Feeling disappointed by the Tories’ Taylor review would be an act of pure naivety. As a political force, the Tories exist to defend the interests of employers and those with wealth and power. That is their prime function. That is why big business and wealthy individuals lavish the party with their money. They consider it, quite wisely, as an investment, and they will more than recoup what they donate in tax cuts, deregulation, privatisation and the erosion of workers’ rights.

Matthew Taylor – asked by the Tories to convene the review – is an eloquent writer. He also hails from the “true believer” wing of New Labour. One of the four key members of his review was an early investor in Deliveroo, one of the most notorious “gig” employers. Thompsons Solicitors – a firm that specialises in workers’ rights – has described Taylor’s review as “feeble”.

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The review suggests relabelling “workers” – an employment category that sits between self-employed contractors and full employees – as “dependent contractors”. But workers – or dependent contractors, as the review recommends they are called – already have entitlements to rights such as sick pay. The key problem is with a lack of enforcement of these rights. The courts have already ruled that some gig economy workers are being denied these rights: Uber was defeated in court over its classification of its workers as self-employed. The ruling said that drivers should be paid the living wage and receive other legal entitlements such as holiday pay.

Alarmingly, the review could even weaken workers’ rights. The Trades Union Congress fears that the revival of piece rates could potentially mean, say, an Uber or Deliveroo driver stuck in traffic could be “paid less for not completing their set quota of jobs”.The Taylor review also pushes against adding new regulations: it promotes changes to corporate culture instead. But moral guidance will not win workers the rights they deserve: unscrupulous employers will only respect a strictly enforced law.

It was George Osborne who pushed for the Tories to be rebranded as the workers’ party. It was an insult then, and it is even more so now. From the longest squeeze in workers’ wages since the Napoleonic era to punitive anti-trade union legislation; from the hiking of tribunal fees to the slashing of in-work benefits: this Tory party remains what it has always been. It is the political arm of Britain’s bosses. And no empty rhetoric – or toothless review – will alter the age-old fact that the Tory party is the mortal foe of working people.