Paul Nowak calls on Labour to forge closer relationship with Europe | TUC

Keir Starmer should seek a much closer relationship with Europe, including a possible customs union, the TUC chief has said.

TUC general secretary Paul Nowak said the British public had become aware of the need for vastly improved trading regulation and that this had become more urgent than ever due to the unstable nature of the relationship with Donald Trump’s US.

In an interview with the Guardian, Nowak said Starmer needed to focus relentlessly on the cost of living to improve Labor’s position in the polls, and said it was hardly surprising there were talks about leadership when the party was doing so poorly.

But he warned his challengers that they “will not be thanked” by the public for distracting the government from its core focus on the economy.

He also warned Starmer and home secretary Shabana Mahmood not to be “Nigel Farage-lite” when it comes to a crackdown on immigration, and said he was concerned about reforms to unions’ indefinite leave to remain.

While Nowak’s new year message called on the government to do all it can to help ordinary families, new polls show four in five households say their financial situation is either stagnant or worsening.

The union’s president said a customs union with the EU should be explored as a way to grow the economy.

“The government needs to do all it can to establish the closest positive working relationship with Europe that is economically and politically possible… right up to the customs union,” he said.

“I think this is reinforced by the events of the last 12 months, where Trump and the White House have proven that the United States is not the predictable ally we have always relied on.”

Nowak, 53, said he did not believe there were a significant number of voters still opposed to closer trade relations with Europe, but said this needed to go beyond election considerations.

“Whether you vote for Brexit or not, people realize we are facing a terrible Brexit deal,” he said. “They can see the impact of that bad Brexit deal on things like prices in supermarkets.”

Nowak, who takes over leadership of the TUC in 2022, has been a strong supporter of Starmer in the past despite the government condemning winter fuel cuts and welfare reforms that have now mostly been reversed.

But he gave only cautious support to the prime minister, with Starmer’s position likely to come under further pressure after next year’s tough May election.

“He’s the one doing the job right now,” Nowak said. “When I go around and talk to union representatives in workplaces, they’re not obsessed about who’s prime minister, who’s up or who’s down.”

Unions have recently elected leaders who are skeptical of the current Labor leadership, despite low turnouts.

Two of the biggest unions are now led by Starmer critics: Unite’s Sharon Graham and Unison’s newly elected Andrea Egan, who was expelled from Labor in 2022.

Nowak declines to comment on what this might mean for relations with unions. But he said unions should be able to call on the Labor government.

“There will always be points of tension and we can’t agree on everything,” he said.

“I think people are frustrated that sometimes difficult choices fall into the hands of those who can least afford them. This year they just need to be open… show what a difference you’re making to people’s standards of living.”

He said he was pleased to see Labor’s U-turn ahead of the budget on plans for an income tax increase. “It’s not just “The sharp end of the labor market that is feeling the pinch is right in front of the low- and middle-income segment.”

Nowak said he was not surprised that speculation had arisen about Starmer’s leadership. One of his likely rivals would be Angela Rayner, who has particularly close union ties to Unison and steered the employment rights bill before being forced to resign earlier this year.

“If the Prime Minister personally performs poorly in the polls, you’ll never be able to avoid it [leadership speculation]said Nowak.

“I don’t think it’s helpful for me to engage in fantasy politics. We’re dealing with the facts that we have right now.”

He said Starmer had the opportunity this year to make concrete differences about how people feel about the cost of living and that if he did it would “look fundamentally different in the polls”.

However, the leadership warned hopefuls not to be distracted by politics. “Frankly, the public will not thank you for your parliamentary maneuvers and political nonsense when the big job at hand is not accomplished.”

Nowak said that while he acknowledged many union members were supporters of Nigel Farage’s party, he remained extremely concerned about the rise of Reform UK. But he said the normalization of racist language had a devastating impact on some minorities.

“I was in County Durham a few months ago and met a black female social worker who had been living in the country for 20 years. She talked about her experience of being afraid to go out on the streets because she had been racially abused,” she said.

“What we did was legitimize language that, frankly, we thought was unacceptable five, 10 years ago. If he walks like a racist and quacks like a racist, he’s probably a racist.”

Nowak said he acknowledged there were widespread concerns about high levels of immigration and said unions would be ready to support fair reforms. But he warned they would have a major impact on public services and said he was deeply concerned about the proposed change to people waiting 10 years for permission to remain indefinitely.

“There will be real-world consequences for people working in care homes, our railways, our buses and our prisons, when you lose people we desperately need,” he said.

“Both my grandfathers came to this country during the Second World War and the idea that if you come to the UK, within two and a half years someone might assess that you should go back? That’s really difficult… We’ve put that to the government.”

The TUC and most unions are ending the year in a celebratory mood with the passage of the Employment Rights Bill in the House of Lords after months of delay. However, Nowak said there were still important steps to be taken to implement the full Make Work Pay package that the Labor Party promised in the manifesto.

He said it was crucial that ending zero-hour contracts was implemented “in earnest”, so the onus was on employers to offer fixed working hours. And he said the government should continue consultations on defining single worker status to end bogus self-employment.

“Bad employers can be incredibly innovative when it comes to precarious forms of employment,” he said.

However, Nowak said he was very happy that new measures came into force that make it easier for unions to organize in workplaces. “As a union activist and official for 35 years, this is the first time in my life that any government has repealed anti-union legislation,” he said.

For the first time, he expected union membership to increase in the coming years. “I think this is about moving us from being a minority sport to the mainstream of British workplaces,” he said.

Nowak also said she wanted to see the government shout louder about left-wing issues, from an employment rights bill to nationalization to ending the inequality in two-child benefits.

But he also said progressives disillusioned with Labor needed to engage more and show what pressure could achieve. “I think we need to turn this into the best possible Labor government,” he said.

“I don’t think in my job, or anyone who’s really interested in progressive politics, you can treat politics as a spectator sport. It’s not our job to mess around from the sidelines, it’s to try to engage the government and lobby them.”