The Chancellor, Mr Gordon Brown, issued a robust defence of the British government's economic strategy yesterday, telling the Labour conference there would be no U-turns, and warning trade union leaders they risked a return to the days of "boom and bust".
Amid evidence of mounting activist concern about the implications of the global slowdown, mounting job losses and the role of the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee, the Chancellor told conference: "I say Labour's economic competence, our iron resolution, our prudence for a purpose is hard earned and hard won. We will not sacrifice it for today's standing ovations, tomorrow's headlines, next week's easy slogans or next month's false solutions."
Although Mr Brown won his own standing ovation after reaffirming the government's commitment to long-term stability, two views of the economic realities and options available to the government were on display yesterday in the Winter Gardens.
Mr John Edmunds, general secretary of the GMB union, called on the government to engage in social dialogue as part of a "grown-up debate" about the economy. Unemployment would start to rise next winter, he claimed, telling delegates that many policies aimed at creating full employment would then go "through the shredder".
While a number of trade union leaders insisted they had not been "slapped down" by the Chancellor, Mr Rodney Bickerstaffe, the leader of Unison, Britain's biggest union, made an impassioned plea for "a bit of jam today" for public sector workers. Speaking minutes after the Chancellor, Mr Bickerstaffe demanded: "Don't just give us a vision of the promised land. Give us a place in it."
Mr Bickerstaffe said the public finances had proved healthy enough to permit the repayment of £20 billion of the national debt, and the allocation of an additional £40 billion for health and education. "So why on earth was it necessary for a Labour government to claw back from nurses and midwives and other poorly paid workers the pay rises awarded them?"
He continued: "Let's try a fairer way for public sector pay, so far behind the private sector and the huge City and boardroom hikes. Not jam yesterday, not jam tomorrow, but a little bit of jam today for those who will look after you tomorrow."
But the Chancellor was adamant there was no "quick fix" alternative to his policy. It was to end the cycle of boom and bust that he had made the Bank of England independent. "And it is because the causes of slow growth, unemployment and inflation are the same that there is no longterm solution to unemployment that does not demand a solution to inflation."
Mr Brown went on: "I say to manufacturers, I have understood your immediate concerns about the pound, but you have also told me that the greatest long-term threat to your businesses, and the jobs which depend on them, is the boom-and-bust instability we are determined to avoid. And that is why we have taken tough action for the long term."
Mr Brown said: "It is only because we have corrected these Conservative errors and tackled both the deficit and inflation that people know that in a world of instability Britain is today steering a course of stability." The Labour leadership gave a further signal yesterday that it will be in no rush to judgment on the recommendations of the Jenkins Commission on electoral reform.
Mrs Margaret Beckett, leader of the House of Commons, told conference: "The Lib Dems want to change our electoral system to give them a lot more power than they have now. They demand to be heard because in this they say they speak for the people. But in the 1997 election their share of the vote fell."
Mrs Beckett continued: "They got twice as many MPs with a declining share of the national vote. So let's hear a little less about how the Lib Dems are disadvantaged by our electoral system, whose great virtue is that the British people understand it and know exactly how to use it to get a result they are prepared to live with, as Michael Portillo can testify."
The Ulster Unionist councillor, Mr Chris McGimpsey, is expected to address tonight's Tribune rally from the same platform as the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams. "New Dialogue" organiser Mr Gary Kent welcomed the decision to produce "a balanced platform" as evidence that "many on the left are now wise to the realities and complexities of Northern Ireland politics."