Brown's crowd pleasers' fall flat

Sep 11 2007 by Haydon Wood, Liverpool Daily Post

GORDON BROWN’S maiden TUC speech as Prime Minister fell flat yesterday amid a storm of criticism over public sector pay, workers’ rights and Europe.

Despite a series of suppos-edly crowd-pleasing announcements designed to boost jobs and protect employees, Mr Brown received a lukewarm response from delegates at the Brighton conference.

Union leaders dismissed the 40-minute address as a “lecture”, and warned their members could start to “walk away” from Labour unless the Premier took their concerns more seriously.

Within hours of Mr Brown delivering an uncompro-mising rejection of above-inflation pay rises, union leaders announced workers in the biggest Whitehall department had overwhelm-ingly rejected a three-year deal, raising the threat of strike action.

The vote, by members of the Public and Commercial Services Union, fuelled specu-lation that the Government faces an ‘autumn of discon-tent’ by millions of public sector employees.

Mr Brown told delegates he would “always put stability first”, hammering home the point that there would be “no loss of discipline, no resort to the easy options, no unafford-able promises, no taking risks with inflation”. He said: “Let me be straightforward with you – pay discipline is essential to prevent inflation, to maintain growth and create more jobs – and so that we never return to the boom and bust of the past,” he said.

If inflation was allowed to get out of control, the country could go back to the “same old familiar pattern” of spiralling prices, high unemployment and public spending cuts that there had been under the Tories, according to Mr Brown.

“Because this government will take no risks with the economy I will only make promises we can afford. For me it will be stability first, now and in the future – stability yesterday, today and tomorrow – and that will mean more jobs.”

As the Premier rose some delegates held up protest placards which read “Fair Pay for Public Servants”.

The audience listened in stony silence, with only a few ripples of approval during passages about the unveiling of a statue of Nelson Mandela in Parliament Square, moves to bolster enforcement of the minimum wage, and a pledge to stand up to the BNP.