Strikes

[Paigntonian]

Interesting that 'Sir' Keir Starmer bans his shadow ministerial team from supporting trade unions on picket lines. I'm no Labour supporter but as the trade unions help fund the Labour Party this seems to me hypocritical. If a Labour MP chooses to support strikers on a picket line why should they not be able to do so?

[Buenchico]

While it's true that 58% of Labour's income is derived from affiliated trade unions, it's worth pointing out that there are over 100 trade unions in the UK but only 11 of them are affiliated to the Labour Party. Unions such as the RMT and the NUT (which has now becomes the NEU) abandoned their links to the Labour Party ages ago.

[Paigntonian]

Buen: That means 58 per cent of trade unions support the Labour Party and the leader of the Labour Party believes his team should not support those trade unions by supporting them on picket lines. Hopefully you can spot the lack of brotherly, and sisterly, love...

[FatticusInch]

Starmer’s stance is rapidly alienating the unions and if he doesn’t get on board soon he’ll lose out on the benefits in the GE because there’s a long winter of discontent just around the corner and he needs to capitalise.

[Gromit]

Not all Trade Unions pay a levy to the Labour Party. So it is not a given that Labour will support any strike.

Labour lost the 2019 general election because it’s core voters decided (rightly) that the Labour party had abandoned them. And Starmer is doing nothing to change that perception.
That is a danger for Labour - it needs to decide one way or another which side it is on. Ignore the poor and the strikers for a cost of living increase, and Truss will get a landslide in a fortnight.

[jno]

he's still fighting Corbyn and is trying to make the party look like Blair. I think he's getting it wrong: a lot of people seem impressed with Mick Lynch, who articulates his people's grienvances clearly, articulately and reasonably (and makes people like Piers Morgan seem petty and foolish). Starmer should try to imitate him.

[FatticusInch]

Mick Lynch and Eddie Dempsey are fast becoming the face of anti-Conservatism where it should be Starmer, they’re speaking up for working people where Labour are failing.

[ynnafymmi]

@00.03.No,Labour lost the last election because most people preferred an idiotic aerosole like Johnson rather than an old anti-semitic idiotic aerosole like Corbyn.

[Gromit]

ynnafymmi
The red wall didn’t fall because the northerners were protesting about anti semitism, they never thought about that for one second. They wanted tighter immigration, and they had been convinced that Brexit would achieve that. Conservatives promised to get Brexit done, so they voted Conservative, not Labour.

[davebro]

Paigntonian //That means 58 per cent of trade unions support the Labour Party //

Did you not read what Buen wrote?

[naomi24]

//Starmer should try to imitate him [Mick Lynch].//

Good leaders don't imitate anyone. They strong and decisive in their own right. Starmer is weak, faltering and impotent. A man with splinters in his bottom from wriggling around on the fence for the whole of his leadership. He needs to make up his mind, decide in which direction the party needs to go and do what he needs to do to lead it there - but he won't because he's incapable. A leader in name only.

[emmie]

in other words a failure and a liability....

[Gromit]

Too early to write off Starmer as a failure.
But he is not doing enough for his core voters, so they will go elsewhere, LibDems probably.

[ichkeria]

He’s doing the right thing.
The left don’t like it of course but neither do the Tories, who would like to be having a go at him for supporting strikers :-)

[ichkeria]

It isn’t core voters who win elections.
Or Tory party members :-)

[emmie]

he has been in the job an age, time for Labour to find a new leader, one with charisma and a go getting mentality, which SKS lacks.

[davebro]

I don't mind Starmer - prefer him to Burnham who is touted by some as a future leader.

[naomi24]

The unions would like him to support strikers but I don't think the country as a whole has the appetite for that. People are still reeling from the horrors of life with Covid, they're facing a harsh winter, and they want as much stability as they can get at the moment. His problem is the Unions on the whole fund his party and expect his loyalty so he's in a bit of a pickle really. He has to decide where he wants to go - but he won't. He isn't strong enough.

[barry1010]

Paigntonian, you have twisted the figures. Less than 11% of trade unions fund the labour party and their funding equal 58% of that party's income.
Around 89% of union give no funding at all to Labour

[Gromit]

Emmie,
SKS has not fought a general election. He has to lose one to be replaced.

[Ellipsis]

> they’re speaking up for working people

No, they're not, they're speaking up for some working people, i.e. their members. Most working people are not their members. Somebody working for a small business (in an office or a shop or a warehouse or a workshop or on the road) has very little in common workwise with their members. Mick Lynch et al does not speak for such people.

As for Labour, it should do what it wants, not what somebody else wants, and that seems to me exactly what Starmer is doing. Just because a union leader thinks something, doesn't mean that Labour blindly agrees. You can't keep everybody happy, especially when not everybody has the same opinion about something - you have to do things your way. That is leadership.