Nigel Farage’s offer to trade unions was met with a wall of hostility on Monday, as the country’s largest labour organisations accused the Reform UK leader of being “no friend of the workers” and dismissed his invitation to affiliate with his party as “a con”.
The snub came after a poll in The Times suggested Farage was the most popular party leader among trade union members, prompting him to declare in an interview that “if you represent working people in this country, my door is open” and to invite union leaders to Reform’s conference in September.
“Unions reject Nigel Farage's invitation to affiliate with Reform UK, calling him 'no friend of workers'.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham was the first to respond. “Reform have shown absolutely no evidence that they are friends of workers,” she said. “What needs to happen now is for the Labour Party to stop dithering and be the voice of workers.”
Unison’s Andrea Egan went further, pointing to Reform’s pledge to repeal Labour’s Employment Rights Act, which gives workers sick pay from day one and the right to claim unfair dismissal after six months. “It’s a con to think Nigel Farage and his rich cronies are interested in unions for anything but cold hard cash,” she said.
A GMB spokesperson added: “Mr Farage and his Reform MPs say one thing to workers and do another… we see them for what they are – re-badged Tories after union members’ basic rights.”
Even Wes Streeting, who resigned as health secretary last month and says he would join any future Labour leadership contest, weighed in: “Farage has the audacity to vote consistently against the rights of workers and then claim he’s open to trade unions.”
Farage acknowledged there would be “disagreements” and suggested common ground on “historical injustices” surrounding the British Steel pension scheme, which he said his party would “like to help you sort out”. But the resistance underscores how deeply unions are tied to Labour. Eleven unions, representing four million workers, back the party financially: Labour received £1.4m from seven unions in donations in the first three months of this year alone, with Unison giving £366,936 and Unite £392,544.
Yet beneath the united front, the labour movement itself is fracturing. The NEU, Britain’s largest teachers’ union, is locked in a bitter dispute with Unite, Unison and the GMB over who gets to organise teaching assistants. According to a source familiar with the matter, the row could even result in the teachers’ suspension from the TUC.
Mick Lynch, the former transport workers leader, recently sought to broaden the definition of class, saying: “If you don’t own the means of production, you are working class. If you have to get up when the alarm clock goes off and do a job and you depend on your earnings rather than your assets then you are working class.”
But as unions fend off Farage’s overtures and quarrel among themselves, the question remains whether any single voice can truly claim to speak for Britain’s workers.