Labour insist there has been no watering down of its pledges on workers’ rights but Unite begs to differ. It is not the first spat over its programme for government and will not be the last as the party moves through the complicated process of picking eye-catching, voter-friendly policies for its manifesto.
Wording agreed at the national policy forum, leaked to the FT, shows some changes have been made in order to head off potential Tory criticism about Labour’s approach to business. It had pledged a single status for workers apart from the genuinely self-employed. Now it looks as if there will be post-election consultation on workers’ rights to hammer out a “a simpler framework” that differentiates between workers and the genuinely self-employed in a way that would “properly capture the breadth of employment relationships in the UK” – as well as ensuring workers can still “benefit from flexible working where they choose to do so”. Labour points out that it is still committing to ban zero-hour contracts, tackle bogus self-employment and end qualifying periods for rights in the “biggest levelling up of workers’ rights in decades” – and highlights the support of all unions apart from Unite. But Unite and some on the left of the party would rather have seen a stronger pledge and more detailed commitment. These kind of policy disagreements tend to multiply in the run-up to Labour’s manifesto as the party looks over its offering and tries to appeal as broadly as it can, ditching some areas and amending others. With possibly only a year or less until the general election, Labour faces a delicate balancing act over how to include pledges that sound impressive to voters while still leaving wriggle room for a prime minister in government. Some policies announced in the early days of Keir Starmer’s leadership pitch have long been ditched – from abolishing tuition fees to more nationalisation of utilities. Others have been refined in a way that helps with the party’s attempts to position itself as fiscally responsible, including delaying plans for a green prosperity fund, from the first year of government to the middle of a first parliament. The first step of sifting through policies has now been done by the national policy forum but the next minefields to navigate are discussions at party conference and then the final selection of policies for the manifesto. Starmer has so far managed to keep the unions apart from Unite on side, and there has been little public dissent within the shadow cabinet on policy issues. There are still a few thorny areas, such as the diverging views on gender recognition between Labour in Scotland and England, and unhappiness among many Labour MPs about the refusal to scrap the two-child benefit limit. But in general, there has been a closing of ranks within the major unions aside from Unite and the bulk of the parliamentary party. The party’s conference in October will show the extent of any splits or whether Labour and most of the unions are now too hungry for government for big divisions on policy.