Talking Left, Walking Right

Such is Starmer’s unpopularity that the UNISON election is being fought partly in terms of who can effectively distance themselves from the prime minister. In a speech to a national delegate conference for the union, which represents public service workers, incumbent general secretary Christina McAnea acknowledged that “Labour’s missteps” were driving people — including some of her own members — towards Nigel Farage’s hard-right Reform Party.

McAnea lambasted the Labour government for “stealing the clothes of the right” in attacking migrant workers, and criticized the maintenance of the two-child benefit cap. Although she welcomed the government’s U-turn over cuts to winter fuel payments for the elderly, she insisted that they should never have been on the agenda in the first place. McAnea’s tone was defiant: she would push for “a Labour government that will work with us, not against us.”

It is hardly surprising that a trade union leader would challenge a government pursuing austerity policies. What was striking about the speech was the distance McAnea attempted to put between herself and Starmer’s Labour. She has been one of the key players in the success of the Starmer project and has remained a loyal supporter of Starmer’s positions at Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC).

In 2021, for example, there was a last-minute motion to change Labour’s rules to increase the number of MPs required to get on the ballot for Labour leader. It was pushed through with the help of McAnea, who swung UNISON behind the line of Starmer and his chief of staff Morgan McSweeney.

This was one of the most consequential moves that cemented Starmer’s hegemony within Labour by making it much more difficult for a left-wing candidate to run for the leadership. The reform was part of Starmer’s efforts to prevent the Left from acquiring power within the party again in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s defeat, and it could not have been passed without the support of UNISON.

As the Guardian reported at the time: “Labour members tore into rule changes proposed by Keir Starmer to give MPs more sway over leadership elections, but the new rules were carried over the line after the trade union UNISON gave its backing at the last minute.”

“She wanted to back you”

In Get In, their inside account of Starmerism, Sunday Times journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund describe a conversation after the vote between McSweeney and McAnea’s husband Rob Hill, a Labour councillor. “Why did she do it Rob?” McSweeney asked. “We had won. She doesn’t need to do this.” According to Hill, her support for the stitch up was a matter of high principle: “She couldn’t sleep. She knew it was the right thing to do. She wanted to back you.”

While McAnea denies taking a factional line within Labour, her leadership of UNISON and personal interventions in the London district of Streatham also indicate her alignment with the Labour leadership. Novara Media journalist Aaron Bastani reported in 2022 that she joined a hybrid meeting of the Streatham branch of the Labour Party as part of a factional effort of the Labour right. The goal was to block new members from outside her faction from standing for positions in the branch.

At the more significant level of political donations, a BBC analysis found that UNISON was Labour’s second-largest donor during the 2024 election period, stumping up £1.5 million (with an additional £1.17 million given in the rest of 2024). This came even as trade union funding in general declined for the party.

Of the MPs that received money from UNISON, 95 percent voted with the government on the disability benefit cuts. The list includes six members of the Get Britain Working Group that sent a letter to Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall in support of her decision to cut disability benefits — “hard choices need to be made,” the MPs insisted — as well as five front-benchers, once again suggesting alignment with the Starmerite hardcore.

While McAnea has now begun to criticize the Labour government, these criticisms have coincided with her need to win reelection and with a period of plummeting popularity for the PM. It would be an electoral drag for her to be too closely associated with Starmer.

Left Challenge

McAnea’s recent history as one of the Starmer project’s major backers means that her reelection is unlikely to worry the troubled prime minister. However, her rival Andrea Egan would be a different story.

In 2021, the Left fielded four candidates for UNISON general secretary with a combined score of 47 percent. Their divisions paved the way for McAnea’s victory. This time, as the only candidate running from the left, backed by the faction Time For Real Change, Egan’s victory is a distinct possibility. What would that mean for the Labour Party?

At the launch event of her campaign in January, Egan emphasized her opposition to Starmer’s policies, stating that “Labour is not representing working people.” She has maintained a confrontational posture towards Starmer as her campaign has gone on.

