This week, Brighton once again played host to the annual gathering of trade unionists at the TUC Congress. While it was the third Congress since Labour returned to power, it was the first since Andy Burnham took over as prime minister. 

Mr Burnham’s ascent to Number 10 loomed large over the event – and gave the whole thing a much more optimistic tone than it has had in recent years. Speaking to delegates, there was a palpable sense that Burnham offered hope for the movement and a real opportunity to prevent a Reform government. 

Likewise, both the senior cabinet members who addressed the Congress were warmly received by delegates. Housing secretary Angela Rayner spoke at the event on Monday, in which she gave a stark warning of what a Reform government would mean for workers. On Tuesday, first secretary of state Louise Haigh spoke in place of the prime minister, who had cancelled all engagements following the death of his father. She used her speech to commit the government to “turn the page on four decades of lost opportunity, to deliver the change our country is crying out for, and to build a future that the people we represent expect and deserve.” Both speeches were met with a standing ovation from delegates. 

Beyond the applause though, what do the leaders of some of the big unions think of the early days of the Burnham government? 

Equity’s Paul W Fleming told LFF that it is ‘markedly more competent’ than Keir Starmer’s‘. Dave Ward from the CWU said Burnham is the ‘best chance for working people’. Unite’s Sharon Graham told LFF that his ‘analysis has been good’.

So far, so good. But the support from trade union general secretaries isn’t unconditional or without warnings.Graham said she wanted to see “meat on the bones” and that he needed to prove “the working class could feel that their better days are ahead of them”. ASLEF general secretary Dave Calfe told LFF that Burnham has to use the budget to “make life easier for working people”. And while Ward said he was the best chance for working people, he also said he was the ‘last chance’ to prevent Reform from coming to power and seeing Labour out office for a long time. 

The prospect of Reform coming to power, and the threat of the far-right, were threads that ran throughout much of this year’s Congress. The TUC general secretary Paul Nowak used his keynote speech at the event to lay into Nigel Farage’s party, saying: “Reform do not, never have, and never will represent the interests of working people”, and calling for a ban crypto donations. Delegates also agreed to set up a task-force to combat the far-right online. They also voted for a motion which saw the TUC commit to take steps to tackle the far-right’s “weaponisation of women’s and girls’ safety”.

On the topic of motions – what were the big debates at this year’s Congress? Ultimately, there was very little disagreement within the movement this year, with most motions passing unanimously. Compared to Congresses over recent years, this one was much more cordial. 

The main disagreement came on Wednesday morning, over a UCU motion on the ‘Wages Not Weapons’ campaign, which calls for investment in public services, rather than defence spending. The motion called for the TUC to “build on the Wages Not Weapons campaign by advancing a trade union vision of security based on decent work, quality public services, equality, climate action, democracy and peace”. Although it passed, it proved divisive, with Unite and GMB among those to speak against it.

Despite not causing disagreement in the hall, this year’s Congress did pass a number of other significant motions. Delegates voted to oppose the EHRC code of practice and support self-ID for trans people, to call a national demonstration this autumn calling for investment in public services, and to push the UK government to end all military cooperation with Israel.

With the storytelling done, here’s the full line-by-line rundown of everything that happened:

The interviews

• Sharon Graham: A just transition could be as transformational as the 1945 Labour government
• Andy Burnham must ‘make life easier for working people’ – interview with ASLEF general secretary Dave Calfe 
• Andy Burnham is ‘best chance for working people’ – CWU general secretary Dave Ward 
• Zack Polanski will be sixth Green MP after Holborn and St Pancras by-election, Rachel Millward claims
• Andy Burnham’s government ‘markedly more competent’ than Keir Starmer’s – Equity general secretary

The speeches

• Louise Haigh tells TUC Congress Labour government is ‘proudly on the side of working people’
• Angela Rayner gives stark warning of impact of Reform government on workers in TUC Congress speech
• TUC general secretary slams Tory and Reform ‘flat-earthers’ over climate policy
• Paul Nowak calls for ban on crypto donations in damning attack on Reform UK
• TUC general secretary celebrates ‘biggest increase’ in trade union membership ‘since records began’
• TUC president blasts ‘vindictive and pernicious’ legislation that blocks trade unionists’ ‘fundamental human rights’
• TUC president perfectly sums up why trade unionism matters

The motions

• TUC calls for end to all UK military cooperation with Israel in wide-ranging BDS policy
• TUC votes to build on ‘Wages Not Weapons’ campaign and advance an alternative vision for security
• TUC passes motion condemning ‘institutional racist targeting, harassment and humiliation’ of Professor Jason Arday 
• TUC backs motion calling for investment in climate resilience 
• TUC backs ASLEF campaign for publicly owned trains to end railway profiteering 
• TUC calls on Labour to make good on its promise to deliver ‘biggest wave of insourcing in a generation’ 
• TUC agrees to call national demonstration to demand investment in public services
• TUC votes to condemn EHRC code of practice and back self-ID for trans people
• TUC issues call for radical shift in British economic policy
• TUC agrees to launch social media taskforce to take on far-right online
• TUC commits to ‘defend’ teachers from ‘attacks’ by Reform-controlled councils

The rest

• Privatised water firms acting “like a criminal racket”, Apsana Begum MP claims
• Labour Party’s record on trans rights ‘absolutely disgraceful’, Nadia Whittome tells TUC fringe 
• Sharon Graham explains why workers not bosses are what keeps the country going in just 29 words
• Government must ‘face up to reality’ on climate crisis, Fire Brigades Union leader says
• Union leader destroys far-right’s claims to care about women’s safety

The stuff that’s still to come

We’re not quite done yet! We’ve still got two more interviews to get out from this week. Watch this space for our conversation with the Musicians’ Union’s Naomi Pohl and USDAW’s Joanne Thomas. 

TUC was the first conference in our calendar of coverage for this season (as Reform refused to let us in!) Next up, in just over a week’s time, we’ll be in Liverpool covering Labour Conference. We’re proud to have provided some of the most comprehensive coverage of TUC Congress of any media outlet in the UK. But this reporting doesn’t come cheap.

If you haven’t already done so, please consider chipping in and donating today to help fund our conference season coverage.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Unite is one of the UK’s largest trade unions, representing over 1 million workers in a range of sectors. Its general secretary – Sharon Graham – is one of the most prominent figures in the labour movement, having first been elected in 2021 and comfortably re-elected this summer.

Under her leadership, Unite has sought to assert its influence on the political scene in order to deliver policy change for its members, while maintaining a relentless focus on workplace organising over issues of pay, terms and conditions.

During her time in office, she’s butted heads with governments of various flavours. With Andy Burnham now in Number 10 and leading a new-ish administration, LFF spoke to Graham at this year’s TUC Congress about what she makes of his early days in government and what her union wants him to deliver for workers.

“At the moment the working class feel that their best days are behind them”, Graham told LFF, adding: “They don’t believe their children will have better jobs. They don’t believe their children are going to be able to buy a home. And actually they feel that everything that was there is almost in the past, not the present.”

She went on to say that Burnham needs to “crack the code” to ensure that “the working class could feel that their better days are ahead of them”. She said his “analysis has been good”, but that there needed to be “meat on the bones”.

What would this look like? Graham’s initial answer comes with a proposed contrast to the early days of the Keir Starmer government. Within months of coming to office, Starmer and his chancellor Rachel Reeves proposed major cuts to the Winter Fuel Allowance, a move vociferously opposed by many in the trade union movement.

Graham told LFF that Burnham needs to deliver a “Winter Fuel in reverse”, arguing that “he has to something positive and clear”, and that this should be “immediate”.

With the budget coming up in October, the government has an opportunity to deliver this. For Graham, there are some clear policies it could adopt that would improve the lives of workers and begin to rebalance the economy.

First up is tax thresholds, which Graham argues should be un-frozen. “It’s one of these hidden things that’s happening that most people don’t even realise”, Graham told LFF. She added that in: “2022, they were frozen by the Tories, continued on by Labour. But if that had not happened, the £12,500 band would be £16,000, and the 40% tax threshold at £50,000 would be £66,000. We’ve got low paid members and pensioners going in too early on the 20%, and you’ve also then got tanker drivers, nurses, teachers coming in at the 40% bracket when they shouldn’t be in at the 40% bracket at all.”

Graham continued: “So even though that’s something that in a way is really hidden, I think the signal it would give is: work pays.”

Alongside this, Graham has called for the government to use the budget to ‘ease’ the pressure on people around energy costs.

But Graham and Unite are looking for a more extensive set of economic changes than this. At this year’s TUC Congress, delegates backed a Unite motion which called for an “ambitious industrial strategy to deliver good well-paid jobs and reindustrialise Britain”, an end to public sector austerity through taxing wealth, and a loosening of the government’s ‘fiscal rules’ to allow more direct investment in jobs.

Graham told LFF that “since the 2008 crash and Covid, it’s been workers and communities that have paid the price for the entirety of it”, and called for the government to say that “workers and communities aren’t going to pay anymore”, arguing that they should instead be “going to the exceedingly rich” and the “banks who we bailed out” to fund the economy.

Alongside this, Graham said she wants to see a substantial “package of investment in British industry”, the “reindustrialisation” of the UK, and for the government to begin taking energy into public ownership. She told LFF: “In an average house bill of £1,700, £500 pound is profit. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. At some point we need to take this back into public hands.”

