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Majority of largest teaching union’s members now back Green Party

In another bit of good news for the Green Party, the UK’s largest teaching union now intends to vote for them (or its members do, anyway):

In another bit of brutal news for the Labour Party, they’re 40 points down with the UK’s largest teaching union.

Labouring the point — and boosting the Green Party

The union in question is the National Education Union (NEU). As accounts like Tory fibs have highlighted, the results are absolutely disastrous for the Labour Party under Starmer:

NEU general secretary Daniel Kebede has been highly critical of Starmer. Speaking after the PM’s conference speech in September, Kebede said:

The NEU is disappointed that the Prime Minister insisted on sticking to the fiscal rules and so firmly ruled out a wealth tax. Growth in the economy requires strong public services and schools need an injection of funding to stop further cuts to provision.

He added:

We need to see some definitive action that will make a real difference to the millions of children and young people who live in Dickensian levels of poverty. There are many levers that can be pulled. The introduction of free school meals for all children from households on universal credit was a good first step but this needs to be extended to all children. Keir Starmer could also get rid of the two-child benefit cap and make an immediate difference.

Also in September, NEU member Louise Lewis spoke to the Canary‘s Ed Sykes, saying:

Like a lot of unions, we feel let down by Labour. Labour made a lot of promises to improve recruitment and retention, to address workload for teachers, to fund schools properly. And that hasn’t happened. So we feel really let down. And we’re really pushing for a new left party because there isn’t a party there that is for workers’ rights. And we would certainly welcome and get behind a new left party.

She added:

We’d want a government that’s going to work with us, that’s going to listen to unions and work with trade unions… We know what works best for our schools. At the moment, the government isn’t working with us…  We know what underfunding is going to be like, so we would certainly want a party that is going to work hand in hand with trade unions, is going to work democratically, are a part of the workers’ struggle.

In other words, it’s entirely predictable that teachers would start abandoning Labour for other parties. The fact that Starmer didn’t see this coming suggests he needs to go back to school to learn more about ‘consequences’ and ‘obviousness’.

Featured image via Stats for Lefties

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.