This weekend brought an impressive set of results for Jeremy Corbyn on most counts. No coup, no catastrophe, fewer seat losses than The Conservatives, and of course, the first Labour London Mayor for eight years.
Now, it is a patchy victory, but there is a strong positive trend since the 2015 election, and Corbyn has only been leader for eight months; he'll have four more years to push further. What is striking though, is the effect that strong, left-wing leadership has had on the current Conservative Government's policies. They have been forced to change their anti-worker policies in reaction to the strong criticism from The Labour Party. Here's five horrific policies that would have passed without people voting Labour.
Cutting Tax Credits For Low-Earning Workers
In November George Osborne planned to cut £4.4 billion from tax credits. Tax credits are paid to low earning workers to ensure they have a good quality of life. These are vital to making work pay, and incentivising people out of benefits, and into work. This move showed the Conservatives' true colours to the workers miss-led by Tory media propaganda before the 2015 election. I don't think they will be miss-led again. However, thanks to pressure from the newly left-wing Labour Party, these cuts were able to be prevented. Without Labour voters, and without Corbyn, these cuts could have passed.
Cutting Funding For The Disabled
Personal Independence Payments are benefits given to the most vulnerable people in society - and these are the people the Conservatives wanted to foot the bill to cover the still-gaping deficit - this is not acceptable. Those with the broadest shoulders should carry the heaviest burden, not those who need our help the most. This is the most sickening attempt of injustice I have seen from a mainstream party in my lifetime - and one that showed many voters why the Labour Party needs to exist; to keep immoral people in line.
Preventing Help For Child Refugees
Recently David Cameron has been forced to back down from his plans to ignore helpless Syrian child refugees living without parents in camps. A plan put forward by Labour peer Lord Dubs to resettle child refugees was originally refused by David Cameron, but because of pressure from Labour and rebelling backbench Conservative MPs, he was forced to concede to morality. How one can have such little empathy and be so unnecessarily ruthless is unforgivable.
Cutting Police Jobs
The Tory ideology of cutting without caring stretches further than those who can't speak up for themselves though. Sometimes they go after others too, such as our Police force. We have one of the best police forces in the world, but it is at risk under the control of the Conservatives. Cuts to the police budget were attempted by the government right after the threat of ISIS terrorism became apparent in November, just when we are in such dire need of strong local community policing to prevent it. This one isn't just immoral, it's incompetent. The strong Labour opposition fought this, and won.
Forcing Schools to Convert to Academies
Yet more incompetence is found with the Conservative MP Nicky Morgan and her leadership as education secretary, which doesn't seem to be going much better than that of recently reshuffled Michael Gove. She has u-turned this weekend on her plans to force all schools, even high performing ones, to change the way they are run. This was despite backlash from teachers telling her this could upset schools which are currently working very well. Thanks to Labour supporting teachers in this fight, Nicky's ignorant plans have been prevented, allowing teachers to get on with what they want to do - teach.
