Morning Call: State of the unions
Can Labour and the unions work together?
Good morning. Big news on Labour’s plans for workers’ rights below. Then, Harry has had an interesting conversation with NS alumnus Mehdi Hasan – they discuss Gaza and the moral failure of traditional media.
Labour drops policies when they jeopardise victory – or to put that more charitably, it strives to be as close to voters’ concerns as possible. For a political party 14 years out of power, you can understand the rationale.
This was one reason behind the U-turn on the £28bn of green spending. Labour strategists foresaw Tory attack lines that Labour would raise taxes to pay for it. By dropping the policy, they closed down that risk and took a big step towards the Conservatives.
With the £28bn junked, the question became: what next? Eyes turned towards Labour’s New Deal for Working People, a tranche of measures to improve workers’ rights. Labour MPs anxiously predicted its demise, as did some union leaders. Amid Labour’s love affair with the private sector, businesses started pushing for the proposals to be diluted.
All of which meant Keir Starmer’s meeting with union leaders yesterday to discuss the package was probably quite awkward. The deal had already been watered down last summer: for instance, fair-pay deals would only initially apply to social care, not all sectors. There were rumours Labour would dilute the measures, and the language around them, even further. But yesterday’s meeting recommitted both sides to last summer’s deal.
It must be judged a success. Unite’s general secretary Sharon Graham, a persistent Starmer critic, went from calling the package a “betrayal” a week ago to supporting the deal. “We’ve been listened to and the workers’ voice heard,” she told LBC. It is a strong sign that the relationship between Starmer’s Labour and the unions could be amicable.
So why has Labour retained most of the New Deal for Working People, but jettisoned the £28bn? The main reason is that the New Deal costs much less upfront and therefore won’t breach Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules. Second, Angela Rayner, who is responsible for the policy, believes in improving workers’ rights in the way that Reeves believes in fiscal orthodoxy. Rayner has a uniquely powerful position within the party as the independently elected deputy leader. Starmer does not want to pick a fight with her. Third, improving workers’ rights is popular – even with Tory voters, as a Savanta poll showed this week.
Having said that, remember that the line is the line until it is not.
Follow the New Statesman Podcast on Apple Podcasts for all the latest political analysis:
Freddie’s picks
Read Will’s excellent, essential cover story on how privatisation and the pursuit of profit have led to the devastation of England’s waterways.
What is Robert Jenrick up to? Rachel investigates whether the Sunak cabinet resignee can become Tory leader.
Jill Filipovic delves into the race to be Donald Trump’s running mate.
Yes, Janan Ganesh writes, the Tory right is to blame for the party’s polling position (Financial Times).
Mehdi Hasan: “We don’t value Palestinian life”
Mehdi Hasan – who has tweeted 167,300 times since April 2010, or 33 times a day for 14 years, in a tone that tends towards righteous and accusatory – is more agreeable in person than you might expect. His combativeness is more puckish than caustic. We met in April in Washington DC, where he has worked since 2015, to walk the Mall, from the Capitol to the Washington Monument. We argued for an hour.
Hasan is the frontman and CEO of Zeteo, one of the most successful new media companies in the US, which he set up after losing his weekly prime-time show at the cable news network MSNBC in December. His trenchant views on Gaza may have lost him his job, but he could not discuss the terms of his departure. To fund Zeteo, Hasan raised $4m from Muslim-American businessmen whose identities he did not want to divulge (“You associate with me, and the Donald Trump Juniors of the world come for you”). The site’s success has been remarkable: it has generated an estimated $2m in revenue from 25,000 paid subscribers since it launched on 27 February.
Hasan, 44, has become a flag-bearer for the American left, having only moved to the country a decade ago. In doing so, he followed a path set by Christopher Hitchens, a predecessor of his at the New Statesman, where Hasan worked from 2009 to 2012. Hasan, a teetotal Muslim, may be the closest thing to a contemporary successor to Hitchens, who was as well known for his love of alcohol as for his atheism. His critics on the right will find that comical but Hasan, like Hitchens, knows the power of moral stridency and a will to argue. Both were prolific columnists, but it was viral clips of them defeating others in debate that inspired devotion, and have proved so profitable for Hasan.
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