Unite boss welcomes Labour’s warmongering
Red Tory Chancellor Rachel Reeves claimed today that her massive cuts to public spending and the government’s war on the sick, disabled, vulnerable and kids is all because of ‘global uncertainty’ – in other words, she wants to spend more on weapons – a line that was spewed endlessly by her political and media apologists, as if global uncertainty and change are not something that is always present and as if any of it justifies making the lives of millions of people in the UK and elsewhere miserable and even untenable, while putting all of us at risk of annihilation. ‘There’s no choice’, we’re supposed to believe – ‘we can’t afford the poor and disabled because we need more bombs’.
For a supposedly ‘Labour’ Chancellor to spout such far-right, frankly nazi-adjacent nonsense is utterly shameful – but for a union boss supposed to represent the working class to echo the same line is unconscionable. Yet that’s exactly what Unite general secretary Sharon Graham did:
Graham, repeating the rote (and tautological) ‘uncertain global world’ that faux-Labour spokespeople used in endless repetition, claims that spending more on weapons is great; she just wants it spent on UK-made weapons. To try to balance this out, she threw out a few lines about not penalising the poor that she knows Starmer and co are already ignoring and will continue to ignore, but Graham has long made clear that in her book arms industry jobs take priority. She said as much, in an ‘unhinged’ email to union staff and organisers a year ago, telling them that Unite will always prioritise arms jobs even above stopping genocide and will never support any organisation that takes action against UK weapons factories if any Unite members work there and haven’t agreed to it.
The same allegedly does not apply in the case of workers within her own union. Graham has been accused by furious workers of using ‘union-busting’ tactics against Unite staff working in the ‘Bargaining and Disputes Support Unit’ (BDSU) – which she set up when she became general secretary and which is run, for a handsome salary, by her husband Jack Clarke – who are taking industrial action over Clarke’s alleged bullying.
Clarke was on a final warning for bullying and misogyny until Graham took the top job – and Graham’s lawyers explosively admitted, while trying to lean on Skwawkbox not to publish, that the union destroyed evidence in those complaints after she took over. At least three and by some reports four of the five women working in the BDSU have quit alleging bullying and abuse; more than 9/10 workers there voted in favour of strike action over the issue. Graham has also been accused by the union’s officers of using similar union-busting tactics to try to prevent them organising collectively.
On the issue of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Graham has been alleged by insiders to have:
- banned Unite officials and national banners from pro-Gaza protests
- banned and smeared films and books exposing the ‘Labour antisemitism’ scam
- placed an official under investigation who refused to cancel a Palestine solidarity fringe event at Labour’s 2023 annual conference
- told her chief of staff to threaten a soon-to-retire official with the loss of a pension bonus if he did not soften his support for Palestinians
Her supporters also prevented debate and votes on Gaza at a meeting of the union’s elected executive – and last week, Unite members publicly accused Graham of a ‘systematic’ attack on union democracy to prevent debate over, and solidarity with, the people of Gaza. Graham has also stopped the union’s affiliation with Stop the War out of the same commitment to the arms industry and because of the organisation’s anti-genocide position and protests.
Graham’s latest comments are appalling, but they’re not out of character.
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It’s erm… girl power or something.
From Just Treatment:
Spring Statement 2025: Austerity 2.0 unleashed – our NHS & health will suffer
Today’s budget statement confirms the government is making a dangerous political and economic mis-calculation, returning to discredited austerity policies that brought the country, and our health care system to its knees. Rather than taking on the super-rich so they pay their fair share in tax, they are targeting the most vulnerable people in society with deadly cuts. This is going to put further strain on our crumbling hospitals and clinics, and will not address the big challenges we need to meet.
Analysis by the Resolution Foundation has found that some disabled people could lose nearly £10,000 a year in benefits by the end of the decade…
Labour have today announced that they intend to cut even further and deeper…So Labour have also announced that the health element of Universal Credit will be cut by 50% then frozen over the course of the rest of this Parliament, in order to balance their own books.
This desperate and dangerous scramble is happening because Labour’s economic strategy is failing to deliver on its own promises. So Rachel Reeves is seeking to address this poor performance by making sweeping cuts. But the last decade and a half have shown what this leads to – and it’s not good. The truth is that Labour cannot cut their way to “growth”, yet they are refusing to listen…
Some of the world’s leading economists have written to Rachel Reeves saying that new cuts would be a “profound mistake”. The group Patriotic Millionaires UK have spent the last week urging the government to tax their wealth in order to invest in Britain. Alternatives exist, but Labour won’t listen…
Labour claims one of its key shifts for the NHS is “from sickness to prevention”, yet it is pursuing policies that will plunge people into hardship, and make them even more unwell. Countless think tanks and policy experts have evidenced that tackling poverty is vital to improving healthy outcomes and therefore reducing pressure on the NHS.
What’s more, the government is…demanding that Integrated Care Boards cut their costs by 50%. Health experts have warned that these cuts will threaten the NHS’ ability to deliver long term transformation that is needed to improve patient care and outcomes.
Meanwhile, alarm bells are ringing as Keir Starmer refuses to rule out tax cuts for US tech giants – a move designed to “appease” US President Donald Trump. These companies include US spy tech corporation Palantir – who has been handed a £330m contract to run a giant database for NHS patients’ health data in England.
https://justtreatment.org/news/2025/3/26/spring-statement-2025-austerity-20-unleashed-our-nhs-amp-health-will-suffer?link_id=0&can_id=eb4352adfe463cd68572fdd9e73cf86c&source=email-spring-statement-austerity-20-unleashed&email_referrer=email_2671244&email_subject=_-spring-statement-austerity-20-unleashed&&
Worth a read is this piece by Jennie Kermode in Yorkshire Bylines:
Labour welfare cuts: bad for people, the party and the public purse
Labour’s planned cuts to disability benefits have been rightly condemned for targeting the vulnerable, but they’re also economic nonsense
There is, it would seem, a confusion at the heart of government between the ability to make hard decisions and the ability to make decisions well. Not that taking money away from the most vulnerable people in society is really a hard decision – it’s a cruel decision, but it doesn’t require toughness of the sort needed to tax wealthy people who might withdraw their party donations and personal gifts as a result. What it does require is a measure of stupidity. That’s because, far from saving the country money, it’s a false economy that we will all pay dearly for.
https://yorkshirebylines.co.uk/business/economy/labour-welfare-cuts-bad-for-people-the-party-and-the-public-purse/
From Richard J Murphy:
Rachel Reeves’ figures in the Spring Statement don‘t stack up – and are very scary
He concludes with:
The government looks like it is hoping that there will be a high-interest-rate policy in the UK, and there are two reasons for that.
If there’s a high-interest-rate policy in the UK, foreigners will bring their money here, and the government will need to run a smaller deficit as a consequence, simply because that is how the equation has to balance. But UK households will be dissaving because they won’t be able to afford to make ends meet because they’ll be paying such high interest costs and, therefore, we’ll be paying money to foreigners at high interest rates to induce them to bring the money here and we – that is the people in the UK who borrow money in particular, those with mortgages or those who pay rents to subsidise the mortgage costs of their landlords – will be being penalised so that we can pay high interest rates to the people who want to deposit their money in sterling from outside the UK.
We are literally going to be bankrupting the poorest people in the UK economy to make rich foreigners wealthier.
We’re going to see money leaving the UK economy to make these people richer as a consequence of running a high-interest-rate economy well out of line with the rest of the world.
No wonder Rachel Reeves is so keen to keep the Bank of England and the City of London happy right now, because she sees them as the source of the funding that is going to keep the UK exchange rate in control as a clear indicator of what this really means.
This is not a viable economic policy.
It is not viable for the people of the UK.
It is not viable that we should be so dependent on hot money, which is effectively what that purple line is.
It’s not viable that we should be paying so much interest out of the UK at a cost to the people of the UK.
It’s not viable that we must run a high-interest-rate policy to maintain the value of the pound.
Nothing about this suggests that Rachel Reeves is in control of the economy. What it does suggest is the exact opposite. It suggests that she’s panicking, and the only way she can think of the economy balancing is by literally having to borrow from foreigners who are going to leave money in the UK because we’re going to have such high interest charges.
That’s not an economic policy. That’s a way to bankrupt the UK, and she needs to change her plan or go because this is bad news for everyone in this country.
Well, we waited for the statement and got exactly what we expected.
Bombs, not butter. Jingoistic posturing rather than Pensions – which are on target to trigger over into paying income tax on state pension by next year.
Even it terms of employment, it makes no sense as so called ‘defence’ spending creates far less employment than investing that same money in other sectors of the economy.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/economic/economy/employment
……Whilst this piece……
https://aoav.org.uk/2024/the-myth-of-military-prosperity-why-oxford-economics-report-the-economic-impact-of-the-british-army-fails-to-convince-that-defence-spending-is-the-best-way-to-drive-uk-economic-growth/
……eviscerates the fanciful notion that “defence” spending is the best way to drive the UK economy
…..and here……
https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-sir-keir-starmer-defence-spending-wont-make-britain-richer#
…even the CATO Institutes notes:
“Top American economists from Valerie Ramey to Robert Barro have found that defence spending crowds out private investment.”
Shame on ye, GS Graham.
Austerity is Class War. The Austerity Merchants are showing their true colours.
So Graham’s is just another Warmonger?
Another political lightweight who doesn’t seem to get that building peace & co-operation with other countries is actually FREE!
But I guess that doesn’t boost profits for the arms companies who donate to politicians.
According to the FT “50% of the US discretionary budget is spent on the military” and now as Europe including the UK scuttles around to build up arms after being wrong footed by the USA, would the world economy crash if the world actually came to its senses and built peace?
Say No to The Merchants of Death & their apologists.
Hope Unite gets a new heavyweight GS soon.
At least graham’s got the cojones to.
Whereas our resident imbecile seems to have disappeared onto the ether.
It’s all gone quite over there.
Meanwhile here’s what the tories really think about (disability) benefits
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkngrv14myo
Minister sorry for comparing benefits to pocket money
“sorry” me arse.
Now here’s an idea: Send your kids, from Far Away People Production
https://x.com/FarAwayPeopleUK/status/1902803274711044149