Are Unite and Labour heading for divorce?
Under the Conservatives, 2022's 'summer of discontent' saw the number of days lost to strike action reach its highest level since 1989. Where there was discord, Starmer promised to bring harmony.
After Labour entered office, pay disputes were settled, to echo Aneurin Bevan, by stuffing workers' mouths with gold: a 22 per cent rise for resident doctors (formerly junior doctors), a 15 per cent rise for train drivers, and an above-inflation rise of 5.5 per cent for teachers and nurses. The most radical workers' rights bill since the 1970s was introduced. While Tony Blair was accused by the former TUC head John Monks of treating the trade unions like 'embarrassing elderly relatives', Starmer embraced them as partners.
Yet a year on, discontent is returning. To the indignation of Wes Streeting, resident doctors have voted for five days of strike action this month despite a cumulative pay rise of 28.9 per cent (doctors reply that their real-terms pay is still lower than in 2004-05 – even if the government's preferred inflation measure is used). When Streeting addressed the Labour Party on 14 July, he warned that the action would be a 'gift to Nigel Farage' and his 'attacks on the very existence of a publicly funded, free at the point of need, universal health service'.
But this conflict is mild compared with the fusillades between Unite and Labour. It was the union's ceremonial purging of Angela Rayner that absorbed most of the attention (the former Unison shop steward, in fact, cancelled her membership several months earlier). Yet far more significant was the decision by Unite to 're-examine' its affiliation to Labour. Jack Jones, the former general secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, once said of the relationship between Labour and the unions: 'Murder, yes; divorce, never.' But Unite's general secretary, Sharon Graham, is raising the spectre of divorce.
Unite insiders speak of a long train of grievances: Rayner's 'shambolic' handling of the Birmingham bin strike, the winter fuel cuts (which saw the union launch a judicial review), the disability benefit cuts, the 'watering down' of the Employment Rights Bill and Ed Miliband's climate policy (Graham warned that oil and gas workers could become the 'miners of net zero').
Cabinet ministers have reacted with incredulity to Unite. This government, they argue, has delivered for union members: raising defence spending, rescuing British Steel and protecting automotive workers from the full force of Donald Trump's tariffs (one source describes the Labour-union link as 'the best deal in western Europe'). Rayner's allies contend that far from being diluted, the Employment Rights Bill has been strengthened: amendments introducing a penalty for abuse of 'fire-and-rehire' practices and barring businesses from using non-disclosure agreements to silence victims of harassment and discrimination have been tabled.
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'Angela is a working-class woman facing down powerful interests in pushing through the Employment Rights Bill and now Sharon is doing their job for them with these vicious and pointless outbursts,' says a Labour MP with close links to the unions.
At the Durham Miners' Gala – the labour movement's most hallowed gathering – Graham led a chant of 'Shame on you' over Rayner. Her speech dispelled assumptions that Unite's threat to disaffiliate from Labour is a bluff. 'If we leave, we will forge a new vehicle for our class,' declared Graham.
To some ears that sounded like an endorsement of a new left party. Jeremy Corbyn, who has vowed to establish such a force, was among those on the same platform as Graham. For Labour, MPs say, losing Unite's annual £1.4m affiliation fee would be an 'annoyance'. Indeed, it would be rather more: an internal party document speaks of a 'difficult financial position' with Labour needing 'at least £4m to adequately resource the 2026 elections', the contests that some cabinet ministers say could determine Starmer's fate.
But in the words of a Starmer ally, it would be 'game-changing' for Unite to throw its financial and industrial muscle behind a new left party. The absence of union backing helped thwart past upstarts such as Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party and George Galloway's Respect. Yet Unite insists that its animosity towards Starmer should not be mistaken for adoration of Corbyn. 'Sharon is not interested in personality cults,' one source says of a new left party. What of Zarah Sultana, Corbyn's putative co-leader? Unite is still less impressed by her.
She was not among the 100 candidates financially supported by the union at the last election, charged with being insufficiently supportive of the 2022 Coventry bin workers' strike.
Those who know Graham say that she is unconcerned with the power games that so absorbed her predecessor, Len McCluskey, rarely happier than when posing with a chessboard and calling himself 'the kingmaker'. Her animating passion is industrial struggle – she once managed to close down a toll bridge in Toronto over a dispute in London – and so it will remain.
Polls show support for a new left party, but Labour is unmoved. 'We've got enough challenges in the marketplace without worrying about something that is yet to form,' said one strategist. For Starmer, a divided left will remain a beatable one.
[See more: Even centrists want to vote for Reform]
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