People will starve or freeze to death this year – Neale Hanvey MP

It’s from Dr. Spencer Johnson M.D., author of the New York Times business bestseller Who Moved My Cheese,

“Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”

I’ve always striven to live by this principle, even though speaking the truth has sometimes come at personal cost.

Today I have a very uncomfortable truth to share.

People across the constituency and beyond face the prospect of starving or freezing to death this winter.

That’s the stark, yet very real warning in my inbox today from Citizen’s Advice Scotland.

And let me be clear, this is a predictable, and some may say deliberate, consequence of Tory greed.

I entered frontline politics when the Tories were enabled into power by the Liberal Democrats in 2010. I knew it would herald the re-introduction of their corrosive social policies, but never could I have imagined how bad it would become.

David Cameron’s narrative of meeting the financial crisis ‘together’ was a lie.

The brunt of austerity was born by the poorest, and ordinary workers have endured stagnant wages for 12 years.

All the while the super-rich have seen their wealth soar.

This shameful situation is no more pronounced than with the obscene expenditure on Covid contracts awarded to individuals and companies with close links to the Conservative party. The channelling of billions of pounds of public money into the hands of a well-connected few stands in stark contrast to the relatively miniscule amounts of money attributed to the ‘shirking’ recipients of welfare.

That’s why I support decent people who deserve a decent salary for their work, and why I joined RMT workers on the picket lines again during last week’s industrial action where I stood united with members of CWU, Unite, Unison and the GMB.

And it’s why I still pay my Unison membership dues, because I believe in a unionised workforce.

Across these isles people have no control over energy or fuel costs.

Alongside inflation, interest rates are rising with online enquiries from folk struggling to pay their mortgage.

rising by up to 1,627% from June 2021 to June 2022.

Like the poll tax, striking and demonstration are the only tools people have.

We need radical change in our politics where the people are the priority, not personal advantage and greed, and that’s the truth.

Neale Hanvey is MP for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath.