POACHING: Targeting core Labour voters, May’s Conservatives promises more workers’ rights -
ABINGDON: British Prime Minister Theresa May was confronted by an angry voter over welfare cuts on Monday as she made a rare public walkabout ahead of the June election.
The woman, who gave her name as Cathy, said she had learning difficulties and challenged May over changes to state handouts for disabled people. “I can’t live on £100 (118 euros, $129) a month!” she said.
May, who has been accused of avoiding the public in the campaign for the June 8 vote, tried repeatedly to answer Cathy but was interrupted.
“The fat cats keep the money and us lot get nothing,” Cathy said in the Oxfordshire market town of Abingdon, west of London.
May responded by saying that “we’ve got a lot of plans” and the goal was to ensure welfare payments are “focused on those who are most in need”. Some shoppers stopped to shake the prime minister’s hand during the 11-minute visit, and she posed for pictures.
One man told her to “keep it up”, while May was also told she was the “best of a bad bunch”, to which she responded: “I’ll take that as flattering.”
May was likely to promise to extend British workers’ rights in the workplace and the boardroom, part of a push to win over traditional working class supporters of the opposition Labour Party in next month’s election.
May, appointed prime minister after Britain voted to leave the European Union last June, wants to seal a decisive victory for her Conservative Party in the June 8 election to strengthen her hand in the Brexit talks, but opposition parties said her latest bid was part of a campaign to “fool” working people.
On a visit to southern England, May will commit to keeping EU guarantees on workers’ rights, getting workers represented on company boards and protecting pensions from “irresponsible behaviour by company bosses” — a clear reference to billionaire Philip Green who oversaw the demise of department store BHS.
May will also outline plans to tackle pay gaps between different races and ages, introducing a demand for employers to be transparent to correct “an injustice which cannot be allowed in 21st century Britain”.
“Our plans... will be the greatest expansion in workers’ rights by any Conservative government in history,” May will say, according to excerpts from her speech.
“There is only one leader at this election who will put rights and opportunities for ordinary working families first.”
Labour accused May of making “ridiculous claims”.
“Theresa May is taking working people for fools,” said Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s campaigns and elections chairman.
“The Tories (the Conservatives) have spent the last seven years prioritising the few, opposing Labour’s proposals to give workers more rights and overseeing wage stagnation which has left people worse off,” Gwynne said.
The finance spokesman of the centrist Liberal Democrats, Vince Cable, said he had experience of the Conservatives trying to ban workers from striking when he was part of the 2010-2015 coalition government and urged voters not to trust them.
May’s governing Conservative Party has a clear lead in the opinion polls, but her aides say she does not want to become the latest victim of misleading predictions after pollsters wrongly forecast last year that Britain would vote to stay in the EU.
Using one of her campaign catchphrases, she again took aim at Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, saying his “nonsensical policies would trash the economy and destroy jobs”.Listing 11 commitments, May said she would increase the “national living wage” in line with median earnings, give new protections to “gig” economy workers and offer a new statutory right for workers to receive information about major decisions in companies, in keeping with the rights of shareholders.
— Agencies
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