AS AN avid follower of North American sports, I recently came across a bizarre event called the Tournament of Preposterous Statements.

Organised by Minnesota radio station KFAN, it showcases the most ridiculous pronouncements of sports commentators.

If there was a similar event for politicians, you could bet that the likes of Nigel Farage, Sarah Palin or Boris Johnson would be strong contenders for the top prize.

However, David Cameron’s recent claim that the Tory Party is now “the party of working people” would most certainly secure the “blue riband.”

As a preposterous statement that one takes some beating.

It is worth remembering some of the achievements of “the party of working people” over the past five years: severe, unnecessary and ideological austerity which deliberately targeted society’s most vulnerable; a collapse in real wages without precedent since the 1850s; a surge in low-wage, insecure jobs with the number of zero-hours contracts growing by 400,000; charges for industrial tribunals leading to an 80 per cent fall in new claims — with women and low-wage workers worst affected; bribes for workers to give up their employment rights, including the right to claim for unfair dismissal, in exchange for company shares and revoking the 114-year-old civil liability of employers for their workers’ health and safety, making it exceptionally difficult to gain compensation for injury or death at work.

That’s quite an impressive anti-worker record for the self-proclaimed party of working people.

And what wonders does their manifesto have in store for the next parliament?

Another £30 billion departmental and £12bn welfare cuts, all currently unspecified; a promise to attack the facility time of trade union reps; a promise to repeal what they refer to as “nonsensical restrictions” which prevent employers from hiring agency staff to scab during strikes and, most significantly, a commitment to introduce ballot thresholds which will effectively outlaw industrial action in public services and utilities.

The Tory strike ballot proposals are an outright attack on the fundamental, democratic right of workers to withdraw their labour. They are an affront to civil liberties and a violation of International Labour Organisation conventions. They are presented as a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.

In Britain we don’t have a strike “problem.” The most recent figures we have on strikes in Britain is from 2013, when only 1 per cent of British workers participated in a strike.

There were only around 100 strikes, most of which were in the private and not the public sector, and the number of working days lost due to strikes was 1.4 per cent of the 28.2 million days lost to work-related accidents and ill health.

Based on that evidence, you would think that the priority of government would be to strengthen health and safety regulations rather than those governing strike ballots.

On the contrary, what the “party of working people” plans is another £10bn of cuts to what they call “red-tape,” but what in reality is health and safety and employment protection.

It is interesting that the only proposals the Tories have for ballot thresholds is in relation to strike ballots. In 2013, the current British government’s reform of the way top executive pay is set by shareholders left decisions to be based on a simple majority of those voting. No ballot thresholds for the bosses!

But strikes in the public sector are more disruptive to our public services and the economy than the level of executive pay, they argue.

The coalition’s austerity policies have, each and every day, caused more damage to public services and our economy than public-sector strikes.

Yet the point seems to be lost on the Tories that it was excessive levels of executive pay, the increased income inequality that accompanied it and the corruption in corporate behaviour that it provoked — particularly in our financial institutions — that caused the 2008 crash and the great recession that followed. We are still recovering from it now.

The agenda of the “party of working people” is carefully designed to undermine the bargaining power, living standards and human rights of working people. Is transparently anti-worker, anti-trade union and profoundly anti-democratic.

We know that the most enduringly successful economies in the world have high levels of trade union density and collective bargaining coverage. They also have more active and participatory democracies.

If Labour and the SNP are serious about reducing inequality and about tackling the cost of living crisis, they must not shy away from a positive policy agenda on union rights, the extension of collective bargaining and an increase in levels of workplace democracy.

That will be the demand of the STUC Congress when it meets in Ayr this week.

It is not enough for both parties just to oppose Tory plans on strike ballots. That is the least we should expect.

If they are truly progressive parties, they need to raise their voices in support of the right to strike and for the introduction of secure online and secret workplace ballots.

Labour, by continuing to oppose the devolution of workplace protection powers, is missing a golden opportunity to forge the enduring home rule settlement it claims to desire. It is spurning the opportunity to improve the lives of people, not just in Scotland but across Britain.

And the SNP would do far better to concentrate on the real powers we need to create a better society, the powers over minimum wages, employment law, health and safety and trade union freedom, rather than prioritising full fiscal autonomy in the face of clear evidence that it would be to our detriment.

The SNP would be well-advised to forget fiscal autonomy and make the devolution of employment protection a red-line issue in any post-election negotiations with Labour.

It is clear that the election of a Tory government would be a disaster for working people. Far from being the party of working people as it claims, the Conservative Party agenda is one that is carefully designed to undermine the bargaining power, living standards and human rights of working people.

It is, and always be, the party of privilege and patronage, the party of the rich and for the rich, the party of prejudice and intolerance and hopefully on the May 8 the party of opposition.

• Grahame Smith is STUC general secretary.