Mick Hartley

Exciting union news – Left-wing candidate beats Starmer ally to lead UK’s biggest union.

Left-wing candidate Andrea Egan has been elected as the new leader of Unison, the UK’s biggest trade union, in a blow to Sir Keir Starmer.

Ms Egan, who was expelled from the Labour Party three years ago, beat the union’s current general secretary Christina McAnea, an ally of the prime minister.

We heard from Andrea Egan earlier this month:

Having joined Labour about 15 years ago, she says, Egan is no longer a member after being expelled for sharing articles from the proscribed Marxist group Socialist Appeal.

Nor is she a member of any other party, she clarifies, though she is personally enthusiastic about ‘Your Party’, the new one being started by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, as well as pro-Gaza Independent MPs. It has been a chaotic endeavour so far but when we talk – before its founding conference – Egan says she will have to “see how it develops”: “I do feel that it gives people hope again.”.

And, of course, lovely trans people.

Another is standing up for trans workers. I wonder what she makes of Sandie Peggie, the NHS nurse who complained about having to use the same hospital dressing room as a trans colleague. She has launched legal action against her trade union, alleging that the Royal College of Nursing failed to support her. How would Egan react if a similar case came to Unison?

“I haven’t followed that case. But what were the real issues within that? I have trans friends, trans women friends; my nephew is a trans man. I wouldn’t have an issue. I’d want to understand. Because the argument can then develop to anybody saying… ‘Well, I don’t want you there because you’ve got blonde hair’ or ‘I don’t want them there because they’ve got blue eyes’,” Egan says.

So…anti-women, and, to judge from the quality of that last argument, stupid as well.

More than 70% of Unison members are women….