Chancellor Alistair Darling behaved as if in the presence of a “ravening beast” at the TUC conference in Brighton this week, but it was more of a “dowdy, clapped-out old dinosaur”, says Andrew Gimson in The Daily Telegraph. Delegates clapped Darling’s speech rather than tear it to bits, and seemed reluctant to humiliate a man they viewed as Gordon Brown’s pawn.
Nonsense, says Macer Hall in the Daily Star. There may have been “few outbursts of old-fashioned class-war tub-thumping”, but a “quietly militant determination to flex industrial muscle is increasingly evident”. Today’s unionised workforce is a “leaner, meaner beast”. Modern super-unions, such as Unite, are ready for co-ordinated strikes – they have warned that up to a million public-sector staff could strike this winter. After three decades of “virtual irrelevance”, their political influence is growing rapidly. Many wealthy party donors have deserted following a series of funding scandals, leaving Labour heavily dependent on the unions. And while you would never guess it from their “sullen indifference” at Brighton, Labour have looked after their “union brethren” well, filling their members’ pension pots and raising their salaries by 39% since 2000.
Union leaders should stop grumbling, says the Daily Mirror. Under the Conservatives, public servants would “kiss goodbye to their earnings-linked pensions”, low pay rises would be a “permanent reality” and they would be “marginalised” politically. So why are the Tories embarking on a recruitment campaign among union members? asks Rachel Sylvester in The Daily Telegraph. According to the House of Commons library, 19% of members voted Conservative at the last election; senior figures think more than a third may be tempted to do so next time. It has become a cliché to describe the unions as dinosaurs. “The real danger for the Labour Party, however, is that they turn out not to be extinct”.