Power in a union: could Labour’s affiliates unseat Keir Starmer?

As storm clouds gather over Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour party, there’s one headwind that could worsen the outlook: his relationship with the trade unions.

Although they no longer wield the political clout they once did, they can still exert significant pressure – particularly on Labour, a party founded as their political arm and still reliant on their funding. Relations with the government have deteriorated, with two key union leaders openly hostile to Starmer. Some have withdrawn their support in response to poor poll ratings and rightward shifts in policy.

The head of the Fire Brigades Union warned last week that all 11 trade unions formally affiliated with Labour could come together to tell the prime minister to step down, if the May elections “are as painful for the party as predicted”, said PoliticsHome. Starmer is on his “last chance”, said Steve Wright.

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What did the commentators say?

“There have been a lot of own goals,” said the FBU’s Wright in an interview with The House magazine, citing the government’s initial refusal to scrap the two-child benefit cap (now being lifted in April). He also criticised the decision to block Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham from standing in the upcoming Gorton and Denton by-election. “I want to see Labour in a position to fight” off the “real threat” from Reform UK. “And I’m not sure who’s best to do that at the moment.”

The FBU leader’s words are just “the latest threat to the prime minister’s position before make-or-break elections” in Scotland, Wales and for English councils this May, said Max Kendix in The Times. Labour’s relationship with its two largest affiliated unions, Unite and Unison, had already hit a new low, with both now “run by general secretaries hostile to Starmer”.

Unison’s Andrea Egan, elected last year, has “publicly criticised Starmer, and attacked him” for blocking Burnham. Unite was, until recently, the Labour party’s biggest donor but its current general secretary, Sharon Graham, has been on a “tireless crusade” against Starmer, said Stella Tsantekidou on The Critic. Many a Labour member “raised an eyebrow” last summer when Unite voted to “re-examine” its relationship with the party. Graham has said voters could feel “duped” after the government scaled back plans to ban zero-hours contracts and introduce ‘day one’ workers’ rights. Labour has “one year to get this right because Nigel Farage is on their tail”, she told The Guardian.

Any formal disaffiliation by Unite would mark “the biggest rupture between the party and the trade union movement in recent history”, said Camilla Turner in The Telegraph. Sources say there is “intense frustration” with Starmer, from the top of the union down to the grassroots.

Should they be a leadership contest, the union vote will play a key part, said Morgan Jones in The New Statesman. The Labour electorate comprises party members and affiliate supporters. Who this means and how they vote has been “the subject of much change and controversy in the party’s recent history”. But, since 2021, any paid-up member of a Labour-affiliated union can vote, whether they are a member of the party or not. After a year of policies that “seemed designed specifically to upset” them, party members will “certainly” be fewer than they were, making affiliate votes more relevant. It could be trade union members, not Labour Party members, who “decide the outcome of the next leadership contest”.

What next?

Wright has promised to fight any attempt to disaffiliate his union from the party, if that is proposed at the FBU’s next conference in May. “I’m still of the view that we are best placed within the Labour Party,” he said.

As for Starmer, Wright sees a “benefit to keeping someone in position”. “No one liked the ever-revolving door of No. 10” when the Tories were in power, he said. “There’s hope. We’ll see what happens in May, won’t we?”