Unite leader issues blunt warning to Labour about ‘failing to back workers’ | Labour
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has told the government it must do more for workers in 2026 or it risks sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
Graham accused Labor of engaging in “failed leadership” and said debate over who could replace Keir Starmer was inevitable.
Writing in the Times, he said: “For too long, ordinary people, workers and communities have paid the price for crisis after crisis they did not cause. This must end in 2026. The government needs to decide what it represents and who it represents. If we have to ask, it is not working.”
“Party loyalists may suffer for his failed leadership and ‘night of the long knife’. But a new Labor leadership with the same policies won’t cut it. The doomsday cycle with milder austerity cannot be broken, no matter who is in Downing Street.”
“Britain needs vision. We led the first Industrial Revolution and we are nowhere in the fourth. Rudderless.”
Graham said that unless a change in policy was made, the next prime minister would face the same problems and Starmer would be replaced by former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner; Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester; Neither health secretary Wes Streeting nor energy minister Ed Miliband could persuade workers to support Labour.
“This can’t just be a matter of changing the leader or improving the sales pitch,” he said. “There’s a lot of pain right now about whether, when and who should replace the prime minister. It’s inevitable.”
Graham said Unite, Labour’s strongest union supporter, was the only union that did not endorse the party’s manifesto “because it does not support jobs”.
“We have fought against winter fuel rebate cuts and the self-destructive nature of net zero targets that come without necessary investment in new industries. Unions are there to fight for workers, not to side with politicians,” he said.
“Labour’s choice in the last budget to impose hidden taxes on workers rather than impose a wealth tax on the mega-rich was the wrong choice. Labor must stop being ashamed of being the voice of workers.
“If this government does not deviate from its current path next year, it will surely sow the seeds of its own destruction.”
