Unison Isn’t New Labour’s Playground Anymore
Andrea Egan’s victory in Unison’s leadership election is a win for millions of workers whose lives have played second fiddle to Labour’s right-wing careerists for too long — and could lead to a revival of British trade unionism.
Left-winger Andrea Egan was elected as Unison's new general secretary. (Credit: NQ)
In Get In, the first major account of Keir Starmer’s steady takeover of the Labour Party, journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund describe a scene from one of Starmerism’s major tactical victories over the party’s left: a hastily introduced a motion at 2021’s party conference that would double the threshold of nominations for MPs to make future leadership bids from 10 to 20 per cent.
The move, strongly opposed by delegates, was a method of blocking a Jeremy Corbyn-like figure from standing in the future. But after scores of Starmer loyalists and shadow ministers failed to convince affiliated trade unions and members to lend the motion their support, it was carried over the line at the last minute, winning with 53 percent. The weak link was the Unison, which moved to support Starmer’s plans at the eleventh hour.
After the result, which left the Labour right ecstatic at having closed the door to any future left-wing leadership challenger, Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney discussed Unison’s decision with Rob Hill, a former Labour councillor married to the union’s general secretary, Christina McAnea.
Maguire and Pogrund write that, when asked why Christina had risked her standing with incensed trade unionists to support the motion, he responded that his wife acted on principle: ‘She couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘She knew it was the right thing to do. She had to back you.’
The Fleas Bite Back
It wasn’t the first defeat for a Labour left grappling with a post-Corbyn era. But it was a decisive one, signalling a real shift in power towards the right-wing Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). A jubilant Starmer recognised the vote as ‘a major step forward’ in reverting Labour to a party of corporate sleaze, war and racism — of ‘shaking off the fleas’, as a senior Labour figure once referred to Labour members (who, in this case, were opposing genocide).
Yesterday, the fleas bit back. With 58,579 votes, left-winger Andrea Egan triumphed in Unison’s general secretary election, beating McAnea with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Egan, a social worker from Bolton, has become the first rank-and-file member of the union to lead it (McAnea, a former GMB official, was given a senior role under her right-wing predecessor, Dave Prentis, in 2018 before leading). She will also be the first Unison leader to have been expelled from Labour, having fallen foul of the party’s anti-socialist purge in 2022.
Egan’s victory has shocked the political sphere. Approving statements have been released from left-leaning Labour organisations such as Momentum and Mainstream. Warm comments from health minister Wes Streeting and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson have followed, while pro-business lobbying group Labour First warned that fellow right-wingers must be serious about the need to grow Unison’s ‘moderate’ groupings.
Their fear is justified. Egan’s victory is the biggest defeat for Labour’s right wing since Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election in 2015. From its creation, Unison has nearly invariably walked in line with Labour’s neoliberal leadership. In power, it has been a consistent passive supporter of whatever Labour offered. Out of power, it has served as a life raft for Labour right-wingers to factionalise against socialist opponents and draw comfortable wages for little work, as evidenced so plainly in the packing out of Unison roles with anti-Corbyn organisers.
But surprise was genuine in Egan’s camp, too. Many supporters of Time for Real Change (TFRC), the faction that backed Egan, believed (with real justification) that the incumbent had the full weight of the union’s machinery behind her, and was bound for victory. For the past year, Unison’s internal communications had put McAnea front-and-centre to members. ‘Judging by the newsletters with [McAnea’s] face on, you’d think she’d warriored through every dispute herself,’ one Unison member in social care told Tribune.
‘If You Do Fuck All, What Do You Expect?’
But for many ordinary Unison members, such concerted attempts to familiarise McAnea only put a face and name to the leader of a union that has failed to fight for them. To say that Unison’s outgoing leadership is light on successfully strengthening its members’ hand is putting it mildly, but some recent examples have drawn particular ire.
The most obvious is this summer’s consultative ballot of all NHS workers over accepting a 3.6 per cent pay increase. With Unison holding most seats on the staff council that negotiates wages with the government, this could have been a real moment of struggle for a union containing thousands of workers hit with over a decade of real-terms pay cuts.
McAnea chose otherwise. Unison members did not receive the ballot email from ‘Unison’, but in the name of a broadly unknown union officer. Several members told Tribune that they were convinced it was an act designed to intentionally drive down engagement and help a struggling government whose election victory was heavily bankrolled by Unison’s leadership.
As a result, most members were left in the dark: voter turnout stood at a pitiful 26 percent. Of this number, only 18 percent said they would be willing to take strike action. Documents sent to branches showed that nearly no branches gained more than 30 per cent of members voting in the ballot, and none mobilised more than 50 per cent.
