Unite could cut ties with Labour over bin strikes row, boss claims
Sharon Graham, the general secretary of Unite, criticised ministers' 'disgraceful' actions in attempting to bring the Birmingham bin strike to a close. Unite could cut millions of pounds of funding for the party.
Graham said on Saturday she was under 'pressure to have an emergency rules conference, which would mean we would disaffiliate' from Labour. 'At this present moment in time, [affiliation] is hard to justify', she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
She also hit out at Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, claiming she had acted in a 'despicable way' and had been 'missing in action' over the Birmingham dispute.
Graham told Times Radio that Rayner was 'literally nowhere to be seen because she is trying to avoid this'.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Sun
an hour ago
- The Sun
Transport Secretary admits she doesn't have ‘expensive' EV – despite trying to convince drivers to make switch
TRANSPORT Secretary Heidi Alexander admits she doesn't have an "expensive" electric car - despite trying to convince drivers to make the switch. The Cabinet Minister highlighted the difficulties of living in a terraced home and not having a driveway to plug in the motor for charging. 1 Her comments come as £700 million could be on the table offering subsidies to lower the upfront costs of purchasing electric vehicles. She told the BBC "I don't have an electric car. But I'm like millions of people in this country, I bought a new car about six years ago. "I'm thinking about the next car I will purchase, and it will definitely be an electric vehicle. I'm not in the habit of changing my car on a yearly basis, expensive as it is." Electric car sales amounted to 47,000 in June but this is still below the mandated level which states 28 per cent of new car sales and 16 per cent of van sales should be zero emission. She also committed to giving £25 million to councils so they could adapt paths between a house and the road for cables to be laid. Ms Alexander said: "We do need to make it easier and cheaper for people to buy an electric vehicle. "So today we're announcing a really big investment, £63 million in charging infrastructure across the country, £25 million for councils so that people like me, who don't have a driveway. "I live in a terrace house, if I had an EV, I'd be asking myself questions about how I would get the electric cable across to the car." Electric car sales amounted to 47,000 in June but this is still below the mandated level which states 28 per cent of new car sales and 16 per cent of van sales should be zero emission. The transition to electric vehicles comes as new petrol or diesel motors should come to an end by 2030. Just five years later, all new motors will have to be electric as part of the drive to meet Net Zero targets by 2050.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
All the times Labour has changed the definition of ‘working people'
Ever since the Labour general election manifesto promised there would be no tax rises for 'working people', party figures have struggled to define what that means. The manifesto claimed 'Labour will not increase taxes on working people, which is why we will not increase National Insurance, the basic, higher, or additional rates of Income Tax, or VAT'. Sir Keir Starmer said on Wednesday that the Government would keep this promise, but a growing hole in the public finances has raised questions over whether this will remain the case, and how the party will define a 'working person'. Heidi Alexander, the Transport Secretary, on Sunday appeared to suggest that only those on 'modest incomes' would be classed as working people. It was not clear how she defined a 'modest' income. This is not the first time that the language surrounding 'working people' and how the Labour Party defines them has come under scrutiny. The Telegraph breaks down how the term 'working people' has changed since Sir Keir first made that promise last year. Working people do not have savings Before voters went to the polls, the Labour leader suggested that he did not believe that 'working people' had savings. Asked what he meant by a working person, Sir Keir told LBC in June: 'People who earn their living, rely on our [public] services and don't really have the ability to write a cheque when they get into trouble.' The following day, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, appeared to contradict him by saying that some working people did have savings. She claimed on Sky News that her definition was: 'Working people are people who go out to work and work for their incomes. 'Sort of by definition, really, working people are those people who go out and work and earn their money through hard work.' Ms Reeves added: 'Many other people who go out to work have had to run down their savings. 