Graham acknowledged that “we might not get everything”, but argued that “if the package shows this is a Labour government fighting for the working class and making sure that everyday people are not paying the price – they’ve done that since 2008 – I think he [Burnham] will get a good hearing.”

On that economic package, how the government addresses the climate emergency and decarbonises the economy is a central interest for trade unions. How that transition is managed is a key area of debate within the trade union movement.

Unlike some within the movement and the wider left, Unite does not oppose the expansion of oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.

Graham told LFF that Unite’s support for continued drilling in the North Sea is in order to buy time to deliver a fair and just transition for workers into a net-zero economy.

“Everyone I speak to wants net-zero”, Graham said, adding: “But you cannot have one part of the equation, which is the target, if you don’t have the other part of the equation, which is how the jobs are going to be replaced and what those industries are”. She went on to say that continuing to extract oil and gas from the North Sea “just buys time for us to be able to hopefully convince a government that they have to invest in these new industries”, arguing that “The problem we’ve got at the moment – there isn’t any transition”.

For Graham, the transition to a decarbonised economy is a massive opportunity for the country and for workers, but one that is not currently being taken. “We led the first industrial revolution. We’re nowhere as far as this is concerned with the fourth industrial revolution”, Graham told LFF.

Later in the interview, she went on to say that this transition could be ‘transformational’ for the country. She said: “It could be something transformational on par with the 1945 Labour government if they got it right. I mean, imagine if there was a plan to nationalise our energy at the same time that we were building new industries in Britain for the first time. It’s an unbelievable package.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have endorsed a policy of ending all military cooperation and arms trading with Israel. They backed a motion proposed by Artists Union England (AUE) and seconded by UNISON.

The motion began by noting the “catastrophic destruction of Gaza, including infrastructure, hospitals, schools, and universities, following Israel’s genocidal assault since 2023, killing over 70,000 Palestinians, displacing millions, and increase in illegal settlements, military occupation and apartheid”.

It went on to argue that the TUC had an obligation to “answer the call of Palestinian workers for solidarity” and back the “global Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions” (BDS), which it described as “an effective strategy to pressure Israel to end its ongoing genocide, system of apartheid, occupation and denial of the right of return for refugees”.

As a result of the motion, the TUC will campaign for the UK government to end all military cooperation and arms sales with Israel, and to “impose wide-ranging sanctions on Israel until it complies with international law”. It will also see the TUC “support the Palestinian led BDS movement; trade union-led campaigns in support of Palestine; the workplace days of action; divestment from companies complicit in Israel’s crimes against Palestinians, in cooperation with union members in those companies”.

Alongside AUE and UNISON, delegates from Unite, NASUWT, the National Education Union, PCS and the CWU spoke in favour of the motion.

The motion was welcomed by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC). Peter Leary, Deputy Director of PSC said: “This historic vote, committing the Trade Union Congress to support the Palestinian-led movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions, recognises that the limited steps announced by the government fall far short of meeting Britain’s legal obligations not to assist Israel’s ongoing genocide, apartheid, illegal occupation and other violations of international law.

“Trade unions and workers across Britain are right to call for continued political pressure and action in the workplace to end the complicity of companies, institutions and the government in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.

“In response to the call from Palestinian trade unions and the BDS movement, workers across Britain, alongside workers from around the world, will put this motion into practice on Thursday 26 November when they take part in the TUC-backed workplace day of action in solidarity with Palestine.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Trade unionists have been gathering in Brighton this week for the annual TUC Congress. At the Congress, delegates have been debating and agreeing the trade union movement’s positions on key political and economic issues.

On the final day, delegates supported a motion proposed by the University and College Union (UCU) to build an alternative vision for security “based on decent work, quality public services, equality, climate action, democracy and peace”. The motion called on the TUC to build on the ‘Wages Not Weapons’ campaign, which calls for investment in public services, rather than defence spending.

This is the second year in a row a motion on this issue has been debated at TUC Congress. In 2025, delegates backed the UCU’s original Wages Not Weapons motion, which called for the TUC to ‘prioritise campaigning for public investment in Britain’s public realm’, to ‘commit to a safe, liveable planet’, and to ‘reaffirm that our movement’s priority is welfare and wages, not weapons and war’.

As with last year, this year’s motion was highly contentious, prompting a heated debate in the hall. Alongside UCU, delegates from the National Education Union (NEU) and RMT spoke in favour of the motion. Unite, GMB and Prospect delegates were among those to speak against the motion.

Unlike last year, however, the motion did not go to a ‘card vote’, and the chair deemed it to have been clearly carried within the room.

