This year’s election for general secretary of Unison is no ordinary trade union contest. It has become a microcosm of the wider divisions between Labour and the movement that created it. The incumbent, Christina McAnea, is one of the most powerful people in the labour movement. Long considered a close ally of Keir Starmer by many on the left – a reputation she now denies – McAnea has distanced herself from the Prime Minister. Meanwhile, her challenger, Andrea Egan, makes no bones of her contempt for Starmer. The union’s left-wing groups have rallied around Egan, backing just one candidate in a rare display of unity. At issue is the future of Labour’s relationship with Unison, one of the party’s biggest funders. The public sector union was the second biggest donor to Labour during the 2024 election period – donating more than £1.4m between May 30 and July 4 of 2024 – and its members form a core part of Labour’s electoral base. Yet dissatisfaction with the first 18 months of the Labour government has rocked its once cosy relationship with the party. Both candidates spoke to the New Statesman about what is at stake.
The left’s unity behind Egan marks a significant shift. In 2021, four left candidates ran and together took 47 per cent of the vote, a split that helped deliver McAnea’s victory. This time the left has rallied behind one. Egan reached out to other left groups, including the Socialist Party, to avoid dividing support. “I think there’s a recognition that if you put too many candidates up, you can split the vote,” she said. “We’re all pretty much aligned on what we want, we want a better resource for our members.” She said the unity reflects not only strategic discipline but a broader alienation from Labour. “And sadly, this Labour government has come in and continued to attack working-class people.”
Egan’s dissatisfaction with the government partly stems from her own experience. She was expelled from Labour in 2022 for sharing two articles from Socialist Appeal, a Marxist group proscribed by the party, while she was serving as Unison’s president. “I’m still in a position where apparently the Labour Party has written to me and told me that the appeal has been heard and it’s not been upheld, but I can’t find any evidence of that in my inbox. So four years on… I don’t want to move on, I feel like there’s a real injustice that has happened,” she said. “I’ve not been given the opportunity to explain.”
She believes many members feel the same sense of betrayal. “There’s a depth of feeling at the minute… I might not be speaking to the right people, but I am speaking to hundreds of people who are so unhappy with Labour, and people who I have known for decades who have been Labour Party members before I was saying I can’t stay any longer. So there’s an awful lot of dissatisfaction, unhappiness, bitter disappointment, they’re not in a good place full stop.” The government’s treatment of the deputy leader has compounded this mood. Egan said that “at least with Angie you could have decent conversations”, arguing that the loss of Angela Rayner has removed one of the few senior figures who had a relationship with the unions. When asked about the party’s future leadership, she said Andy Burnham “would make quite a good leader”, noting that “he’s been quite critical of the Labour government, he’s saying they’ve lost their way”. Yet she added: “You can’t expect any political group to deliver everything you want.”
Her manifesto reflects this estrangement. In it, Egan calls for an end to “blank cheques” to Labour. “That’s my money, that’s other members’ money,” she said. She has promised a “comprehensive review” of the relationship and has said the nascent left-wing Your Party offers the “possibility of a viable alternative to Labour for the first time”. She has also pledged to “oppose our union’s votes at Labour Conference and the Labour NEC being abused for the factional ends of Starmer’s allies” who she argues “have proven time after time that they have no interest in our members or our policies”.
McAnea’s pitch could hardly be more different. She casts herself as the experienced negotiator capable of extracting concessions from backroom negotiations with the government. “My background is, I’m a negotiator, and have been for over 30 years,” she said. Instead of public confrontation, she favours sustained engagement. “I could come out and put a press release saying, ‘This is all terrible, Labour’s awful, we’re not going to meet them again to talk about this.’ It would please certain factions in the union, it would get me coverage in the media, but that’s not what I do my job for. I do my job to try to get results, and if I think there’s a different way to try to get a better result or an outcome from members, then that’s what I’ll do.” She cited the Employment Rights Bill, including the fair pay agreement in care and the new negotiating body for school support staff, as examples of what long-term pressure can achieve.
