Sir Keir Starmer is preparing for the annual TUC feast with union leaders – but one important person is on the ‘naughty step’
Mick Lynch is. But Sharon Graham isn’t.
Yet Mick’s union the RMT isn’t even affiliated to the Labour Party, while Sharon’s Unite is one of the party’s biggest donors.
Sir Keir Starmer breezes into blowy Liverpool on day two of the TUC conference to attend the traditional gala dinner for shadow cabinet ministers and the TUC’s general council, mostly the leaders of the big unions.
Mick’s predecessor, the loud, no-nonsense left-winger Bob Crow – who stormed out of a TUC speech by Sir Tony Blair some years ago, always used to boycott the dinner, declaring that he was “going down the pub” instead.
But savvy Mick, the thinking man’s Bob Crow, is going. It seems he’s not one to turn down a free dinner. He’s also not the sort to miss the opportunity to put his point of view to the Labour leader or any other senior politician.
But Sharon, who since her election as Unite general secretary in late 2021 has made a point of avoiding the kind of political scheming of her extrovert predecessor Len McCluskey, is not going to the dinner.
She’ll be busy dealing with an industrial dispute on Monday evening, she told Sky News. Probably just as well, after her “1990s tribute act” attack on Sir Keir in a provocative Sunday Times article.
According to insiders, Sir Keir and his deputy Angela Rayner, who makes the big set-piece speech on behalf of the Labour Party at the TUC on Tuesday morning, have put Sharon “on the naughty step” after her frequent criticisms of the Labour leadership.
She did reveal to Sky News in an interview, however, that she’s meeting Sir Keir next week, ahead of Labour’s conference next month. So relations can’t be all that bad.
Despite their differing dining arrangements, both Mick and Sharon will be leading players in the debates at the TUC conference over the next few days.
The RMT leader is leading the unions’ fight against the government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act, which received Royal Assent at the end of July.
He told Sky News there are no new rail strikes planned at the moment. But, he said, if the employers, the Rail Delivery Group which represents the train companies, don’t come up with a new offer soon, there will be.
Sharon Graham of UNITE
What’s the betting those new strikes with coincide with the Conservative Party conference, which takes place between 1 and 4 October? Don’t forget, that’s more or less when hospital consultants are going on strike. They’re walking out on between 2 and 5 October.
Broken Britain, anyone?
Sharon may not be joining Sir Keir, Mick and the other diners at the TUC feast, but the Unite leader will be active in the conference hall, leading the demands for re-nationalisation of energy companies in a debate on Monday.
In her Sunday Times article, she also called for wealth taxes – rejected by shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves – and taxes on what she called “excessive” business profits.
The conference began on Sunday afternoon with stirring speeches by two other senior union leaders, Christina McAnea of Unison and Paul Serwotka of the civil service union PCS.
He talked powerfully about “broken Britain”, though he was referring to crumbling concrete in schools and escaping prisoners rather than strikes by trade unions!
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Mick Lynch is leading the unions’ fight against the government’s Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Act
The TUC’s new general secretary, the affable scouser Paul Nowak, earlier announced a move to report the government to the United Nations workers’ rights watchdog, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) over what he called the government’s “pernicious” anti-strike laws.
Not sure that move will have Tory ministers quaking in their boots. After all, isn’t the ILO just a talking shop? To be fair, though, the TUC chief claimed in a Sky News interview that unions have won significant legal battles against the government in the past.
This could be the last TUC conference before a general election which Labour are favourites to win, Christina McAnea predicted in her speech on funding public services, although realistically the election conference is more likely to be just before the election.
If she’s right, there could be a mood celebration at next year’s general council dinner. Although his union is not affiliated to Labour, the RMT’s Mick will probably be there.
And who knows, perhaps Unite’s Sharon – if she’s no longer on the naughty step – will join him at the top table.
Harriet Harman has suggested a “mini inquiry” into issues raised by the grooming gangs scandal and called on Sir Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch to discuss “terms of reference”.
The Labour peer told Sky’s political editor Beth Rigby on the Electoral Dysfunction podcast that there should “openness” to a future probe as long it does not repeat the previous investigations.
In particular, she said people need to be “trained and confident” that they can take on matters “which are in particular communities” without being accused of being racist.
“I think that whether it’s a task force, whether it’s more action plans, whether it’s a a mini inquiry on this, this is something that we need to develop resilience in,” Ms Harman said.
The grooming gangs scandal is back in the spotlight after Elon Musk hit out at the Labour government for rejecting a new national inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham, saying this should be done at a local level instead.
The Tories also previously said an Oldham inquiry should be done locally and in 2015 commissioned a seven-year national inquiry into child sex abuse, led by Professor Alexis Jay, which looked at grooming gangs.
However, they didn’t implement any of its recommendations while in office – and Sir Keir has vowed to do so instead of launching a fresh investigation into the subject.
Ms Harman said she agreed with ministers that there is “no point” in a rerun of the £200m Jay Review, which came on top of a number of locally-led inquiries.
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However, she said there’s “always got to be an openness to further analysis, further consideration of what proposals would move things forward”.
She called on the Conservative Party to start “sensibly discussing with the government what should be the parameters of a future inquiry”, as they “can’t really be arguing they want an absolute repeat of the seven years and £200 million of the Jay inquiry”.
She said the Tories should set out their “terms of reference”, so “the government and everybody can discuss whether or not they’ve already got that sorted”.
Girls as young as 11 were groomed and raped across a number of towns in England – including Oldham, Rochdale, Rotherham and Telford – over a decade ago in a national scandal that was exposed in 2013.
In many cases the victims were white and the perpetrators of south Asian descent – with the local inquiry into Telford finding that exploitation was ignored because of unease about race.
The Jay review did not assess whether ethnicity was a factor in grooming gangs due to poor data, and recommended the compilation of a national core data base on child sex abuse which records the ethnicity of the victim and alleged perpetrator.
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Ms Harman’s comments come after the Labour Metro Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, said he believed there was a case for a new “limited national inquiry”.
He told the BBC that a defeated Tory vote on the matter was “opportunism”, but a new probe could “compel people to give evidence who then may have charges to answer and be held to account”.
Jess Phillips, the safeguarding minister who has born the brunt of Mr Musk’s attacks, has told Sky News “nothing is off the table” when it comes to a new inquiry – but she will “listen to victims” and not the world’s richest man.
Sir Keir has said he spoke to victims this week and they do not want another inquiry as it would delay the implementations of the Jay review – though his spokesman later indicated one could take place if those affected call for it.
Tory leader Ms Badenoch has argued that the public will start to “worry about a cover-up” if the prime minister resists calls for a national inquiry, and said no one has yet “joined up the dots” on grooming.
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