The motion called for the trade union movement to “campaign for sustained public investment in health, education, housing, social care, social security and climate resilient”.

Alongside this, the motion called for the TUC to “raise awareness of fundamental rights, including the right to conscientious objection and opposition to compulsory military service in the UK”, and “work with the ITUC, ETUC and other partners to promote conflict prevention, diplomacy, international cooperation, human rights and respect for international law”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Dave Calfe was elected as general secretary of rail union ASLEF in November 2025. That means this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton is his first at the head of the union.

It’s also the first TUC Congress since Andy Burnham took over as Labour leader and prime minister. The new government’s plans have therefore inevitably been a major point of discussion throughout the event.

In an interview with LFF at TUC Congress, Calfe gave his views on the early days of Burnham’s government and what his union is seeking to secure for train drivers.

Calfe started by saying that Burnham’s government is “very different from the last one” and “a lot more engaged”, going on to add that he is “looking forward to the next few months of working with the government, particularly for us in rail, but also for working people across the board”.

What should the government’s priorities be? For Calfe, the “most pressing thing we need to get addressed” is the fact that people “with three jobs [are] still struggling to make ends meet”. As such, he told LFF that he wants the government to use the upcoming budget to “make life easier for working people”.

Alongside this, Calfe also called for the government to make changes to the tax system in the budget. He told LFF: “I think the taxation system in the country is probably out of kilter with with where most working people are”, before adding: “there are people with massive wealth in this country who literally pay nothing on that wealth”.

For Calfe, this kind of agenda will not only be important in improving workers’ lives, but it will also help to see off the threat of Reform and the populist right.

He told LFF: “I think if if Labour start making a difference for working people, then the focus will change”.

He went on to say: “People are desperate at the moment and they’ve been desperate for a very long time and they don’t see mainstream politics doing anything for them. And so they’re looking around to see who’s saying what, saying things that make them feel that they’re not being as worse off as they are today.”

Beyond the budget and the economy, Calfe spoke to LFF about another major issue affecting ASLEF members – the climate emergency. Climate is significant for ASLEF for two reasons – first because increasingly frequent extreme weather events have a direct impact on train drivers’ conditions and safety, and second because the rail industry is a central part of the transition to a decarbonised economy.

Calfe is under no illusions about the severity of the issue and the scale of the challenge it poses for both workers and the country, telling LFF: “They’re talking about next year being even hotter or more extreme than this year’s weather has been.” He went on to describe the impact this is having on ASLEF members, saying: “We still have train cabs without air conditioning, and we had our members in 40-50 degree heat for many hours through this summer, and I don’t thin we can put up with that next summer.”

Calfe said that “we need some mitigations in place” to address these impacts on drivers, before going on to address what is needed to secure the future of the railways more broadly. He told LFF: “Network Rail needs the funding to put in place the resilience for climate change”, adding: “Some of the soil conditions have changed because the soil is drying out, and that’s not happened just this year, that’s happened in previous years at other locations where they have to put emergency speed restrictions in place. And so we want to see a long-term plan”.

These calls were echoed by TUC delegates this week, who passed a motion calling for a maximum working temperature and for investment in climate resilience.

The climate crisis isn’t the only big issue facing the railways right now. Privatisation remains on the agenda.

Since Labour came to power in 2024, one policy area it has talked extensively about is its decision to take the rail operators into public ownership. However, this doesn’t mean that the whole of the railway is in public hands.

Presently, the rail operators don’t own the trains themselves. These are instead leased from privately owned rolling stock companies (ROSCOs).

ASLEF is pushing for change here, arguing that the trains themselves should be publicly owned too. At this year’s TUC Congress, the union got the support of the wider trade union movement for its Own Our Trains campaign, which is seeking to get the government to move in that direction.

LFF asked Calfe why the union is prioritising this campaign. “So ROSCOs took £2.9 billion out over the last five years in profit and dividends”, he highlighted, later adding: “It’s really important that the money stays in the industry and doesn’t get siphoned off elsewhere. They’ve [the ROSCOs] come into the industry to make money, but we want the money to stay in the industry.”

He would elsewhere go on to explain what the demands of the campaign are: “We’re not seeking for the government to go and buy the ROSCOs or renege on any contracts they’ve got. What we want them to do is put something different in place, use a different funding model – EUROFIMA or similar, or green bonds as we’ve discussed – as a way of procuring trains that are then owned by the government stroke the operator.” Calfe later added: “We’re not looking to try and buy them out or end up in court for year after year trying to break contracts. What we want to do is we want those contracts or that rolling stock to be procured directly”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: ASLEF

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress passed a motion condemning what it described as the ‘institutional racist targeting, harassment and humiliation’ of Professor Jason Arday.

