 carers in Britain do one of the most important and difficult jobs in the country and they do it for appalling pay. So it's only right that Labour challenged the Tories vociferously on their abandonment of the sector. However, when Liz Kendall, who is Shadow Minister for Care, attacked the government on pay for carers, she also managed to piss off another group of key workers. Despite repeated promises, the truth is you'd be better off stacking shelves at Morrison's than caring for older or disabled people and that is simply not good enough for our country. So that was a debate on Tuesday in the House of Commons. Liz Kendall, I mean, the motivation of the intervention was good. She's saying you don't pay carers enough, but for some reason, some arbitrary reason, I'm not sure why she thought it was a good idea, she made that point by essentially denigrating or seeming to denigrate at least the work of people who work in supermarkets. So she's saying, oh, how could it possibly be the case that we value care less than working in a supermarket? Now, understandably, this pissed off many people who work in supermarkets. Let's go to some responses on Twitter from people who are supermarket workers who weren't particularly pleased with what Liz Kendall said there. First tweet, as a shaft stacker myself, I think the people that have been on the front lines through all this deserve a bit more respect than being someone to be scoffed at. Very reasonable point there. This worker from the very supermarket, Liz Kendall mentioned of the supermarket chain, Liz Kendall mentioned also pretty pissed off. This is vile and disrespectful. Liz Kendall should hang her head in shame. You're sincerely a Morrison's worker. Now, this statement was also predictably pounced upon by opposition politicians in this case, much more opportunistically than the tweets I've shown you previously. So this was the Tory leader in the London Assembly. She says, let me take this opportunity to say thank you to shelf stackers in supermarkets. You are valued hugely by the majority of us. I am sick to death of some constantly belittling certain jobs. Everyone who does an honest job is valuable to all of us in society. What an ignorant and just appalling comment to make, especially now when you thought we would have learned our lesson on about work, about what kinds of work are actually essential, what kinds of work are very difficult and are very skilled, and that has actually rarely corresponded to how that work is valued in society, either socially or economically. There is actually a connection between the devaluing of care work and the devaluing of shelf stacking and supermarket work, because it tends to be the work that makes our world a much more hospitable place that seems to be undervalued in our society, and it's the work that makes our world less hospitable that is somehow much more valued and rewarded in society. What is the job of the Labour Party if not to fight that paradigm that some workers are not worthy of respect and not only to reinforce it but proudly reinforce it? This wasn't like some kind of got-shoot moment. This wasn't like Twitter sleuths digging up past comments. This was something that a speech that Liz Kendall wrote or someone wrote for her, she read out and then posted it to her own Twitter page, which is just such a sign of where the Labour Party or where at least parts of the Labour Party are now, and it represents a kind of really disgusting, what is often called aspiration politics that has plagued the Labour Party. It's also plagued, you know, liberal, anti-racist movements, quote-unquote movements, and it's an approach that basically says that working class people or, you know, racially minoritised people should keep intact the hierarchies that run our world, regardless of how illogical, how damaging they are, and fight for our claim to have a few seats at the top of this false hierarchy. It's like a framework of empowering yourself by keeping the rest of your class or your group down. And the reason I made that connection is because this reminded me of, you know, when liberals or people of colour in upper-class jobs, like, lament their experiences of racism through the lens of like, oh, I'm the CEO but I get mistaken for a cleaner, like, isn't that so terrible? Isn't that the sharp edge of racism? Rather than thinking, you know, why are we accepting the premise that being a cleaner is something that shouldn't be respected and valued and paid well, why are we accepting the premise that it is an insult to be mistaken for a cleaner? Because let me tell you, a world without CEOs is probably going to be much nicer than a world without people who clean our streets, our homes, our buildings, etc. But working-class people, people of colour are encouraged to express their politics through these means precisely because it is so reactionary and it does so much to destroy solidarity, in particular to destroy class solidarity. Like, think how much the liberal press loves the story about, you know, a professional being mistaken for