Whether it’s the bully-boy threat to ban workers taking strike action, the imposition of a real- terms pay cut on public sector pay, or the attacks on the jobs and conditions of rail and postal workers, Johnson’s government is hellbent on bashing the working class.

Johnson’s Cabinet of millionaires is oblivious to the suffering experienced by hard-pressed families, as they preside over the most severe cost of living crisis in decades.

While in-work poverty has become endemic in Tory Britain, Johnson’s sole concern has been for his own political survival and loosening grasp on power, against the backdrop of growing internal opposition from his own MPs at Westminster.

Although, there’s real opposition from the trade union and labour movement, which manifested itself in a show of strength today on Saturday in one of the most critical demonstrations for many years, by the Trades Union Congress (TUC). The TUC ‘We Demand Better – Enough is Enough’ march and rally in London had scant coverage in the national and mainstream media, with internecine Tory battles over Johnson’s tattered leadership dominating the airwaves and column inches.

However, many thousands of trade unionists, anti-poverty campaigners, and Labour Party members from across the country, met in the capital for a landmark protest, demanding decisive action to boost wages and plummeting living standards.

The Rail Maritime and Transport (RMT) union’s General Secretary, Mick Lynch, has quite rightly stated that Britain ‘deserves a pay rise’ and that ‘the British working class should not have to beg to address the cost-of-living crisis that faces us’.

As a Labour MP, I’m proud to stand wholeheartedly with the rail workers, who have been denied a pay increase for three years on the bounce, against a backdrop of inflation rocketing by 11.3 per cent, making it impossible for employees to keep up with the cost of living, and afford soaring food prices, as well the soaring fuel bills piled on us by the energy companies.

Likewise, with our postal workers, who are being forced to shoulder a pay freeze, despite the Post Office racking up a £35 million profit in 2020-21, by bosses who are egged on by the rabid anti-trade union rhetoric and practice of the Tory government.

What a grotesque insult it is to refuse reasonable pay claims from these two groups of workers, who bravely continued to run our trains and deliver our letters and parcels at the height of the Covid pandemic, when they literally put their own lives and health on the line in the interests of public service.

Rail workers and postal employees were among Britain’s Covid heroes, and it is high time this was recognised with a respectful and proper pay increase.

It’s now an all-too-familiar sight in our towns, cities and villages, to see people in queues for food banks or the outdoor soup kitchens, provided by the generous souls from charitable, community and faith groups.

That level of in-work poverty is an indictment of twelve years of Tory rule, and the TUC straplines for the protest of ‘Enough is Enough’ and ‘We Demand Better’ could not be more apt.

Instead of action from this government, we get Tory MPs like Boris Johnson cheerleader Lee Anderson, telling poverty-stricken families that they ‘cannot budget’ and ‘cannot cook properly’.

This grossly offensive attitude was echoed by Tory minister Rachel Maclean, who the day after Anderson’s intervention, crassly told workers to cope with rising costs by ‘taking on more hours or moving to a better paid job’. Only last month transport secretary Grant Shapps told a Sunday newspaper that the government was considering stripping rail workers of their right to take industrial action.

It’s a pernicious climate of attacks on the working class that is reminiscent of the Thatcher era. Not to mention the ‘On yer Bike’ rhetoric of Norman Tebbit, with his callous demand in the early 1980s that workers should abandon their own communities in search of work.

As trade unionists took to the streets in London, it represented the launch of a movement in support of a New Deal for Working People.

The pay claims of the rail, postal workers, and all other employees must be met, with backdated wages, and money lost during disputes restored to employees.

Rail and postal workers deserve better pay - Andy McDonald MP