PRITI PATEL: Five years of Sir Keir Starmer will take us again 50 years

Some of my very earliest political memories are of the late 1970s. I was young at the time, but remember my parents, who ran a successful small business, telling me about the strikes which were grinding Britain to a halt.

Back then trade unions were holding James Callaghan’s Labour government hostage with huge pay demands. Britain was crippling under the weight of pressure because the Labour government wasn’t prepared to say no to their pay demands.

Bins were left uncollected in the streets, the dead were not being buried, and public services ground to a halt as the unions demanded ever more.

We knew then that every time the government gave into the trade unions, they would be emboldened to come back for more. What we will now find out all too quickly is that this is still the case now.

Clearly, Keir Starmer’s socialist government has not learnt these lessons from the past. Already, it has shown it will too easily give into militant trade unions who will never stop coming for more money – making unions think they have a blank cheque to keep begging for more.

Let’s look at Labour’s disastrous plans to buckle to the unrealistic demands of the Aslef rail union. For nearly two years, the train drivers’ union has been holding Britain to ransom. There have been 18 days of travel disruption and unreliability, causing chaos on our railways. They have prevented people getting to school or work, and the economic cost is astronomical.

Any responsible government would not have given into Aslef’s unaffordable demands.

It would have stood up to the union and pushed for agreements on reforms to help modernise and improve rail services, delivering better values for commuters and taxpayers.

But weak Sir Keir and Labour didn’t even put up a fight. And what reward did they get? More strikes from the very union they just caved into – and threats of industrial action from other unions concerned that their members have not received as generous an award.

This is sadly just going to be the tip of the iceberg. We’ve seen Labour take millions of vulnerable pensioners’ winter fuel allowance payments with one hand –shamelessly blaming the previous government’s record – whilst handing junior doctors a 22 per cent pay rise on the other. More and more unions are going to come begging for more money.

What Labour has done is go down a very slippery slope. It is telling unions that this government is not strong enough to say no. They will keep holding Sir Keir to ransom with unreasonable pay demands all whilst weakening the service the British public get.

And, as the Mail revealed this week, the trade unions have Labour in their pockets having already supported more than half of Sir Keir’s MPs to fight elections with donations to bolster their campaign funds.

The Labour Government’s socialist agenda is now clear for everyone to see. Ministers are wilfully handing out multi-billion-pound pay settlements using taxpayers’ money with no care for the reduced quality in public service the British public is going to get in return.

This immoral, big-state government will remind people that socialism never works – but it also comes at a price: the loss of freedom and choice.

Whether it is parents being punished with taxes on school fees by this vindictive Labour government or businesses anxious about new taxes and red tape, no country can flourish if its economic and social fabric are dominated by state control.

It will sap the lifeblood out of the economy, weaken productivity and kill any sense of aspiration. With emboldened trade unions, higher taxes and our freedoms being lost, under Labour, we are heading straight back to the 1970s.

Just five years of Starmer will take Britain back 50 years.