What Labour Can Learn From RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch
With a Conservative Party in crisis and Boris Johnson’s half-hearted non-resignation, Labour hasn’t been this happy in decades, but the party can’t stop listening.
Communication has never been a natural talent for Labour, but it’s also a blindspot that belongs deep in the soul of many left wing parties. It’s a current struggle for the Democrats in America, who despite suffering obstruction from Republicans on key legislation, have still achieved enough to take back to the voters, but their pessimism and unwillingness to play politics has left them even more vulnerable. This wasn’t a problem for Labour under Tony Blair, in fact Blairites to this day parrot his laundry list of achievements for the NHS, education and poverty, unlike Starmer who has been criticised for being too modest during campaigns despite having a lot to show for, especially as a former Director of Public Prosecutions.
In the past three months the RMT General Secretary Mick Lynch has made many media appearences following the biggest rail strike in 30 years, and overwhelmed the British media with his old fashioned straight talking, while not blinking twice to attack the government and the two leadership candidates for their diabolical wish list for Tory members and the total reluctance to even get round the table. But I’ll have to admit when Lynch first started making the rounds, I was taken aback by his bluntness and confrontational style, in fact without understanding the context I definielty scowled at my phone more than a few times.
In just a couple of days Lynch went viral and admirers quickly put together compilations of his hits, which included his inevitable spat with Piers Morgan who tried to expose the trade unionist as an aspiring evil mastermind, by drawing a comparison to his Facebook profile picture of The Hood from Thunderbirds. For red top rag writers like Morgan it’s the oldest trick in the book, but even the attempt to deploy it on telly shows the desperation of which the media are trying to typecast Lynch as a unpatriotic villain.
Lynch’s other victims include Richard Madeley on GMB, Digital minister Chris Philp on Newsnight, Tory MP Jonathan Gullis on BBC Politics Live and Robert Jenrick on Peston, all of which tried their rehearsed attack lines and were called out by Lynch for being just that, something you don’t see a lot of Labour MP’s doing. These interventions from Tories are particularly rich as they seem to have suddenly grown concern for people who need to get to school, to work and to hospital appointments, yet have turned their heads at every chance to ease the strain on living standards.
Lynch’s virality on Twitter and TikTok has helped his cause significantly among younger people, many of which overlap in their criticism of Starmer for not being “real opposition”, unfortunately but typically these people call everyone under the sun who criticises the government “the real opposition”. It’s probably the most frustrating and common criticism of Starmer, which isn’t exclusively coming from the hard-left who deliberately leave the context of Labour’s electoral challenge post 2019 out for a quick crowd pleaser, but also disenfranchised voters and people who understandably don’t know the political limits opposition comes with.
Where Starmer is at fault is not having the political courage to capitalise off the widespread support among Labour voters for the strikes by warning his frontbench not to join the picket lines. It’s quite clear to see the Labour leadership’s caution is mainly based on the optics of cozying to the RMT which could cause damage later depending on how much chaos the “summer of discontent” could do, especially now with further strikes planned for the 18th and 20th of August.
Labour’s argument for not vocalising support more strongly for the unions because they’re a government in waiting won’t impress anyone though, but ultimately the focus should be on dismantling the framing the Tories have constructed on the issue and avoid trying to outdo their distance from the unions, which is only self inflicting damage where there doesn’t need to be any. I mean, it’s not exactly a secret that the party of working class’s people takes donations from trade unions.
Starmer himself needs to have some courage to tackle the criticism that he’s “boring”. I’ve long been of the view that post Boris Johnson’s clown show government, the public are hungry for a normal, decent, statesman-esque prime minister like Keir Starmer who can grip the revolving door of crises, because this country can afford boring, but it can’t afford anymore inaction. From the start, Starmer has understood that after the historical defeat for Labour in 2019, plotting a long term, nationwide, trust building strategy was the only chance of getting even the slimmest Labour government, while abandoning the Corbyn years that were plagued by gesture politics, flash in the pan policies and ineffective politicking in general.
What makes Lynch effective is his knowledge of the issues that concern his union members back to front and his refusal to play in the same court as the pundits and politicians, and Labour can learn a lot from this. Lynch no doubt has a different and in fact easier task than Starmer or even the shadow cabinet, for a start he doesnt have to worry about appealing to anyone but his members, but political communication overall would be better off if politicians were once again straightforward and respected the intelligence of the public, rather than evasive for no real benefit of anyone but their own convinient ambiguity.
