Angela Rayner places boot into Labour’s critics

Angela Rayner wasn’t sporting her trademark chunky boots when she addressed the TUC convention in Liverpool

But she put the boot into Labour’s trade union critics in a robust speech, ending with a name for the unions to “come together, stand together and campaign side by side”.

No stilettos, both, only a pair of sensible enterprise footwear and a gown in a sober darkish inexperienced color. Preparing for presidency?

And her message was, if you’d like a Labour authorities, cease the carping and moaning, as she declared: “This country can’t survive another five years of Tory rule.”

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Her targets? Principally Unite’s Sharon Graham, who this week denounced Sir Keir Starmer’s insurance policies as a “1990s tribute act”, and Mark Serworka of the PCS, who accused the Labour chief of breaking guarantees – suggesting he was untrustworthy.

The name for unity was all of the extra highly effective coming from the Labour deputy, who informed the unions she could have been born in Stockport, however she was “raised in the trade union movement”.

It wasn’t a message that might have the identical resonance had it been delivered to the unions by Sir Keir, seen by critics as a slick north London lawyer whose claims of his personal working-class roots usually are not at all times convincing.

When she was launched earlier than she delivered her speech, genuine Angy was hailed by TUC president Maria Exall as “one of us” and “Labour’s finest” – not the kind of introduction Sir Keir would have been greeted with.

The night earlier than her convention speech, the self-deprecating deputy chief had confessed that she was “no angel”, however vowed to “get things done”.

And she echoed that latter assertion in her speech, promising to enact Labour’s New Deal for Working People – that’s, in an Employment Rights Bill ” in the first 100 days of a Labour government.

“That’s a cast-iron dedication,” she mentioned.

That was adopted by a blizzard of pledges: banning zero-hours contracts, ending fire-and-rehire, family-friendly working, strengthening sick pay, ending the gender pay hole, tackling sexual harassment at work and extra.

It was precisely what the unions needed to listen to and prompted Sir Keir, whose speech on the TUC’s gala dinner the earlier night was described to Sky News as “bland” by one union basic secretary, to tweet that her speech was “brilliant”.

The Tory chairman, Greg Hands, nevertheless, claimed: “The mask has slipped. Despite Keir Starmer’s short-term promise to be pro-business, his deputy leader is committing to Labour’s paymasters that they will have more control over Britain’s economy.”

That’s not totally honest. She mentioned in her speech that Labour will “work hand in hand with trade unions as we will work with business”.

Read extra:
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Sharon Graham stays unrepentant about her criticism, nevertheless. She informed Sky News after Rayner’s speech that Labour must be bolder.

“There can be no back-tracking on the agreed workers’ rights,” she mentioned.

That’s harsh and a bit of unfair. There was no back-tracking in Ms Rayner’s speech. A cast-iron dedication could not be clearer.

She is, in any case, because the TUC president kindly identified, “one of us”.