'But there are people who do have savings, who have been able to save up and those are working people as well.' People on six figures can be working people The new Government came under intense scrutiny over its definition of 'working people' ahead of the Chancellor's first Budget in October last year. Lisa Nandy first suggested that someone on a six-figure salary who goes to work counts as a 'working person'. In an interview with Sky News, the Culture Secretary said: 'When I think about working people, particularly the challenges they face, I think about the factory workers, I think about people driving the buses in my constituency, working in the public services, working in the private sector, delivery drivers, call centres.' When asked whether someone on a six-figure salary counted, the minister replied: 'I mean, if they go to work obviously they will be working.' Landlords and shareholders aren't working people The following day, the Prime Minister said that he did not believe that landlords or shareholders fell under his definition of a working person. Asked by Sky News if those who earn income from assets such as shares or property would count as working people in the Budget, Sir Keir said that they 'wouldn't come within my definition'. The Chancellor went on to announce an increase in capital gains tax at the Budget, but kept property rates the same. Small business owners might not be working people Bridget Phillipson, just days before the Government's first fiscal event, refused to say whether a small business owner who earned £13,000 a year was a 'working person' or not. The Education Secretary told the BBC's Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that Labour's definition of a working person was someone 'whose main income arises from the fact that they go out to work every day'. Those paying employers' NI contributions are not working people When Ms Reeves's first Budget was unveiled on October 30, she announced an increase to employer's NI contributions. Standing at the despatch box, the Chancellor said that 'people will not see higher taxes in their playslips as a result of the choices that I am making today. That is a promise made and a promise fulfilled'. Ministers insisted that this did not breach the manifesto promises not to raise taxes on 'working people' because it was employers, rather than employees, paying the increased levy. But critics, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), disagreed. Paul Johnson, the then director of the IFS, said ahead of the Budget that the manifesto did not 'specify employee National Insurance' and therefore raising employers' NI would be a breach. He also warned that the levy ultimately came from employee pay, and therefore an increase could result in 'less pay rises' and 'possibly fewer jobs'. Working people earn 'modest incomes' On Sunday, Ms Alexander said that the Government had promised not to put up taxes for 'people on modest incomes'. She told Sky News: 'We made a commitment in our manifesto not to be putting up taxes on people on modest incomes, working people. We have stuck to that.'
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Opinion: Channel migrants are troops recruited by Macron
Look at those people bobbing in the Channel, crossing the sea every day in an irresistible tide. See their pitiful burstable coracles, so rammed with humanity that their limbs are left trailing in the water. Count the numbers that have been coming in, more than 40 per cent up on last year – tens of thousands of illegal aliens scrambling ashore and burying themselves in the crevices of our society. Then ask yourself the key question. Who benefits? Who is really behind this moral, political and economic disaster? Which is the evil genius orchestrating this daily humiliation of the British state? It is time to unmask the Mr Big – or Monsieur Petit – behind the whole thing, and I will give you a clue. He has Cuban heels, a boyish charm, a lisping voice, and a wife who smacks him around in public. Yes, folks, there is one ultimate beneficiary of this whole nightmare, and that is Emmanuel Macron of France. As he made clear during his press conference with Keir Starmer, the French president is blatantly using this crisis to make a political point – namely that Brexit Britain has been unable to control its borders . It follows that every single one of those young men – and they are almost all young men – has effectively been recruited by Macron to embarrass the UK. These are his shock troops in his continuing jihad against Brexit. He will keep sending them over the Channel in boat after boat until we accept his ridiculous and insulting assertion: that the British people are fools, that they swallowed a lie, and the whole problem of illegal migration is now so bad that we might as well concede that Brexit was a mistake and a delusion, and get back into the EU. That is Macron's game; that is his strategy. And that is why he will never do enough to stop the boats. No one was fooled by the 'returns agreement' this week between the UK and France, the so-called 'one in one out' deal by which illegal arrivals could be swapped for those