Unite’s general secretary, Sharon Graham, has told the government it must do more for workers in 2026 or risk sowing the seeds of its own destruction.
Graham accused Labour of being preoccupied with its “failing leadership” and described the debate about who might replace Keir Starmer as inevitable.
Writing in the Times, she said: “For too long it has been everyday people, workers and communities who have paid the price for crisis after crisis not of their making. In 2026 this must stop. The government needs to decide what it stands for and who it stands for. If we have to ask, it is not working.
“The party faithful can agonise about its failing leadership and a ‘night of the long knives’. But a new Labour leadership with the same policies simply won’t cut it. The doom loop cannot be broken with more austerity lite, no matter who is in Downing Street.
“Britain needs vision. We led the first Industrial Revolution and we are nowhere in the fourth. Rudderless.”
Graham said the next prime minister would face the same problems unless they undertook a shift in policy, and that replacing Starmer with the former deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner; the mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham; the health secretary, Wes Streeting, or the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, would not persuade workers to back Labour.
“It cannot just be a question of changing the leader or improving the sales pitch,” she said. “There is much agonising right now about whether, when and who should replace the prime minister. That is inevitable.”
Unite, Labour’s most powerful union backer, was the only union that did not endorse the party’s manifesto “as it did not back jobs”, Graham said.
“We fought back on the winter fuel allowance cut and the self-harm of net zero targets that came without the needed investment in new industries. Trade unions are there to fight for workers, not to side with politicians,” she said.
“In the recent budget, Labour opting for stealth taxes on workers instead of a wealth tax on the mega-rich was the wrong choice. Labour must stop being embarrassed to be the voice of workers.
“In the coming year, if this government does not depart from its current path, it will surely be sowing the seeds of its own destruction.”