Whether members are right or wrong in saying that this amateurism was an attempt to guarantee a smooth ride for their friends in Westminster, it is still a shambolic mishandling of people’s lives. It has led to Unison members being industrially neutered and materially worse off. Right now, the British Medical Association (BMA) is demanding a 26 per cent pay rise for junior doctors; in the same workplaces, Unison NHS members on the lowest-paid band will continue to require ‘emergency uplifts’ from employers to meet the legal requirement of the minimum wage.
In retrospect, it does seem unthinkable that such a poor operation should or could be rewarded with a fresh mandate. As a Glasgow nurse told Tribune: ‘Someone had to lose. And if you do fuck all, and do fuck all this badly, then what do you expect, really?’
Fighting Low Expectation Trade Unionism
Though Egan takes the leadership, the structure she inherits is far from helpful. An immediate obstacle is the union’s national executive committee (NEC), on which the right wing have a majority of 12. It is an incoherent coalition which includes Blairites, ‘independents’ and Organised Left, a Communist Party of Britain (CPB)-led faction that supported McAnea’s re-election. Whether some votes will sense the way the wind is blowing is unclear; indeed, so too is the question of how the CPB adapts to changed circumstances, although many hope that, with McAnea’s unexpected demise, they can return to a somewhat more dignified industrial tradition.
But a massive problem will come in attempts at bureaucratic wrecking from right-wingers installed into senior positions. Stuart Hall’s comment that ‘the right-wing of the labour movement has no ideas of any compelling quality except the instinct for short-term political survival’ couldn’t be truer for many Unison figures. The same people who wouldn’t break a sweat over members’ pay will fight like lions for their own, and all healthy democratic procedure or connection to reality will be thrown out the window.
In just the past few years, former left-wing leadership candidate Paul Holmes has been suspended, as has TFRC supporter and NEC vice-president Julia Mwaluke. Steve North, a former NEC member and Salford branch secretary, was suspended in May from a complaint made by a senior official in 2023. The animosity directed at North — who has been denied the right to call witnesses by senior officers investigating his case — is clearly down to his role as chair of the NEC’s staffing committee, a pivotal role for appointing union positions.
Perhaps most bizarrely is the treatment of Dan Sartin, an NEC member accused of creating a ‘hostile work environment’ for taking a while to let someone speak after they raised their ‘virtual hand’ and for ‘failing to intervene’ when a Unison member accused officials of having ‘boozy lunches’. Maggi Ferncombe, who played a role in this investigation (and also served as chair of London Labour and Unison’s head of political strategy), has now been elevated at the last minute to become Assistant General Secretary.
As Unison members start trying to take back their union, this skulduggery will intensify: such maneouvring is central to the survival of a low-expectation trade unionism which encourages the minimal participation that makes their comfortable jobs safer. Already, members have demanded the pulling of an advertisement for the vital AGS — Chief Operating Officer role, with North arguing that McAnea is a ‘lame duck’ and ‘must not be allowed to participate in any decisions impacting the future of our union.’
North is clearly right to demand that a new mandate must be immediately reflected in the organisation’s operations. Egan’s victory represents the waning influence of a slovenly right-wing politics that has dominated Unison’s infrastructure throughout its existence. Free of any institutional debt to such force, this moment could begin a renewal of public sector trade unionism in Britain.
But for this to happen, the new leadership must be unsparing. As anyone can understand from the years of Corbyn’s Labour, progressives refusing to internally confront some of Britain’s most destructive, cynical careerists in the name of a wider ‘unity’ will prove catastrophic. In this regard, Egan would be best not to study Corbyn’s lackadaisical attitude towards the people who eventually destroyed him, but in Starmer’s ability to tear apart the situation he received and make it his own.
The legitimacy is there, and thousands passionately want it. Egan’s victory has already sent an immediate jolt. On the day of the election result, hundreds of Unison care workers thronged Parliament to oppose Labour’s cruel changes to migrant workers’ visa rules. Joining the event were dozens of MPs that no trade unionist would consider a ‘familiar face’, suddenly curious at a new Unison that may not continue greeting their general disinterest in class politics with the same unquestioning financial generosity and personal chumminess. Let’s hope this jolt to their complacency is only the first surprise.
Contributors
John Tranter is a community worker and organizer in Lancashire, England.
Lou Woods is a nurse and Unison member from Durham.