Arday was professor of sociology of education at Cambridge University. He was found dead in his home in August 2026 following intense media scrutiny of his academic work and public claims. The scale and nature of that scrutiny has been widely described as racist, disproportionate and unjustified. Arday’s death is currently subject to an inquest.

The emergency motion was proposed by the University and College Union (UCU) and the National Education Union (NEU).

The motion agreed by the TUC stated that “Black staff and students continue to experience institutional racism, discrimination and inequality across higher education”, and “the treatment of Professor Arday is a product of institutional and systemic racism”.

The motion will see the TUC send condolences to the family and friends of Professor Arday, call on the government to take action to end institutional racism in higher education and to push for the government “to strengthen accountability for institutions that fail to address racial inequality and ensure funding and policy support meaningful anti-racist work”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: ConiferousForest19 – Creative Commons

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First Secretary of State Louise Haigh has told delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton that the Labour government is ‘proudly on the side of working people’.

Haigh made the comments in a keynote address to the Congress. She was speaking at the event in place of the prime minister, who has cancelled public engagements following the death of his father.

Haigh told delegates: “We know we need to go further and faster to deliver the scale of change the country expects. But never be in any doubt whose side this Labour government are on.

“Whether it was standing up for workers illegally sacked by P&O Ferries, or changing public procurement to create more good jobs here in Britain, we are proudly on the side of working people.

“And Congress, I can promise you now, under this government there will never be any doubt about whose side we are on.”

Later in her speech, Haigh said: “We’re going to put power back into our communities. We’re going to put power back into the workplace. And together, we’re going to put power back into the hands of working people.”

Haigh concluded her speech by saying: “Every single day in government we are campaigning against the vested interests, the forces trying to stop progress; against the unaccountable crypto billionaires living thousands of miles away who think our democracy is up for sale; against the politicians who pretend to be on the side of workers but pocket millions in undeclared donations and speak openly about their plans to strip working people of the very protections they rely on; against the far-right ringleaders marching on our streets in balaclavas seeking to spread fear and division in our communities; against all those who talk down our country and say that things can’t better, that this can’t be done.

“Congress, today we recommit ourselves to our collective endeavour, to turn the page on four decades of lost opportunity, to deliver the change our country is crying out for, and to build a future that the people we represent expect and deserve.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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The Labour MP Apsana Begum has issued a blistering critique of water privatisation, accusing the industry of acting ‘like a criminal racket’. She made these comments at a fringe meeting at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.

Begum spoke at a meeting titled ‘For an Irreversible Shift in the Balance of Power and Wealth’ hosted by Arise and the General Federation of Trade Unions.

Speaking about prime minister Andy Burnham’s stated intention to reverse 40 years of neoliberalism, Begum told the meeting: “What is said against neoliberalism will be rendered meaningless, in my opinion, completely meaningless if our government is not willing to end the disastrous experiments with privatisation that have robbed our country and our people of hundreds of billions of pounds.”

Begum then went on to specifically discuss the water sector. She told the meeting: “In water, firms are operating like a criminal racket – discharging thousands of hours of raw sewage into waterways [and] hiking bills every year, with almost £100 billion in dividends since privatisation.”

Later, Begum criticised the Labour government for having not yet ended water privatisation. She told the meeting: “The public are completely incensed about it, I’m sure we can all agree. But I cannot accept the government backing away from even the idea of using special administration measures, even for Thames Water.”

She later added: “I think we should be having a conversation about taking all water firms into public ownership.”

In her concluding remarks, Begum told the meeting: “We have to keep demanding an economy that works in the interests of workers and the wider public. I think public ownership has to be at its heart.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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This year’s TUC Congress in Brighton has a very different feel to the event last year. There’s a sense of optimism about the government that was distinctly absent 12 months ago.

Speaking to delegates and trade union general secretaries, it’s clear that the movement feels there is a much better prospect of Andy Burnham delivering a political programme in their members’ interests than there was of Keir Starmer doing so.

Dave Ward – general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) – is among those who has hope that the government can deliver. In an interview with Left Foot Forward at TUC Congress, he called Burnham “the best chance for working people, for Labour”.

Despite this hopeful tone, Ward argued that it is also “the last chance”, and that he wants to “make clear that if we want to bring about change then the government has to do certain things that take on vested interests”. He continued by arguing that the government needed to “rebalance economic power [and] wealth back in favour of working class people and create growth that workers benefit from”.

What does this look like in practice? Ward told LFF: “You don’t rebalance the economy if you don’t put money in the pockets of people that then spend that money on growing the economy.

“And at the moment, we got it wrong. We’ve had decades where – by any measure – wealth inequality has grown. People are getting richer who don’t put a day’s work in, and the people that are suffering is the millions and millions.”

