Labour has been bought by the unions for decades and now it wants to lecture Reform

Thank you for subscribing!

Former Sun Editor Kelvin MacKenzie has waded into the donations row plaguing Westminster

It’s utter hypocrisy that Labour is jumping up and down at Reform for pocketing £72million from a couple of crypto guys since trade unions have paid the party £200million over the past 20 years.

And let’s be honest, they aren’t paying in fees and donations out of the goodness of their hearts. The union bullies have demanded something back – and have always received it.

Take the Employment Rights Act. This was created and written by the TUC (Trade Union Congress) and then rubber stamped by Angela Rayner. The effect has been bloody awful for small businesses. Burnham doesn’t give a stuff.

From Day One a ‘worker’ can now have sick pay. Some businesses have already seen a big leap in those mysteriously catching the flu within 30 minutes of walking into work.

What about maternity rights? Under the Act from Day One new employees can turn up having been hired three months earlier and proudly announce they are pregnant which will mean in a few weeks they will be away for up to a year.

And you can be sure that on a number of occasions the mum won’t be coming back despite assuring their new employer they would.

When searching for reasons that the UK is increasingly poor you don’t have to look far beyond on our trade union membership which is twice that of the United States.

We have 6.6million members (22 per cent of the workforce) of which 4million, as you would have suspected, are in the state sector.

It will be of no surprise to you that a state worker throws twice the number of sickies compared with the private sector.

One of the great rackets which keeps trade union membership going at all (although it has declined from 60 per cent to 22.4 per cent since Thatcher’s days) is something called check-off, where employees deduct union membership at source and send it on the union barons.

The Tories tried to outlaw it saying it wasn’t the job of employers (mainly education and health) to be responsible for collecting the union dues.

The civil servant union saw their membership collapse by almost 20 per cent when the ‘worker’ had the choice of setting up a direct debit or not bothering.

To save their jobs, the union went to court and won with the idiot judges agreeing it was part of their contract when they were hired.

When a Reform-Tory combo gets to power at the next election I hope they make it a priority to a) Scrap the check-off and b) Scrap the Employment Rights Act which causes so much heartache in small businesses.

That’s why I am so much in favour of that £72million. It gives a chance for Farage and Co. to spend as big on marketing as Labour and Tory.

It’s said that Reform may change their policy to accommodate their donors. So what.?

How far do you think Labour has been bending over to the unions for literally decades and decades?

They will always get a policy through the Commons (over 200 Labour MPs are funded by unions). They will always get a meeting with a minister; they will always be welcome at the party conferences. That’s the way it works when you have paid a £200million entrance fee.

To be honest with employment tribunals, with government setting minimum pay and various other controls, I’m not sure unions are still needed.

Certainly, the way Aslef and RMT act on the railways by using passengers as battering rams to win their members £70-£80,000 a year for driving on a straight piece of track indicates they are simply thugs.

As you can see, it’s laughable that Labour should complain about money heading to Reform when they have been receiving hundreds of millions from the unions who demand in return a massive say in policy.

When those payments end, I’ll listen to an argument against the £72million.

And I suggest there must be somebody in the Labour party who is a better advocate than the stamp duty scandal Rayner.

Bit like Harold Shipman being hired as the front man for Age UK.