Protesting at Tory sleaze: Westminster council gerrymandering exposed promise new spending because they refuse to promise to tax the rich or to reduce arms spending.
And they refuse to do anything which might increase inflation. They are tied to the Tories' free-market, deflationary orthodoxy. The net result is that while the Tories are in trouble, they can still get away with murder because the opposition is so feeble.
Major's government is in deep trouble with its public sector wage freeze. A declaration by the major public sector unions that they intended to put forward co-ordinated wage claims and fight for strike action would send the Tories reeling.
The Tories new crisis highlights the tasks for the left in the labour movement. In 1994 there has to be a big push for action against the Tory wage freeze and in defence of the welfare state.
Defence of the welfare state of course centrally involves the fight of public sector workers and service users against cuts and redundancies. But it is also a political fight to hammer out a popular alternative to the economic consensus between the Tory and Labour front benches.
It is a sad comment on the political degeneration of the Labour leadership that it cannot even defend some minimal Keynesian reflationary proposals, let alone radical or socialist solutions.
But their position is leading to deep disquiet at every level of the labour movement.
Opportunity
This means that the opportunity is there in both the Labour Party and the unions to raise the question of breaking the economic consensus and to demand Labour pledges itself to policies that defend the welfare state and full employment.
Of course, in this period the steps needed to carry through such a programme would be enormously radical and challenge the prerogatives of capital.
Full employment means a 35-hour week with no loss of pay. It means huge state investment project - in effect a programme of public works. The money to defend the health service and the rest of the welfare state will not be found without taxing the rich.
The Labour leaders can win yet another election for the Tories if they keep up their present performance. To prevent that happening the left of the labour movement must hammer home the message - mobilise against the wage freeze, defend the welfare state, break the bipartisan economic consensus.