Chilling reality of Two-Tier Keir in thrall to the unions
Compassion is losing out to partisanship under Keir Starmer's government, says Leo McKinstry.
As the popularity of Sir Keir Starmer’s government collapses, so his own reputation for duplicity grows. The self-image of the principled leader has been replaced by the reality of Two Tier Keir and Slippery Starmer, whose decisions are based on cynical expediency rather than the national interest.
Nothing illustrates the warped priorities and moral inconsistencies of Downing Street more vividly than the contrast between the craven appeasement of the trade unions through lavish pay deals and the willingness to hammer pensioners by the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance for all but the poorest.
Labour justify the axing of the fuel payment by claiming to have discovered a £22billion hole in the public finances, yet even on the Government’s own figures, this will save £1.4billion-a-year, a sum dwarfed by the £14billion additional costs of settling recent pay disputes in the public sector.
Starmer seems to think that the row over the winter fuel allowance reveals his toughness under pressure. In a BBC interview yesterday he posed as the stern, unbending champion of integrity: “We will only deliver change – I’m absolutely determined we will – if we do the difficult things now, I know they’re unpopular. Of course they’re tough choices.”
His approach, he said, was much more courageous than that of the previous Tory Government which supposedly “ran away from difficult decisions”.
But Labour’s pathetic submission to the trade unions makes a mockery of this boasting. Starmer spoke to the BBC on the eve of the TUC’s conference in Brighton, that annual orgy of special pleading and victimhood dominated by the grievance-filled ranks of the public sector workforce.
Just 12 per cent of private employees are unionised, compared to over 50 per cent of staff on the state payroll, and that imbalance has hopelessly distorted the focus of the TUC. The union movement used to be the authentic voice of the working class. Now it is the mouthpiece of heavily subsidised privilege.
That narrowness of vision is also mirrored by the Labour party, which was established in 1900 as the political wing of the trade union movement. Today, the concerns of state workers are the central ingredient of this relationship, which is bad news for the taxpayer and the efficiency of our public services.
Despite Starmer’s defiant rhetoric, Labour shows no willingness to resist. They accuse the Tories of running away from difficult decisions, but Starmer and his Ministers have done more than just flee. They have abjectly surrendered on numerous fronts, giving a 22 per cent pay rise to the junior doctors, 15 per cent to the train drivers and inflation-busting agreements to other public sector workers, including teachers and nurses.
The endless cave-ins on pay have just fed demands for more. Predictably Paul Nowak, the General Secretary of the TUC, said yesterday in Brighton that across the public sector there should be “big increases” in wages to make up for the past impact of inflation and cuts.
The unions also want greater powers and fewer restrictions on their capacity to strike. “We expect Labour MPs to defend workers by word and action,” says Sharon Graham, Unite’s General Secretary. Labour are only too keen to oblige, promising imminent legislation that will repeal most of the Tories’ trade union legislation since 2015.
Labour’s attitude to the unions is so enfeebled because the party is still financially and structurally dependent on them. In 2022, the unions provided 58 per cent of Labour’s funds, while at the last election, more than half of all the party’s successful candidates received union donations.
On the National Executive Committee, Labour’s ruling, one third of all the 39 seats are reserved for union representatives.
The link is personified by Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner – a senior union official with Unison before she entered Parliament – who at last year’s TUC declared to thunderous applause, “If I get to be Deputy Prime Minister of this county I will not let you down. I make no apologies that we will work hand-in-glove with the trade unions to deliver a real partnership.”
That promise is now being dramatically fulfilled, with disastrous consequence for our economy, our competitive, our public financers – and the livelihoods of pensioners. As the union stranglehold continues, compassion is losing out to partisanship.
