking in the polls because mortgage repayments, energy bills, and food and travel costs are up. The country can’t take any more. Workers can’t take any more. Only a general election can get rid of this bunch of chancers.”

McAnea said Hunt’s record as Health Secretary makes her “genuinely concerned about what’s to come”. She accused the current Health Secretary Therese Coffey of seeming “happy to wave goodbye” to nurses asking for higher pay.

Coffey claimed on Sunday that the government has “acted” on pay for NHS staff, declaring that ministers have “intervened in a number of different ways” to help with the cost of living. On nurses leaving the health service to go abroad, she said: “It is their choice, of course, if they want to do that.”

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) launched an industrial action ballot earlier this month over the government’s latest pay award and NHS understaffing – the college’s first UK-wide strike ballot in its 106-year history.

The RCN ballot is due to close on November 2nd. Other groups of workers within the health service, including junior doctors and physiotherapists, are also threatening to go on strike over pay and understaffing.