Scribblings

A Week in London

I was in London during the past week, involved in a workshop discussing what changes the Employment Rights Act, 2025 (ERA) would bring for employers. For anyone interested in industrial relations, the ERA is a big deal. It is one of the most significant employment law shakeups since the various Thatcher governments enacted a series of measures that cut the power of the unions. Along with deindustrialisation, the Thatcher laws have seen union density, the percentage of the workforce that are union members, shrink substantially.

In 2024, 6.67 million employees were members of a trade union. As a proportion of all employees, this is a fall from 28.8% in 1995 to 19.9% today. In the 1960s, it was close to 50%. No wonder the unions pushed Labour hard for this law.

The ERA is designed to reverse this shrinkage and to help unions rebuild sagging membership. Whether it succeeds, only time will tell, but there can be little doubt that it is a pro-trade union law from a Labour government. This should come as no surprise, as the Labour Party was founded to represent in Parliament the interests of working people and their trade unions.

I have always followed British politics closely, and there was no better week to be in the UK if you are interested in such matters than last week. Now, of course, in these days of the internet, 24/7 TV news, and social media, you do not have to be in the UK to know the ins and outs of UK politics. But what you miss when you are following things virtually is the conversation in the workplace or, in my case, in the pub. Not just the back-and-forth with your colleagues after the work of the day is done, but the chat with the stranger who sits down beside you. You can learn a lot in a pub if you are willing to listen.

Of course, the big political story of the week was the imminent decline and fall of the Labour Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. The writing was on the wall since the disastrous local election results the previous week. Starmer tried to rescue matters with what was billed as a major speech last Monday, but the speech had neither substance nor eloquence. The bland delivering the bland.

I will come back to Labour. The other big UK political story of the week was the revelation that the leader of the far-right Reform party, Nigel Farage, he of Brexit fame, had been given £5m by a Thai-based British crypto billionaire just before he was elected to Parliament. It appears he may have used a £1.4 chunk of that money to buy himself a house for cash, a house he previously stated had been bought with money from his partner’s family.

When pressed, Farage gave various reasons for why he was given the money. It was to allow him to beef up his personal protection. It was a gift for his Brexit work, though why a Thai-based billionaire would bung him £5m for that is a bit of a head scratcher. But that is the way with crypto kings. Not for us ordinary mortals to understand the ways of crypto. By the by, I would be grateful if someone could explain crypto to me and how it can be used to buy stuff in a shop.

Maybe the £5m bung will badly damage Farage. Then again, maybe not. As Trump once said, he could shoot someone on 5^th Avenue in New York, and his MAGA base would still vote for him. Maybe it is the same in the UK with Farage. Trump in the US, Farage in the UK, Le Pen in France, Wilders in the Netherlands and the rest of the far right give bigots everywhere a licence to openly express their bigotry, racism, and sexual phobias. They are prepared to overlook the ethical and financial transgressions of their heroes in return for this licence.

But back to Labour. As we Irish would say, Starmer is a “goner”, meaning he will be ousted as prime minister sometime soon. I have seen it suggested that he could serve as a future Foreign Secretary, but I am not aware of any British Prime Minister since WWII who subsequently served in the cabinet of the person who ousted him or her. When you were once top dog, it is almost impossible to return to just being another member of the pack.

I know Willian Hague, a former leader of the Conservative Party, served as David Cameron’s Foreign Secretary, but then Hague never was Prime Minister.

As I have previously written in these Scribblings, I do not comment on UK politics other than when it comes to labour relations laws, my day job, and the UK's relationship with the EU.

We know that Brexit has been a complete economic failure, knocking as much as 8% of UK GDP. When you have done something stupid, the obvious answer is to undo it. Accept that you made a mistake and get on with correcting it. The sooner the better. But even though in recent speeches, including in last Monday’s speech, Starmer admitted that Brexit had badly damaged the UK economy, he could not bring himself to drop his red lines of no to the customs union, no to the single market, no to free movement, and no to rejoining the EU. But he still thought he could put the UK at the “heart of Europe”. Now, I don’t know that you call that, but I call it delusional.

“No, no, no” was bad enough from the UK when it was actually a member of the EU, and the other members had to grin and bear it. But they do not have to do so when the UK is outside the tent. During the “Brexit Wars”, David Frost, Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, was often referred to as “Frosty the No Man”. Starmer is the new Frosty.

It seems to me that whoever replaces Starmer as Prime Minister has an opportunity to revitalise the Labour Party by committing to rejoining the EU. I know that cannot happen today or tomorrow, and it may need an electoral mandate to do so, but it would galvanise the membership of the party and put the water of the English Channel, or Le Manche as we call it in France, between Labour on the one side, and Farage and the Tories on the other. Let them explain why they want to keep the UK poorer by staying out of the EU. So Farage can help make crypto kings richer?

Politics and economics are like a horse and carriage. You cannot have one without the other. Much of the political discontent in the UK is rooted in the absence of economic growth and stagnant incomes.

As Vernon Bogdanor, Professor of government at King’s College London, notes in a piece in the Financial Times:

In the years following the financial crisis, incomes have been stagnant. Real wages were below the 2008 level in 212 out of 340 local authorities, according to an April 2024 analysis by the TUC. The Resolution Foundation think-tank has claimed that, had growth since 2008 matched growth before 2008, the average worker would have been around £11,000 a year better off.

When you are no better off than you were 10 years ago, or even 20 years ago, of course you are going to be bitter. Life chances get postponed. How do you start a family? Buying a house is out of reach. Graduates are burdened with crippling student loans. AI is now threatening multiple entry-level jobs. Optimism is in short supply. When the old political structures fail to deliver a better life, you are minded to take a chance on the new and the untested. Jump to the right with Farage, jump to the left with the Greens. Pick your poison.

Rafael Behr had a column in the Guardian which opened with the words: “Removing Starmer solves the problem of an unpopular leader, but without a coherent alternative agenda his successor won’t fare much better.” A return to the EU should be at the heart of that alternative agenda. What’s to lose, and economic growth is there to win.

Oh, and throw in electoral reform as well, to be implemented before the next election. After all, Parliament is sovereign. Is that not what the Brexiters campaigned for?

I’ll be back in London in September, again discussing the Employment Rights Act. And talking politics with who knows who in a pub somewhere.