To commemorate the one year anniversary of the Birmingham bin strikes, Unite has handed Starmer a fresh political headache. The union voted to slash its funding to the Labour Party by £580,000 – a charged move from Labour’s single largest funding source, which still remains responsible for around £900,000 in funding.
Unite has also announced a vote on disaffiliation as a whole, set for 2027.
To quote general secretary Sharon Graham: “… it shows the anger of Unite members. Stop taking workers for granted, spine up, do your job and be real Labour” (our emphasis).
We welcome Graham’s bold rhetoric to call out the class traitors who fill the ranks of Starmer’s cabinet. This is a harbinger of things to come. Other union leaders will bend to the growing pressure to oppose Starmer – or whoever is the Labour leader by that point.
𝗨𝗻𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗰𝘂𝘁 𝗟𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗮𝗳𝗳𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗯𝘆 𝟰𝟬% 𝗼𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗶𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗮𝗿𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗶𝗿𝗺𝗶𝗻𝗴𝗵𝗮𝗺 𝗕𝗶𝗻 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗸𝗲.@unitetheunion members are coming to the end of the line as far @UKLabour is concerned.
Workers are scratching… pic.twitter.com/MJQm83S20o
— Sharon Graham (@UniteSharon) March 11, 2026
Financial pressure…
However, disaffiliation – or in this case, a 40 percent cut in affiliation – remains one very small step in the right direction for the union leaders.
Unite’s leadership hopes that simply by cutting its financial contributions, it can pressure Labour into adopting more pro-worker policies.
After the Mandelson affair, Graham argued in the Financial Times that “we need a Labour government that shakes the pillars of the status quo so that everyday people are better off… And without a clear change in policies, who the leader is won’t matter.”
Graham makes a number of valid points throughout – all tied to the common thread that ‘Labour has become devoid of purpose’.
But at the same time, she constantly suggests that the party’s pro-business mantras could be reversed – that Reeves could abandon her “obsession” with fiscal rules; that “the debate dominated by personalities” could be transformed into a debate on policies; that Labour could ditch the “pro-business gimmick” – and, crucially, that the “neoliberal” trend could be reversed.
All in all, Unite’s leader poses Labour’s policies (or, in her views, the lack thereof) as a bad, ideological choice – rather than as a product of the capitalist system. By this logic, the door is still open to convince someone in Labour to make the right choice.
Labour’s incompetent behaviour in #Birmingham has come on the back of a failed economic strategy, that has left our industrial base fighting for its life. Oil and gas workers facing decimation, buy British defence promises broken, the public sector undervalued and the elderly and…
— Sharon Graham (@UniteSharon) March 12, 2026
…Or industrial militancy?
But how should Starmer “change course”?
It is, in fact, naive to assume that Starmer is attacking his own voter base as an ideological choice – despite the fact that it makes him incredibly unpopular, creating further instability as a result.
The reality is that Starmer is not a free man. Instead, he is stuck between the anvil of the working class, and the hammer of so-called “bond vigilantes” – who threaten a run of capital should he fail to redress the budget deficit.
The Birmingham bin strikes are a case in point. Obviously, Starmer does not want to attract the wrath of the unions – however boastfully he states his indifference towards them.
Yet Starmer had to give public support to Birmingham City Council in its crusade against the bin workers. The bankrupt council’s options for balancing its budget were either to renege on its debts, inspire other councils to do the same, and trigger a snowball effect on the bond markets – or make the workers pay for the council’s own failures.
There is no alternative on the basis of capitalism but to implement £300 million in cuts, sell £750 million in assets, raise council taxes by 17.5 percent over two years, and break the longest-running strike in recent UK history.
The union leadership remains hesitant to draw the necessary conclusions. In this situation, only determined, militant industrial action can win concessions – coupled with a socialist programme to make the bosses and bankers pay for the crisis, and putting forward the need for a socialist plan of the economy.
To defeat continued austerity, worsening conditions and wages, and unemployment will require far more than symbolic pressure. It requires breaking with the idea that it is possible to reform the capitalist system – and spearheading a national industrial movement to bring down this hated government.
