Millionaire-backed Reform considers slashing minimum wage

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) is exposing on X the dangerous impact Reform MP Richard Tice would have if he makes it to office.

Live on LBC, Tice stated that Reform would:

Will consider cutting the minimum wage for younger workers.

This demonstrates how disastrously out of touch Tice is with the very voters he’s trying to win over.

The post below from the TUC underscores the contrast between billionaire-funded Reform UK, and the real challenges facing ordinary people — just trying to make ends meet.

Richard Tice: “100% of nothing is nothing”

The original LBC interview went as follows:

Ben Kentish: If you were in government, would reform cut the minimum wage for young people to get more of them into work? Is that on the table?

Richard Tice: Well, we’ll be talking about that over the coming weeks. We’ve got to re-look at it because the evidence is immediately there within a matter of six to nine months. But this has had a catastrophic impact as well, of course, of the impact of national insurance contribution rises, employment rights, fears from the dreadful employment rights bill. All of these things have a cumulative impact, which means that employers are saying, why should I take the risk?

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Kentish: A potential pay cut for millions of young workers on the minimum wage is something you are considering?

Tice: If you’re unemployed, I mean, 100% of nothing is nothing.

Kentish: But we’re talking specifically about the minimum wage here and whether it needs to be cut for young people.

Tice: But the wage is irrelevant if you’re not employed. If businesses are not employing you, so it’s much better to say, actually, we look at…

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Kentish: But the young people who are employed on the minimum wage obviously would also be affected by a cut in the minimum wage.

Tice: And that’s why I’m not going to make policy on the hoof. That’s why you’ve got to look at the implications of this.

Kentish: But you’re looking at it.

Tice: We’ve got to look at all of this because they’ve got themselves in a terrible pickle and sometimes it’s then quite hard to unwind these things.

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Kentish: And to young people who say, well, I’m in work, I’m earning the minimum wage, why on earth would I vote Reform if they think I should potentially earn even less than I’m getting?

Tice: That’s…

Kentish: What would you say?

Tice: Well, that’s not what I’m saying. What I’m saying is other young people are not being employed who could be and should be because of this extra cost. And it’s a significant disadvantage. But it’s now… it’s a complicated issue.

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Unfortunately, Kentish misses another reality: giving bosses ‘recruitment discounts’ through low pay requirements doesn’t lift people out of poverty.

Many will still need benefits to survive, with taxpayers footing the bill for what rich employers refuse to pay. After all, workers can’t get their PAYE sent to offshore tax havens — they’re captured by the tax system from the get-go.

Once again, the majority are forced to bear the burden the super-rich continue to shrug-off.

Reform stand with bosses, not workers

This interview exposes how a billionaire-backed party puts profit before people. In the past five years, “greedflation” has driven record returns for executives and shareholders, while ordinary households have faced tightening budgets and rising hardship.

The Canary’s own James Wright wrote yesterday:

The neoliberal system leaves 40 percent of Britons with less than £25 at the end of each week, a survey by the Cost of Living Action (COLA) group has found. This is a pittance and unlikely to stretch far under the cost of living crisis, where even employed people are finding themselves out of pocket.

He added:

Privatised essentials like energy and extractive supermarket chains are driving the cost of living crisis. British Energy companies alone have accrued £125bn since 2020, according to the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.

Meanwhile, profits for the German-owned supermarket, Lidl, rose by 297% since 2021. As for Aldi, its operating profit has risen by 50% and 72% since 2020.

While costs have increased due to climate change and other factors, supermarkets are using these pressures not to break even but to fatten profit margins – otherwise known as ‘greedflation’.

In other words, the fuel feeding the cost-of-living fire is the ‘privatisation tax’ on common essentials – not a natural disaster but a manmade problem.

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Claiming the unemployed must accept lower pay might soothe some. But the rich’s growing wealth proves they could pay fairly — they just won’t.

It’s far more appealing for them to watch their bank balances swell than to invest in fairly paid staff — especially if it means sacrificing one of their many extravagances.

Therefore, Kentish rightly highlights that reductions to the minimum wage won’t only affect unemployed workers taking new jobs – they will ripple far wider. This makes clear, a Reform government will affect all workers at a time when people are feeling absolutely done in trying to keep going on shoestring budgets and rocketing private rents. As the TUC aptly pointed out in their subsequent post.

One X account posted a stark rebuke to those voting for Reform:

These Boomer Cunts thinking of voting Reform will have to look their Grandchildren in the eyes and say ‘Yes, I voted for your abject misery’.

Under Reform, workers pay will be slashed

As if we didn’t need another reason to see that these bellends have zero intention of tackling the issues impacting ordinary people countrywide.

In fact, this party is a gathering of the very people  whose greed and influence created Britain’s economic hellscape in the first place.

We will not stop exposing the deep rot that runs through this deplorable party.

Featured image via Kent Online