What is the Enough is Enough campaign aiming to achieve?

The Rail, Maritime and Transport (RMT) union general secretary Mick Lynch has thrown his support behind a new grassroots campaign as the UK’s cost of living soars.

Launched by trade unions, community organisations and MPs, Enough is Enough aims to pile pressure on the government and businesses to act.

The campaign “has risen out of the multiple crises faced across the country right now which is set to see two-thirds of UK households potentially in fuel poverty by the winter”, said HuffPost.

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What are the campaign’s aims?

The Enough is Enough website sets out five clear demands:

1. A real pay rise
2. Slash energy bills
3. End food poverty
4. Decent homes for all
5. Tax the rich

It calls for the national minimum wage to rise to £15 an hour (from £9.18 for those aged 21 to 22), public sector pay rises above inflation, a return to the pre-April energy price cap and the nationalisation of energy companies.

It also demands rent controls, the building of more than 100,000 council houses a year and reversing the National Insurance contributions rise. As The Times pointed out, the latter policy is also supported by Tory leadership hopeful Liz Truss.

The campaign hopes to end food poverty by reinstating the £20-a-week universal credit uplift and universal free school meals, along with introducing a new independent regulatory body, which will hold the government to account.

Who is behind it?

The campaign’s website says it was founded by “trade unions and community organisations determined to push back against the misery forced on millions by rising bills, low wages, food poverty, shoddy housing – and a society run only for a wealthy elite”.

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has supported the campaign, along with well-known public figures such as the journalist and author Caitlin Moran and the children’s writer Michael Rosen.

It has also attracted support across the Atlantic. US senator and former presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders has backed Enough is Enough on Twitter. Sharing a tweet from the campaign with his followers, he wrote: “Enough is enough. In the UK and across the world, working people are fighting back.

“They are sick and tired of seeing the rich get richer, while workers fall further and further behind. We stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters in the UK.”

When did it launch?

More than 1,500 people showed up at the Enough is Enough launch rally in Clapham, south London, on 17 August. The event was “full of an energetic sense of solidarity and renewed hope” and “had some of the atmospheres of the Jeremy Corbyn rallies in 2015 or 2017”, said Socialist Worker.

Lynch, who was in attendance, told the crowd: “The working class is back… we refuse to be humbled, we refuse to wait for politicians and we refuse to be poor any more.”

Zarah Sultana, the Labour MP for Coventry South, also appeared at the rally. She said the campaign’s demands were “wildly popular”, adding: “Someone tell the leadership of the Labour Party.”

Covering the evening, Tribune, the socialist magazine, said the mood among speakers was “one of both optimism and anger: not just at how workers have been abandoned in this current crisis, but how they’ve been abandoned over decades”.

Will it succeed?

The Enough is Enough team said early signs are promising. Its website crashed under the pressure of sign-ups just hours after launching as “tens of thousands” of people rushed to add their names to the campaign, reported ITV.

By the end of the day, some 75,000 had signed up and the campaign has since told Good Morning Britain that the tally now stands at above 400,000.

Moving forward, the campaign said it will be holding rallies across the UK in the coming weeks, and will be “organising community groups, supporting picket lines and taking action against companies profiteering from this crisis”.