Steve Wright told Left Foot Forward that the government’s record is ‘not good’
The general secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Steve Wright has told Left Foot Forward that Labour is “not moving fast enough” to rebuild public services. He made the comments in an interview at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.
Wright told Left Foot Forward that Labour’s record on rebuilding public services since entering government is “not good”. He then went on to say: “Clearly we’re in a better place than 14 years of austerity that we faced where we lost 12,000 firefighters, fire stations closed, response times going up. But we want to see that change. We’re having lots of discussions, lots of chats but no real firm commitments on anything at the moment.”
Wright added: “We want to see change – they said they would invest in public services, they said they’d have national standards in the fire service to move away from the postcode lottery that we’ve got. Yeah, it’s not moving fast enough for us.”
Turning from the past of the Labour government to its future, Wright spoke to Left Foot Forward about Labour’s deputy leadership election. He said he wanted a deputy leader “that understands trade unions and the trade union movement”, adding that Labour is “our party and we want our voice heard.” Wright then said: “Angela Rayner did that really well actually and I think it’s [her resignation] a bit of a loss for us.”
While he’s critical of the early record of Labour in government, Wright has much stronger words for Reform. He told Left Foot Forward: “Reform pose a massive threat to working people. They can come out with all the policies they want. We’ve looked into some of them and the ones about pensions would be damaging to our union and damaging to public sector workers. But look, they are now leading in 10 councils – many of the fire services are run by County Councils – and they will have an agenda of cuts, they are no friend of working people. I think Nigel Farage is dangerous and actually we need to be opposing him at all levels.”
Later he added “it’s trade unions that represent working people, not Reform.”
Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward
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