Yet McAnea’s frustration with Labour is also evident. In an interview with Laura Kuenssberg, she said she didn’t know if Starmer would still be leader of the party after the elections next May. It was seen by many as a sharp turn away from her previous support for the Labour leader. Asked if her “high hopes” for the party had changed, she said: “We all thought when Labour got into power we’d see a huge difference in terms of the way they would run the country. And, I mean, they have had some spectacular own goals, such as winter fuel.” She questioned whether the party was approaching policy through the right lens. “I can’t recall ever seeing a leader lose or a party in government lose support so quickly and so drastically.” She still believes “working people are better off under a Labour government”, but wants the party to adopt “more socialist policies” and become “a bit braver” on fiscal matters. She, too, lamented the removal of Rayner, calling her “a huge loss” and saying that “the government needs her, and they need that voice”. It’s a damning turn from a union leader who once openly praised Starmer.
Her relationship with the leadership was believed to be so close that it has been the subject of conspiracy theories. She strongly denied claims that she helped influence a national executive vote to raise the number of MPs required for a Labour leadership nomination. The story is, she said, “total nonsense”. She said that while she knows Morgan McSweeney from her constituency, “we never once met to discuss this, it’s totally made up”. She added that she has “never been interested in the workings of the Labour Party” and has “never discussed it with Morgan or anyone senior in the Labour Party”.
Despite this, she said she sees Labour as the “political wing” of Unison. However, she admitted that the party has to appeal to a “broader base” than just the trade union movement “because our membership has been down”. The stats back McAnea up. At its peak in 1979, 13.2 million people were members of a trade union. In the decades that followed, after Thatcher, after Blair, the number plummeted. Today just 6.4 million people are members of a union. Unison alone counts for 1.3 million members, more than 70 per cent of whom are women.
Away from the pair’s policy differences, the campaign has become bitter. Egan said she has “tried to keep to the facts” but described the contest as “quite rough really, quite personal”. McAnea said Egan launched her campaign with a video asking where she was while she was on bereavement leave after her husband’s death. “I suppose it annoyed me, if I’m being quite honest, and I thought, nope, not happening,” she said. “I’m not letting somebody like you take over our union.” She said Egan’s campaign had been “entirely personal” and “very critical”.
Both campaigns provided further accounts. Egan’s team says they delayed their initial social media activity until after the funeral and argue that no video exists asking where McAnea was. They say they have made political criticisms only. McAnea’s team insists the launch occurred ten days after the funeral, during her bereavement leave and argue that Egan’s campaign has focused on attacking her record without offering credible solutions.
A further dispute has broken out over McAnea’s pay. Egan’s campaign says the general secretary’s salary package totals £181,247. McAnea rejects the way the figure has been presented. “I earn a very good salary,” she said. “I never thought in my wildest dreams I would earn a salary like that.” She said the total includes employer pension contributions and the car she is required to use. Egan’s team say the calculation is legitimate and note that Egan would donate a portion of the salary to the union’s strike and welfare funds if elected, taking home only the salary of a social worker.
Beneath the ill-will between the pair sits a deeper clash over strategy, identity and political alignment. Egan’s hostility to Labour and her willingness to question the value of affiliation have won the backing of the organised left. McAnea, by contrast, represents continuity with a tradition that sees Labour as indispensable to achieving gains for public sector workers. The two positions could not be further apart, and that is why the election matters. It is not simply about who leads the country’s largest union. It is a fight over whether Unison turns away from Labour at a moment when the party is struggling to meet expectations, or whether it doubles down on influence over a government that many in the movement still regard as the only plausible vehicle for change. The result will echo far beyond Unison’s membership, into Labour’s finances, its internal balance of power and the shape of the wider movement for years to come.
[Further reading: Keir Starmer’s union problem]
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