Ward then added: “We have to fundamentally shift the balance of forces in the world of work because the same people that are benefiting from that, they benefited from decline.”

In order to deliver this, Ward is arguing for the trade union movement to “reignite” its campaign for a “new deal for workers”. He told LFF this should “focus onbringing in sectoral collective bargaining, focus on ending bogus self-employment – bringing legislation forward that deals with the senior status of worker and actually makes a big difference in workplaces up and down the UK”.

Ward also told LFF that the government needed to look at the tax system. He said: “There has to be a change in tax. There has to be – whatever system you want to use – there’s got to be a fairer tax system that the ultra rich, the people that have benefited from the last 30 or 40 years have to now pay their fair share”.

While Ward is calling for the government to make radical changes, he’s pragmatic about the timescale of delivering on this. He told LFF that he wants to see the trade union movement “playing its part” in delivering the change he wants to see, but doesn’t want to see it “getting into a debate where we become cynical if Burnham doesn’t do the change in about six weeks”.

Still, he acknowledges the scale of the challenge Burnham faces. “I think if he doesn’t get it right,
Labour are out of power for a long, long time”, Ward told LFF, warning it would be Reform that would replace them.

Like many in the trade union movement, Ward is deeply worried about the impact Reform would have on workers. He told LFF: “Reform’s agenda is to maintain the wealth that’s there at the moment and to do it by stoking division. We can’t have that and we can’t have Nigel Farage being the voice of working class people.”

Ward believes that the trade union movement can play an important role in combatting Reform and the far-right. He told LFF that trade unions should “just be honest with people, get out there, talk to your members, not have a go at them if they’ve got concerns around things like immigration. There does need to be some controlled immigration in the UK. But it’s got to be fair. It’s got to be fair to the workers. It’s got to be fair to immigrants. At the moment we need to be leading that debate.”

He went on to add: “One thing that always strikes me about workers I’ve worked in the industry for years […] I’ll tell you now what brings them together is when you convince them that there’s an issue that’s worth fighting for, they don’t look around the workplace and go well this person don’t live in the UK or this person weren’t born there”.

Alongside this, Ward said that he had “faith in Burnham” to deliver for Labour and prevent a Reform government, and that “he’s the right politician for these times”.

Why? Ward said that Burnham’s analysis is “correct”, arguing that he his right to criticise the record of previous Labour governments as well as Tory ones.

Ward told LFF: “He’s the first Labour politician who’s had the courage to actually say that Labour got it wrong as well – and let’s be honest, Labour did get it wrong”. He acknowledged that Labour in power “did some good things”, but argued that “too many Labour governments” didn’t take on “vested interests”.

Ward continued: “If you don’t change the balance of power back to working class people, if you don’t create wealth for working class people, how do you deliver change? And I think these ideas that Andy’s setting out are the right ideas.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Trade unionists are gathering in Brighton this week at the annual TUC Congress. At the Congress, delegates have been debating the trade union movement’s position on major political and economic issues.

High on the agenda has been the climate emergency and its impact on workers. On Tuesday 15 September, delegates backed a motion calling for increased investment in climate resilience.

The motion called for the TUC to campaign for “government investment to make critical infrastructure, schools, hospitals and public transport, climate resilient, inclusive of reversing cuts to maintenance and renewals budgets on the railways”.

Alongside this, the motion also called for the introduction of a maximum working temperature, funding for the installation of solar panels on all public buildings, and funding for “community hubs in public spaces with active cooling measures to offer refuge in extreme heat and shelter from the cold in winter”.

Elsewhere, the motion condemned “the increase in anti-net zero rhetoric being exhibited by populist parties such as Reform UK and the impact such policies would have on the climate”, arguing that this would lead “to more extreme temperatures and ultimately the worsening of working conditions and job losses”.

As a result, the motion committed the TUC to “continue to publicly call out the dangers of climate change denial and the anti-net zero rhetoric, with a focus on the impact such policies will have on workers.”

The motion was proposed by the National Education Union.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have voted to back the rail union ASLEF’s campaign to have publicly owned trains on Britain’s railways.

While the government is in the process of taking rail operators into public ownership, the trains themselves remain privately owned and are leased by the operators from Rolling Stock Companies (ROSCOs).

Delegates backed a motion proposed by ASLEF which endorsed the union’s Own Our Trains campaign. ASLEF argues that the current model of train ownership is costing the railways huge sums of money. The union says that leasing cost £4.1 billion in 2024/5 and that ROSCOs have taken £2.9 billion out of the railway in profits and dividends in the last five years alone.

The motion passed by Congress said that “in 2024–25, 30.6 per cent of train operator expenditure was spent on leasing costs and that the use of private finance is up to 70 per cent more expensive than publicly financed investment”.