12.19.2025
TRIBUNE
Andrea Egan’s victory in Unison’s leadership election is a win for millions of workers whose lives have played second fiddle to Labour’s right-wing careerists for too long — and could lead to a revival of British trade unionism.
Left-winger Andrea Egan was elected as Unison's new general secretary. (Credit: NQ)
In Get In, the first major account of Keir Starmer’s steady takeover of the Labour Party, journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund describe a scene from one of Starmerism’s major tactical victories over the party’s left: a hastily introduced a motion at 2021’s party conference that would double the threshold of nominations for MPs to make future leadership bids from 10 to 20 per cent.
The move, strongly opposed by delegates, was a method of blocking a Jeremy Corbyn-like figure from standing in the future. But after scores of Starmer loyalists and shadow ministers failed to convince affiliated trade unions and members to lend the motion their support, it was carried over the line at the last minute, winning with 53 percent. The weak link was the Unison, which moved to support Starmer’s plans at the eleventh hour.
After the result, which left the Labour right ecstatic at having closed the door to any future left-wing leadership challenger, Starmer’s chief of staff Morgan McSweeney discussed Unison’s decision with Rob Hill, a former Labour councillor married to the union’s general secretary, Christina McAnea.
Maguire and Pogrund write that, when asked why Christina had risked her standing with incensed trade unionists to support the motion, he responded that his wife acted on principle: ‘She couldn’t sleep,’ he said. ‘She knew it was the right thing to do. She had to back you.’
The Fleas Bite Back
It wasn’t the first defeat for a Labour left grappling with a post-Corbyn era. But it was a decisive one, signalling a real shift in power towards the right-wing Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). A jubilant Starmer recognised the vote as ‘a major step forward’ in reverting Labour to a party of corporate sleaze, war and racism — of ‘shaking off the fleas’, as a senior Labour figure once referred to Labour members (who, in this case, were opposing genocide).
Yesterday, the fleas bit back. With 58,579 votes, left-winger Andrea Egan triumphed in Unison’s general secretary election, beating McAnea with nearly 60 percent of the vote. Egan, a social worker from Bolton, has become the first rank-and-file member of the union to lead it (McAnea, a former GMB official, was given a senior role under her right-wing predecessor, Dave Prentis, in 2018 before leading). She will also be the first Unison leader to have been expelled from Labour, having fallen foul of the party’s anti-socialist purge in 2022.
Egan’s victory has shocked the political sphere. Approving statements have been released from left-leaning Labour organisations such as Momentum and Mainstream. Warm comments from health minister Wes Streeting and former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson have followed, while pro-business lobbying group Labour First warned that fellow right-wingers must be serious about the need to grow Unison’s ‘moderate’ groupings.
Their fear is justified. Egan’s victory is the biggest defeat for Labour’s right wing since Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election in 2015. From its creation, Unison has nearly invariably walked in line with Labour’s neoliberal leadership. In power, it has been a consistent passive supporter of whatever Labour offered. Out of power, it has served as a life raft for Labour right-wingers to factionalise against socialist opponents and draw comfortable wages for little work, as evidenced so plainly in the packing out of Unison roles with anti-Corbyn organisers.
But surprise was genuine in Egan’s camp, too. Many supporters of Time for Real Change (TFRC), the faction that backed Egan, believed (with real justification) that the incumbent had the full weight of the union’s machinery behind her, and was bound for victory. For the past year, Unison’s internal communications had put McAnea front-and-centre to members. ‘Judging by the newsletters with [McAnea’s] face on, you’d think she’d warriored through every dispute herself,’ one Unison member in social care told Tribune.
‘If You Do Fuck All, What Do You Expect?’
But for many ordinary Unison members, such concerted attempts to familiarise McAnea only put a face and name to the leader of a union that has failed to fight for them. To say that Unison’s outgoing leadership is light on successfully strengthening its members’ hand is putting it mildly, but some recent examples have drawn particular ire.
The most obvious is this summer’s consultative ballot of all NHS workers over accepting a 3.6 per cent pay increase. With Unison holding most seats on the staff council that negotiates wages with the government, this could have been a real moment of struggle for a union containing thousands of workers hit with over a decade of real-terms pay cuts.
McAnea chose otherwise. Unison members did not receive the ballot email from ‘Unison’, but in the name of a broadly unknown union officer. Several members told Tribune that they were convinced it was an act designed to intentionally drive down engagement and help a struggling government whose election victory was heavily bankrolled by Unison’s leadership.