with a legal claim to come to Britain. By definition, this would do nothing to reduce the overall immigration total, since we would be taking one more person for every illegal arrival notionally sent back to France. More seriously, the proposal will do nothing to deter the gangs. Even if Macron can get the EU commission to approve the scheme, the French say that they expect to take about 50 people per week. That is pathetic. As Chris Philp, the Tory Shadow Home Secretary points out – that would be only 6 per cent of the weekly arrivals. Even if this agreement were to get going, that means your average cross-Channel migrant would have a 94 per cent chance of staying in the UK; and everyone knows that, once you have your jaws clamped around the teat of the UK system, it is almost impossible to prise you away. This scheme is not serious. Macron agreed to do it as a sop to Starmer, and in exchange for the kudos of a state visit, and the chance for him and Brigitte to hobnob with the King and Queen. He doesn't want to make it work – because he has had plenty of opportunity to do so before, and the French efforts have been lackadaisical in the extreme. The gendarmes have been given almost £800m of our money to patrol the beaches of Calais, and yet the problem is getting worse. They haven't fixed it because, fundamentally, Macron wants to convince the British public of a blatant lie – the one he told at the press conference – that this problem has been somehow caused by Brexit. What rubbish. Quelle poubelle! Remember that before Brexit we were obliged by basic EU law to treat every one of the 520 million EU nationals as if they were British citizens, for the purposes of migration to this country . It was insane. Brexit took back full legal control. We can, if we choose, have absolutely zero legal migration to this country – zero. As for tackling illegal migration, EU membership was worse than useless. It is true that there was the 'Dublin convention' by which EU countries could in theory send illegal arrivals back to their country of origin within the EU. In practice, Dublin was a dud. It had broken down long before Brexit; the lawyers were making mincemeat of it, and hardly any illegal arrivals were being returned anywhere. The whole thing was a farce, and we were prevented by EU rules from passing tougher laws ourselves. So, in blaming Brexit for the migrant crossings, Macron is uttering a great, stinking, festering falsehood, and if he had said such a thing in Brigitte Macron's classroom, I hope that she would have given him one of her trademark smacks around his smirking chops. The reality is that Brexit actually gives us the power to control not just legal migration – but to fix illegal migration as well ; and the tragedy of this government is that Starmer refuses to use those powers. The Labour government is being sucked back into the orbit of the EU at the very moment when we need to be doing things our own way . Ask yourself: why does Macron hate Brexit so? Why does he see fit to come to this country, wag his finger, and tell the British public that they have been stupid and wrong? The answer is that he fears Brexit, and he fears the massive potential of an independent Britain. He saw what happened, for instance, when we diverged from the EU regulatory framework and achieved the fastest Covid vaccine roll-out in Europe, followed by the fastest exit from lockdown. He didn't like it at all. He doesn't want Brexit Britain to succeed; he wants it to fail, to be brought to heel, and Labour is all too eager to oblige. Starmer is accepting EU law for the UK – with no say in making it, turning this country into a colony of Brussels . Worse, he seems on the point of adopting the French wealth tax, which has driven tens of thousands of entrepreneurs from France. They are taking this country back into a morass of unnecessary employment law, and suggesting such bizarre Soviet anachronisms as state-owned restaurants. All the while the Reeves-Starmer high-tax economic doom loop continues to stifle activity, so that, as reported yesterday, the economy shrunk for the second quarter. When Starmer and Macron agreed their feeble returns deal, the French apparently set one condition. The UK would have to abandon the Rwanda plan. On the face of things, this was bizarre. Why should the French care? But on reflection the reason is obvious. Rwanda is made possible by Brexit, since we can ignore EU law on asylum and other matters to make it happen; and, unlike any other plan, Rwanda would actually work. It doesn't mean sending back six per cent of illegals; it means sending 100 per cent of them from Kent to Kigali. The idiotic Starmer has axed this country's only practical plan to deal with the boats – at French behest! – while the French cynically refuse to do enough to help. Like the old Danish king of England, Starmer sits and watches as the waves of people wash irresistibly to our shores, and in his self-imposed impotence he is making himself look like a complete and utter Canute.