It went on to say: “ROSCOs present a barrier to the effective planning of the railway with third party agreement needing to be sought when rolling stock needs to be renewed and upgraded and with contracts needing to be changed to enable rolling stock to be cascaded”, and argued for a “better system for financing rolling stock which will result in public ownership and control”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have voted for the TUC to call a national demonstration this autumn to demand investment in public services.

They did so by passing a motion proposed by the PCS union on public sector pay which also called for all public sector unions to plan for coordinated industrial action “to secure real gains for workers”.

The motion argued that Andy Burnham replacing Keir Starmer “means nothing unless there is a change in direction that meets the needs of workers and working-class communities” and that the government should seek to “launch sustained public investment to jump-start economic growth”.

The motion also called on Burnham to re-open talks on public sector pay for 2026/7.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Zack Polanski will win the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, the Green Party’s deputy leader Rachel Millward has claimed. She made the comments in an interview with Left Foot Forward at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.

When asked what she thought was going to happen in the by-election, Millward was clear – she said Polanski was “going to be the sixth Green MP”.

Pressed on whether she was certain of this, Millward went on to tell Left Foot Forward: “We’ve got a fantastic ground campaign. I was there on Saturday – hundreds of people coming, massive energy on the ground.”

She would go on to concede that “there are a lot of people who aren’t decided”, but added: “what’s really clear is that when people understand that they can give Burnham a chance and also get a sixth Green MP. And actually the impact of that is that they then might get the Burnham they actually want. When that lands, people understand it. They really do.”

While some in the media have been getting over-excited about what might happen if Polanski doesn’t win the by-election, Millward downplayed this. She told LFF: “We would absolutely just continue to do the work that we’re doing”, adding: “There is no way that the the the message and the demands of the Green Party are going to seem irrelevant over the rest of this Labour term.”

Millward was at TUC Congress to speak at a fringe meeting hosted by the Green Party. The meeting was organised to explain the Green Party Workers’ Charter.

The Charter was launched in May 2026 and sets out the Green Party’s policy commitments on workers’ rights, pay, pay and trade unions. Among them are a £15 an hour minimum wage, a pay ratio no greater than 10:1 in all organisations, ‘fairer parental leave’, and the scrapping of all anti-union laws introduced since 1979.

Speaking to LFF about the Charter, Millward said that what she wanted to “really emphasise today is that all of this has been in our policy since the 1990s” and that to “make sure that everyone does realise that we were the PEOPLE Party before we were the Ecology Party”. She added that “care for workers’ rights” is “literally in our roots, the DNA of the party”.

Alongside Millward, BFAWU general secretary Sarah Wooley and Meg de Meo from Unite also addressed the fringe meeting.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Left wing Labour MP Nadia Whittome has described the Labour Party’s record on trans rights as ‘absolutely disgraceful’. She made the comments at a fringe meeting at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton.

The meeting, which was organised to discuss the trade union movement’s response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) code of practice, was hosted by the TUC LGBT+ Committee, and a number of individual unions – UNISON, NHBCSA, FBU, CWU, NASUWT and Unite.

The EHRC code of practice follows the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex under the Equality Act, which determined that this refers to the sex someone has been assigned at birth.

Under the EHRC code of practice, service providers are required to ensure that where ‘single-sex’ spaces exist – such as toilets – trans people should use facilities that match the sex they were assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity, or use gender neutral facilities where these are available.

This guidance has been heavily criticised by LGBT+ rights campaigners who argue that it is both unworkable and discriminatory towards trans people.

Whittome told the meeting: “The Labour Party’s record on this over the last few years has been absolutely disgraceful. It should shame every Labour Party member and representative. I completely agree that the Labour Party needs to apologise and then also come to a much better position.”

She then went on to say: “I completely understand why many trans and non-binary people and allies have left the Labour Party and it’s incumbent on the party to win people back, to prove to people that it is willing to change, and that it has changed. We’re a very, very long way from that now.”

Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress voted to condemn the EHRC code of practice and call for the government to change the law to allow trans people to self-identify their gender.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: UK Parliament – Creative Commons

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Unite general secretary Sharon Graham has illustrated exactly how workers, rather than bosses are what keep the country going.

In a speech at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton, Graham laid it out clearly: “If the bosses went out on strike, no one would notice. It’s only when workers go out that people notice, because you are the ones that do the work.”

Graham made the comments in a debate on a motion on industrial and economic policy at the Congress. The motion – which delegates supported – will see the TUC push the government for “an ambitious industrial strategy to deliver good well-paid jobs and reindustrialise Britain”, a “reversal of public sector austerity by paying for more day-to-day spending with a wealth tax”, and “public ownership of our energy and water infrastructure, to cut bills and stop profiteering”.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have voted to condemn the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) code of practice, branding it an ‘attack on LGBT+ equality’. It also called the guidance ‘discriminatory and unworkable’.

