Kmflett's Blog

The Times front page (1st June) leads with a report on a JL Partners poll on union members views on political parties. An extract via the Guardian is below.

JL Partners have their origins as pollsters for Theresa May and the Tories but there is no reason to think they don’t run properly conducted polls. That said the poll was clearly designed for a purpose (see below) and needs to be understood in that context.

Understanding what they mean is another matter and the Times, fiercely anti-union, is not about to enlighten us.

The sample size of just over 1,000 is small. Union membership is around 6.6m, although the focus here is on members of unions affiliated to Labour such as the GMB, Unite, Unison, FBU and TSSA.

There is some support for affiliating to Reform rather than Labour, except that Farage’s political business has no mechanism for that to happen. Moreover policy is determined not democratically but by Farage.

The purpose of the poll, which the Times hints at, is to get the Government to do less things that impact badly on union members and more things that impact well. Andy Burnham may well be pleased, even if its far clear that he would be able to do this if he became Labour leader.

The question of Labour’s institutional links to trade union leaderships is certainly a live one. In the last few weeks both CWU and ASLEF conferences have voted to maintain the link, albeit critically.

Of course political funds can be spent on campaigning rather than donating to Labour directly (and often are, particularly for non-affiliated unions) but the ability to influence legislation, for example, on rights at work, currently exists only within the context of Labour. That can, like everything, change but change takes organisation, hard work and political vision.

In the meantime I don’t think its any surprise that numbers of trade unionists back Reform. Right-wing trade unionism has a long history and does active opposition to it. Perhaps the more interesting thing here is that support for Labour, unsurprisingly is dropping, and where that support is going. Mostly not to Reform I’d suggest, likely to the Greens and support for left campaigns..

Guardian report

Around 1,000 trade union members were polled, and Reform and Labour both attracted 28% support. In 2024 Labour was on 24% with union members.

According to the poll, Reform UK is also comfortably ahead amongst Unite members (on 36%, against 30% for Labour) and amongst GMB members (on 31%, against 22% for Labour). But Unison members are slightly more pro-Labour (28%) than pro-Reform UK (25%), the poll suggests.