Reform is now the undisputed party of the working class

This week brings yet more evidence of working-class voters having ditched the Labour Party for Reform UK. A new survey reveals that trade-union members, who have historically been very left-wing, are now evenly split between support for Reform and Labour. Astonishingly, Nigel Farage comes out on top as their preferred choice for prime minister. It is Farage, not Keir Starmer, who is perceived as the party leader most likely to benefit working people.

This neck-and-neck result is the result of a 20-point collapse in Labour’s support among union members since the 2024 General Election. In the same period, the proportion backing Reform has increased by 12 percentage points, leaving both parties now tied on 28 per cent.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be shocked that 62 per cent of union members now say that ‘Labour has lost touch with working people’. After all, the recent local-election results showed that Reform has picked up most support in the Brexit-backing working-class communities once branded Labour’s Red Wall. Places like Sunderland fell to Reform despite the council having been held by Labour for the previous 52 years. Even union leaders are forced to concede that ‘the working class has abandoned’ Labour.

In recent years, it has been easy to forget that large trade unions were established to represent working-class people. When unions hit the headlines, it has often been plummy-voiced junior doctors demanding higher wages, or union-backed teachers complaining about the prospect of a Jewish MP visiting their school, or National Education Union (NEU) members being given training on how to most effectively bring ‘the Palestinian struggle’ into the classroom. We have grown used to trade unions failing to defend female nurses who refused to undress in front of trans-identifying male colleagues and, even now, shamefully questioning the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s guidance on single-sex spaces. Today’s trade unions can appear to be elite institutions stuffed full of woke activists.

But not all unions are the same. Interestingly, the new polling data show that Reform comfortably beats Labour among members of two of the biggest unions, Unite and the GMB (originally the General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union). Unite represents workers from industries including manufacturing, construction, transport, healthcare, hospitality and the services sector. Thirty-six per cent of Unite members back Reform, compared with 30 per cent who support Labour. The GMB organises ‘across every sector, from care and construction to local government, energy, transport and beyond’. Its members opt for Reform over Labour by 31 per cent to 22 per cent. Among Unison members, Labour wins only narrowly, by 28 per cent to 25 per cent for Reform. Unison represents nurses and healthcare assistants rather than doctors, and teaching assistants rather than teachers or university lecturers.

Meanwhile, the unions whose members are most likely to stick with Labour are Prospect (representing professional engineers, scientists, managers and civil servants), the PCS (civil servants) and the NEU (teachers). In other words, we have a tale of two trade-union movements. Union members in working-class jobs are more likely to back Reform, while those in middle-class professions are sticking with the Labour Party.

But there is another divide worth mentioning too, a split not between but within trade unions. There is a growing divide between the union leadership and rank-and-file members. Following publication of this week’s poll, Gary Smith, GMB general secretary, warned his members that Reform is ‘no friend’ of workers, claiming it wants ‘to cancel hugely important union rights and [is] targeting the pensions of the low paid’. Rather than representing the views of the majority of GMB members, Smith is telling them to think again.

Likewise, the general secretaries of Unite and the GMB have blamed the government’s cuts to the winter fuel allowance and green energy policies for Labour’s declining support. Like Tony Blair, they want Labour to make concessions in order to see off the populists.

The unions’ proximity to Labour is becoming an increasing problem for their Reform-favouring, working-class members. Eleven unions remain formally affiliated to the Labour Party, including all three of the GMB, Unison and Unite. This means that a proportion of the monthly membership fees paid by each worker goes directly to the Labour Party. This is supposed to ensure that working-class interests are represented in parliament through Labour – the party unions established to do precisely that over 125 years ago. That no longer makes sense given Labour’s abandonment of the working class. Why should hard-pressed workers be forced to shell out for a party they do not support, and that does not support them, at the behest of their union’s higher-ups?

Yet it seems that even this may be changing. In March this year, Unite members voted to cut their union’s Labour affiliation budget by 40 per cent. This leaves Labour around £580,000 out of pocket.

Yet, despite working-class support plummeting and union dues shrinking, Labour MPs continue to kid themselves that theirs is still ‘the party of working people’. Not any more. Finally, the cosy relationship between trade unions and the Labour Party is unravelling. Working people see that their interests are better represented by populism – and right now, that means Reform.