One of her pledges is to put “UNISON members first, the Labour Party second,” and she has promised a comprehensive review of the union’s relationship to the party. She has also vowed to oppose cuts coming from the government, to “defend the values of democracy in the Labour Party,” and to “speak out against authoritarian measures that reduce the power of trade unionists.”

Egan has ample personal as well as political reasons to oppose Starmer, having fallen victim to his purges of the Labour left in 2022. She was expelled from Labour for sharing two articles from the group Socialist Appeal, a proscribed group within the Labour Party. One of the articles opposed the proscription of Socialist Appeal itself (and was published before the ban); the other reported on the activity of the Left inside UNISON. The move to expel Egan came after the union’s national executive voted for her as president.

Her campaign has the support of John McDonnell, the veteran left-wing MP who lost the Labour whip last year for voting to scrap the two-child benefit cap in defiance of the government line. Egan has continued to challenge the government over issues such as the proscription of Palestine Action.

Parting Ways

At her launch event, Egan hinted at the possibility of disaffiliation with Labour, suggesting “we might have to part ways.” This would require Egan’s allies to retain their majority on the national executive as well as winning a majority on the Labour Link Committee, which is unlikely.

However, Egan appears already to be taking an ecumenical approach to new left-wing formations. She has appeared alongside Zack Polanski, the new leader of the Green Party, at an anti-austerity rally, and is due to appear alongside Corbyn and Zarah Sultana at The World Transformed Festival this autumn. This indicates that she is willing to work with opponents of the Labour government in an attempt to deliver union policy.

In response to the news that only three of the MPs financially supported by UNISON voted against cuts to disability benefits, Egan promised that as general secretary, she would oppose funding to MPs that “fail to stand up for [UNISON] members.” Her comprehensive review of UNISON’s relationship with Labour would be likely to involve funding cuts to the central party as well as specific MPs who are out of step with union policy.

This would deprive the current party leadership of near-unconditional access to a major war chest. If UNISON was to substantially cut funding for the party as Egan has hinted, the Labour right would be forced to choose between moving left, alienating other donors from the world of big business and undermining their control of the party, or taking the financial hit at a time when the party is struggling to balance the books.

The loss of McAnea could also be destabilizing for the Labour right in other respects, as Starmer and his allies would no longer be able to rely on UNISON loyalty at Labour’s NEC. While Egan’s allies will find it difficult to win a majority on the Labour Link committee, a left-wing general secretary would restrict the committee’s room for maneuver in the event of a party leadership contest, the whispers of which are already beginning to swirl around Westminster. In that scenario, UNISON would be more likely to back a soft-left candidate from outside of the Starmer clique.

The Next Crisis

Starmer’s policies and general unpopularity are also threatening to stir up wider union discontent with the government. Unite leader Sharon Graham has made a point of not participating in the factional politics of Labour, unlike her predecessor Len McCluskey, who played an important role under Corbyn.

However, Unite has still been a thorn in the government’s side over labor disputes. A strike by refuse workers in Birmingham, in opposition to the Labour council over a proposed pay cut of £8,000, is about to enter its seventh month. In May, Graham accused government-appointed commissioners of sabotaging a pay deal.

She now openly speaks about the possibility of disaffiliation from the Labour Party. This would have to occur at the union’s rules conference in 2027 through a vote of conference delegates. In July, Graham told the Times that if there had been a vote to disaffiliate that month, “it would have gone through, without a shadow of a doubt.”

While funding to the Labour Party has been cut substantially under Graham, Unite still gave £1.7 million to the central party and several local branches in 2024. Labour would lose most of this in the event of disaffiliation, as well as losing the link to the union’s base. There have been rumblings of discontent from other unions too: in July, the public services union PCS reprimanded the government over a failure to end outsourcing.

The UNISON election is due to run from late October to late November, with the results to be announced on December 17. If McAnea loses out and other forms of discontent start coming to a head, Starmer’s next crisis may well come from the unions.