Unite General Secretary Sharon
BRITAIN’S most powerful union boss has warned Keir Starmer he is failing to grasp the mood of the country and needs a radical plan to transform lives.
In her most significant pre-election intervention to date, Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham told the Sunday Mail people are crying out for change but that Labour’s over cautious approach sounds like no plan.
It comes after Starmer unveiled six “first steps” promising to deliver economic stability, cut NHS waiting times, launch a new Border Security Command, set up Great Britishsh Energy, crack down on antisociall behaviour and Recruitt
6500 teachers.
The doorstep offe r campaign has been comparedd to the 1997 election pledgee card from Tony Blair beforee he swept to power with a landslide victory that lockedd the Tories out of No10 for over a decade.
But Graham, who represents over a million workers including around 140,000 in Scotland, has urged Starmer – who is being advised by Blair – to instead look to the transformational post- war Labour government of Clement Attlee for inspiration.
She said: “We need a Labour government, there is absolutely no doubt about that. I will be voting Labour, we have had 14 years of the business lobby and we do not need any more of that.
“But Labour’s job is to fight for workers, to create high quality jobs with good pay and conditions. And while they are getting it right on some things, they are being far too cautious in other areas. They think that caution comes across as prudence and good statesmanship but what i t actually sounds like is no plan. I think Ke ir Starmer’s got a massive opportunity and I don’t understand the caution if I’m absolutely honest. The country is crying out for change. Everybody that I speak to says it is hideous – it couldn’t be more hideous for millions of workers out there.
“It’s not 1997, we have a completely different economic backdrop today, people feel differently.
“We’ve just gone through covid and there is a real sense of unfairness, the fact that the people who went out to work, some of who died, were low paid workers, NHS workers, bus workers, supermarket workers – but now when they ask for a pay rise they are told to get back in their box and accused of pushing up inflation.
“While real wages have stagnated, corporations have racked up hundreds of billions in profits. But our research also shows increased profits haven’t translated into investment, while shareholder payouts rise.
“So it’s clear our economy is broken – it wasn’t city bankers that were risking their lives, they were at home, but it is somehow fine to take the cap off bankers’ bonuses. How did we get to this place where we are the sixth