The EHRC code of practice follows the Supreme Court ruling on the definition of sex under the Equality Act, which determined that this refers to the sex someone has been assigned at birth.

Under the EHRC code of practice, service providers are required to ensure that where ‘single-sex’ spaces exist – such as toilets – trans people should use facilities that match the sex they were assigned at birth, rather than their gender identity, or use gender neutral facilities where these are available.

TUC delegates voted for a motion which stated that “trans, non-binary and gender diverse people are entitled to be treated with equal dignity at work and in wider society”, and that “the new guidance is discriminatory and unworkable and effectively excludes trans people from swathes of public life including working life”.

The motion will see the TUC campaign to oppose the EHRC guidance, and to push for guarantees that trans people can access equal civil rights and justice in the workplace.

The motion also explicitly called for a change in the law to enhance protections for trans people, including for allowing trans people to self-declare their gender.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

Image credit: Foreign and Commonwealth Office – Creative Commons

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Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress in Brighton have agreed to push the government to adopt a ‘bolder and more radical’ economic agenda.

Two motions were passed today (September 14) which called for a significant shift in economic policy, including introducing a programme of mass insourcing, taking utilities into public ownership, and increasing investment in renewable energy.

The first motion, proposed by UNISON, seconded by the RMT and supported by the NUJ, TSSA, EIS, Equity and ASLEF called for outsourced services to be brought back in-house, ‘key utilities’ to be taken into public ownership, an ‘extensive package of financial support for households facing rising costs’, increased investment in renewable energy, expansion of public transport, and scheme of mass council housebuilding.

Alongside this, the motion called for the introduction of a digital services tax and a six per cent windfall tax on tech giants – the latter of which would be invested in the news sector. The motion also committed the TUC to commission research on how to deliver a more progressive taxation system.

The second motion – proposed by Unite – made a series of additional calls. That motion said that the TUC should campaign for an “ambitious industrial strategy to deliver good well-paid jobs and reindustrialise Britain”, an end to public sector austerity through taxing wealth, and a loosening of the government’s ‘fiscal rules’ to allow more direct investment in jobs.

The TUC has made these calls at an important political moment, with the government set to announce its budget in October.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government addressed the annual TUC Congress in Brighton today (14 September). She used her speech to give a stark warning of the impact a Reform government could have on workers.

In particular, Rayner drew attention to Reform’s position on the Employment Rights Act. She told delegates: “Congress, I know you know that Reform is not on your side. They voted against the Employment Rights Act, and if elected they would repeal it in a heartbeat, along with the Equality Act.

“Think of what that means – millions of workers no longer protected from exploitative zero hour contracts, millions workers back waiting three days to be paid when they’re sick, millions of workers who could be fired and rehired on worse terms and conditions. This is about people’s lives, our members lives.”

Rayner then went on to criticise Reform for its recent scandals over big money donors. Suggesting that the party would act in the interests of those donors, Rayner told the Congress: “And if you needed proof of who’s side they’re really on, they have given it us on this weekend. Nigel Farage’s sugar daddies made their money in crypto, but there’s nothing cryptic about their motives. They know full well that a Reform government will act in their interests, not the public interest.

“Now when these Reform donors say they want nothing, they mean it. No workers’ rights, no renters’ rights, no social protections, no safety net, no regulation, nothing to stand in their way. And if Farage will do you a Cameo for £70, just ask yourself what he’d do for £70 million.”

Rayner’s speech was well received by delegates at the Congress, who gave her a standing ovation.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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Paul Nowak – the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC) – has hit out at what he described as the ‘flat-earthers in Reform and the Tory party’ over their views on the climate emergency.

Nowak made the comments in his keynote address to the TUC Congress taking place this week in Brighton.

He told delegates: “We are at the end of the hottest summer on record, a summer that scorched our landscape.

“Now, the flat earthers in Reform and the Tory party might pretend it’s got nothing to do with climate change. And Richard Tice might say we should just ‘enjoy the heat’.

“But I dare him – dare him – to to say that to the firefighters battling wildfires, to railway workers and passengers injured when tracks buckle in the heat, to nurses fainting in hospitals, to bus drivers trying not to pass out behind the wheel.”

Nowak went on to use his speech to call for a maximum legal working temperature.

He told the hall: “So let me say it clearly: Climate change is real and we need to act. That means bold climate action, underpinned by good, unionised jobs. And it means keeping our workplaces safe. It is time for a maximum legal working temperature.”

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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