their help, you know, it's seen as the ultimate, like, in the ultimate evidence of racism, even though or, you know, whatever, even though that paradigm is itself part of the problem. So when I was hearing this about Liz Kendall, not only did I think, oh my god, like, have you learned nothing over the past year, but I also, it kind of rang a bell with that sort of trope in a lot of liberal anti-racism that also really pisses me off. And I thought, god, like, this is just such an example of how liberalism has just cannibalised our movements of all of their radical potential. But the good thing is that I definitely think the younger generation and the generations that are taking to the streets, the generations that are becoming very disillusioned with this kind of politics, they're not just accepting that kind of representation, aspirational politics. And so that's kind of where I pin my hope when I switch on Twitter and I see just this absolutely ghastly, self-aggrandising, like, disgusting form of politics that makes me so, like, bristle at the idea that she is in a party that is called the Labour Party. And to be outflanked by Tory as well, just embarrassing, so embarrassing. It really is bizarre for Liz Kendall and her team, and Kirsten Armie, because we know he's quite authoritarian when it comes to what front benchers tweet out, thought that that was okay after a year where literally, in March last year, everyone was saying, the heroes of this moment are people who work in supermarkets, because while everyone else was self-isolating, they had to go out in the middle of the pandemic and make sure that we could all feed ourselves. And the pandemic isn't even over. And they're already using people who work in supermarkets as the example of people whose work is presumably valueless. The fact she was pointing to are also a little bit more ambiguous than she suggested. First of all, you're watching Tiskey's Hour on Navarra Media. We go live every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 7 p.m., if you haven't already, do hit that subscribe button. Let's go to the facts of the matter, because as I say, they aren't as clear cut as Liz Kendall suggested. And so I googled this after watching that clip. I think she might have been referring to, there was a blog from the Kings Fund. So they're the main NGO or research organization when it comes to healthcare. Now they wrote a report in 2019 that was comparing the pay of people in the care sector and people who worked in supermarkets. And we can get up here the comparisons they made. So at this point in time, they did judge that people who worked in care did get significantly worse pay than most people in supermarkets. So the Kings Fund found the average pay for carers was $7.90 per hour, appalling wage there. Iceland was the only supermarket chain that paid less than that, £7.80 outside of London. Tesco slightly higher, which was £8.00 outside of London. And then it gets higher for all chains inside London and up to $10.50 when it comes to little. And Audi, the average pay for working in those supermarkets. And it's important to mention that the reason the Kings Fund did that report wasn't to denigrate supermarket workers, it was that there was a practical problem in the care sector, which was that retaining staff is incredibly difficult because the conditions are awful and the pay is really low. And so people weren't moving from being care workers to working in supermarkets. I mean, it's depressing. But what matters in terms of retention of staff isn't so much is the pay any good, but it is are there alternatives which pay better? So this isn't how the left should be arguing, but in terms of a practical problem that was within the care sector, that comparison makes sense, doesn't make sense in terms of putting moral value on anything, but in terms of retention of workers, you can see how that argument is a one that has some purpose at least. However, I said it's ambiguous because the BBC this year painted a slightly different picture. They used ONS data, that's the Office of National Statistics, to show the various pay levels for key workers compared to whichever and compared to the median national wage. In this case, they show carers as earning slightly more than shop assistants, key workers who are paid the worst of pharmacy assistants, then cleaners, then teaching assistants, then shop assistants, and then care workers. So a slightly different story there. But obviously, when it comes to the politics of this and when it comes to what labour front benchers should be saying in Parliament, the point isn't whether cleaners get paid more than teaching assistants or less than teaching assistants or whether care workers get paid more than shop assistants. It's that all of these essential jobs, people who are doing some of the most difficult jobs in society and some of the most necessary jobs in society, are getting paid a pittance, they're getting paid poverty wages. You can make that point without pitting one group of workers against another group of workers.