Union Boss Criticizes Starmers Speech As Weak

The boss of a Labour-backing union has said Keir Starmer’s make-or-break speech did not “cut the mustard” and called for him to be replaced as prime minister.

Sharon Graham, general secretary of Unite, told HuffPost UK that it would be the “death knell” for Labour if he led them into the next election.

Starmer has been criticised for the “utterly inadequate” speech, which was supposed to set out how he plans to turn around his party’s fortunes after last week’s disastrous election results.

The PM confirmed the government is nationalising British Steel and vowed to put the UK “at the heart of Europe”, but failed to announce any major new policies.

Graham, a frequent critic of the prime minister, said: “I don’t think it cut the mustard. The difficulty here is that the size of the problem is not being grasped.

“Obviously they inherited something that is quite difficult, there’s no doubt about that. The 2008 financial crash is still the most significant thing that has happened.

“Workers have paid the price over and over again. What Labour needs to do now to shift the dial is they’ve got to change direction and they have got to put in economic policy that is going to make the lives of working people better.”

She said the government should bring in a wealth tax on the super-rich and loosen the Treasury’s fiscal rules so the government can “borrow to invest”.

“Those were the sorts of things I wanted to hear in the speech today,” she said. “Unless they do that, then of course people are going to go to other places because they want some hope, they want to know that people are listening to them. They’re not getting that with Labour at the moment.”

Graham also rejected the claim that a Labour leadership contest would be bad for the country.

She said: “This is the point Keir Starmer was making – I’m going to stay put because I don’t want to put the country into chaos. The country is in chaos.

“We’ve got the worst growth, the amount of money that we owe has gone up because we are seen as a risk and so therefore you have to look at how we are going to deal with those things.

“So for me, I don’t think it’s going to happen tomorrow, but there isn’t a cat in hell’s chance that Keir Starmer’s going to lead us into the next election. It would be the death knell if that happened.”

However, she refused to say who she would back in any leadership race.

She said: “I don’t know at the moment because I don’t know what they stand for.

“What we have to understand is what people stand for. Are any of them for the renationalisation of energy, for example, which is going to have to be a long-term goal.

“We have to look at reindustrialisation. They’re talking about not drilling in the North Sea without any plan whatsoever about how any of those jobs are going to have to be replaced and how we move towards jobs within the renewable industry.

“Until we see some of those polices, I don’t think it’s easy to say who would replace him. But replace is the answer, with somebody with good policies.”

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