As a result, most members were left in the dark: voter turnout stood at a pitiful 26 percent. Of this number, only 18 percent said they would be willing to take strike action. Documents sent to branches showed that nearly no branches gained more than 30 per cent of members voting in the ballot, and none mobilised more than 50 per cent.
Whether members are right or wrong in saying that this amateurism was an attempt to guarantee a smooth ride for their friends in Westminster, it is still a shambolic mishandling of people’s lives. It has led to Unison members being industrially neutered and materially worse off. Right now, the British Medical Association (BMA) is demanding a 26 per cent pay rise for junior doctors; in the same workplaces, Unison NHS members on the lowest-paid band will continue to require ‘emergency uplifts’ from employers to meet the legal requirement of the minimum wage.
In retrospect, it does seem unthinkable that such a poor operation should or could be rewarded with a fresh mandate. As a Glasgow nurse told Tribune: ‘Someone had to lose. And if you do fuck all, and do fuck all this badly, then what do you expect, really?’
Fighting Low Expectation Trade Unionism
Though Egan takes the leadership, the structure she inherits is far from helpful. An immediate obstacle is the union’s national executive committee (NEC), on which the right wing have a majority of 12. It is an incoherent coalition which includes Blairites, ‘independents’ and Organised Left, a Communist Party of Britain (CPB)-led faction that supported McAnea’s re-election. Whether some votes will sense the way the wind is blowing is unclear; indeed, so too is the question of how the CPB adapts to changed circumstances, although many hope that, with McAnea’s unexpected demise, they can return to a somewhat more dignified industrial tradition.
But a massive problem will come in attempts at bureaucratic wrecking from right-wingers installed into senior positions. Stuart Hall’s comment that ‘the right-wing of the labour movement has no ideas of any compelling quality except the instinct for short-term political survival’ couldn’t be truer for many Unison figures. The same people who wouldn’t break a sweat over members’ pay will fight like lions for their own, and all healthy democratic procedure or connection to reality will be thrown out the window.
In just the past few years, former left-wing leadership candidate Paul Holmes has been suspended, as has TFRC supporter and NEC vice-president Julia Mwaluke. Steve North, a former NEC member and Salford branch secretary, was suspended in May from a complaint made by a senior official in 2023. The animosity directed at North — who has been denied the right to call witnesses by senior officers investigating his case — is clearly down to his role as chair of the NEC’s staffing committee, a pivotal role for appointing union positions.
Perhaps most bizarrely is the treatment of Dan Sartin, an NEC member accused of creating a ‘hostile work environment’ for taking a while to let someone speak after they raised their ‘virtual hand’ and for ‘failing to intervene’ when a Unison member accused officials of having ‘boozy lunches’. Maggi Ferncombe, who played a role in this investigation (and also served as chair of London Labour and Unison’s head of political strategy), has now been elevated at the last minute to become Assistant General Secretary.
As Unison members start trying to take back their union, this skulduggery will intensify: such maneouvring is central to the survival of a low-expectation trade unionism which encourages the minimal participation that makes their comfortable jobs safer. Already, members have demanded the pulling of an advertisement for the vital AGS — Chief Operating Officer role, with North arguing that McAnea is a ‘lame duck’ and ‘must not be allowed to participate in any decisions impacting the future of our union.’
North is clearly right to demand that a new mandate must be immediately reflected in the organisation’s operations. Egan’s victory represents the waning influence of a slovenly right-wing politics that has dominated Unison’s infrastructure throughout its existence. Free of any institutional debt to such force, this moment could begin a renewal of public sector trade unionism in Britain.
But for this to happen, the new leadership must be unsparing. As anyone can understand from the years of Corbyn’s Labour, progressives refusing to internally confront some of Britain’s most destructive, cynical careerists in the name of a wider ‘unity’ will prove catastrophic. In this regard, Egan would be best not to study Corbyn’s lackadaisical attitude towards the people who eventually destroyed him, but in Starmer’s ability to tear apart the situation he received and make it his own.
The legitimacy is there, and thousands passionately want it. Egan’s victory has already sent an immediate jolt. On the day of the election result, hundreds of Unison care workers thronged Parliament to oppose Labour’s cruel changes to migrant workers’ visa rules. Joining the event were dozens of MPs that no trade unionist would consider a ‘familiar face’, suddenly curious at a new Unison that may not continue greeting their general disinterest in class politics with the same unquestioning financial generosity and personal chumminess. Let’s hope this jolt to their complacency is only the first surprise.
Contributors
John Tranter is a community worker and organizer in Lancashire, England.
Lou Woods is a nurse and Unison member from Durham.
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