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Labour must not seek to “Out-Farage Farage”, the leader of Britain’s trade union movement has warned, as Keir Starmer’s Government faces a backlash from Labour MPs over its recent migration and asylum policies.
The Home Secretary on Monday unveiled a series of hardline plans to limit the rights of refugees seeking asylum in the UK, saying that the UK must not offer a “golden ticket” to those arriving here.
The plans, which include proposals to make asylum seekers wait up to 20 years for permanent residence in the UK, and a controversial pledge to seize the assets, including jewellery of those seeking refuge, have caused outrage among many Labour MPs
Labour MP for Stroud, Simon Opher, was among those who urged his party to “push back on the racist agenda of Reform rather than echo it”.
This is a sentiment which is shared by Paul Nowak, General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress.
Speaking to Byline Times in advance of the Government’s latest plans, Nowak said: “I’ve been very clear in terms of Labour: I don’t think you can out-Farage Farage.”
Nigel Farage will “always up the ante further” on migration, he argues. “That doesn’t mean the Government shouldn’t have a values-based, sensible, fair approach to migration.
“But as soon as you start using their language, aping their rhetoric, I think that’s a slippery slope…It’s not where Labour wants to be politically or morally. And I don’t think there’s any electoral advantage in it either, because if that’s what you want, you’ll go and vote for Nigel Farage.”
The TUC leader, who represents Britain’s 5.5 million member-strong union movement, was speaking before this week’s announcement from Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, where she pledged “the most sweeping reforms of the asylum system in modern times” and “a clear plan to make it less attractive for illegal migrants to come to Britain [and] make it easier to remove illegal migrants off British soil.”
In an interview with this outlet at the TUC’s central London HQ, Congress House, last week, Paul Nowak said: “Lots of people care about migration, but lots of people care about the state of the NHS. Lots of people care about economic insecurity and the cost of living crisis as well. Farage has got nothing to say about those things. I think Labour should be talking about those things.”
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‘Nasty Brand of Politics’
He added that anti-migrant policies could backfire: “If you want to vote for that nasty brand of politics, you’ll vote for the real deal, rather than the…imitators.”
But Nowak saved most of his ire for Reform UK, noting the party’s backing for mass deportations of migrants “echoes the National Front of the 1970s”.
While Nowak is concerned by the rise of Reform – and the party’s effect on political debate in the UK – does not believe their rise is unassailable.
“I don’t think Nigel Farage in Number 10…is by any stretch inevitable.” But the party is “poisoning the political discourse”, he added.
“Our job is to expose the gap between what Reform says and what Reform does.”
Asked how the union movement was engaging with the party, Nowak says: “We’re very clear at the TUC: we won’t platform Reform. What we will do is engage with them where it’s absolutely necessary, where it’s vital to represent the interests of members.”
However, it is not “helpful” to label Reform as a fascist party, the union movement leader believes: “I don’t think they are a fascist party. Clearly there will be fascists who support them. It’s like that little thing: not everyone who voted Reform was a racist, but all racists vote [for] Reform.”
Nowak thinks that, ultimately, the party’s potential Cabinet ministers-in-waiting will not prove an attractive proposition to voters.
“Richard Tice, Andrea Jenkyns and Nadine Dorries do not look like an impressive roster to me.”
The TUC is stepping up its work to tackle Reform UK and its arguments, saying Farage’s “real interests are aligned with, not working class people, [but] the tech billionaires, [media mogul] Paul Marshall and others.”
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Racists on the Rise
The TUC will make a clear distinction between Reform’s voters and the party leadership itself.
“I don’t think that voting Reform makes you racist, but some of the policies definitely are racist, and some of the leadership in that party are definitely racist. [Their] policy around the Indefinite Leave to Remain effectively echoes the National Front of the 1970s,” the General Secretary told Byline Times.
Merseyside-born Nowak recently visited Durham, an area now controlled by Farage’s party. He came away from the trip deeply disturbed.
“A black woman social worker told me she didn’t go out at night – not because she’s scared of abuse, but because she gets abuse.”
“Groups like [neo-Nazi organisation] Combat 18, who had been relatively low profile, all of a sudden [are] emboldened to be back out onto the streets.”
Nowak believes the anti-migrant protests – and riots last summer – have boosted Farage’s party.
“It’s great for them to have people running riots on the streets, laying siege to [asylum] hostels…It fits into their narrative that the country is broken. I think they implicitly kindle some of that really extreme far-right stuff.”
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Net Zero and Steel
But for the TUC, Reform UK also poses a threat to the union movement’s push for a ‘green transition’ towards cleaner energy and jobs in renewables.
When it comes to Reform wanting to scrap Net Zero climate targets, Nowak claimed the policy has “real world implications.”
“If you’re an employer thinking ‘am I going to invest in the next generation of EVs or battery plants or whatever in the UK?’, the prospect of a Reform Government in three and a half years time that’s going to pull all funding and support – that throws in the volatility, the uncertainty that we don’t need. What we need is a very clear path.”
He also hit out at alleged hypocrisy from the party over jobs in steel – noting Nigel Farage is close to Donald Trump, a President who has imposed hefty tariffs on UK-made steel products.
“The cheeky sod [Farage] was in Scunthorpe holding up a placard saying ‘Save our steel.’ At the same time, his mate in the White House is slapping tariffs on the UK steel industry and the automotive industry. They’re directly placing at risk tens of thousands of jobs in the UK. We need to call them out for that,” Nowak says.
He admits, though, that scandals or charges of hypocrisy have so far not stuck on Farage. The right are “held to a different standard,” Nowak argues. “People bake it in: ‘Farage is dodgy. No shit, Sherlock’. People just assume that that’s part and parcel of it. It’s a bit like [coverage of Boris] Johnson: ‘Oh, he’s a lad.’”
But charges of people on the side of wealthy elites will catch up with Farage, Nowak believes: “Ultimately chickens do come home to roost.”
And a majority of voters will stand against the politics of the far-right, he says. “Most people in this country are decent and they’re fair-minded…we want to build a decent majority against the populist and far right.”
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Union Challenge
Nowak, unsurprisingly, gives the Conservative Party and its recent lurch to the right short shrift.
“It looks increasingly irrelevant,” the trade unionist argues. Shadow Home Secretary Robert Jenrick is “reinventing himself as a leader of the nasty right. And I think that’s what it is.”
But while the Conservatives are collapsing, Reform’s rise poses a problem for unions – in that many of their members are backing a party that opposes stronger workers’ rights.
Members voting for the Right is nothing new, however. “We had millions of trade union members vote for Margaret Thatcher at a time when she was attacking trade unions left, right and centre,” Nowak concedes.
He has spoken to many union members now backing Reform, telling this outlet: “In Birkenhead, my hometown – I was with a group of outsourced public workers. Ten or 11 were standing on the picket line. And three or four of them said: “I’m going to vote Reform.” Why? They’re on the minimum wage.”
It is, he believes, about security: if you have little power, on low pay, in a precarious outsourced role – the lure of a scapegoat to blame will often be appealing.
Nowak sees it as a priority of the TUC over the next few years to turn that ire away from migrants and towards bad bosses, and corporate greed. He may have to pick a few fights with the Government, too, to get that message across.
Got a story? Get in touch in confidence on josiah@bylinetimes.com
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