Top union boss launches stinging attack on Starmer: ‘A car salesman who just sells soap’

‘We want a Labour government, clearly, even if they are not very good,’ Mark Serwotka said

Sir Keir Starmer (PA)

A union chief has launched a stinging attack on Keir Starmer, likening the Labour leader to “a car salesman who just sells soap”.

Mark Serwotka, the head of the union representing civil servants, said Sir Keir is “not the most engaging person” as he accused him of lacking “vision”.

Speaking from the annual TUC congress gathering of trade unions in Liverpool, Public and Commercial Services Union chief Mr Serwotka told The Independent: “We do not want car salesmen if they are just going to sell soap.

“You do not have to be the world’s best orator, but you need policies and a vision, and that is what I think they have not got at the moment.”

Responding to questions about whether that means the PCS does not want a Labour government, he said: “We want a Labour government, clearly, even if they are not very good.”

But he said: “Their pitch right now is that the Tories are terrible and we are better than them.”

He added that deputy leader Angela Rayner had gone down “really well” at the TUC conference, but that Sir Keir had only been at the dinner, adding: “That tells you what their problem is.”

Mr Serwotka also hit out at Sir Keir Starmer’s small boat crackdown, saying it was a non-starter.

He claimed the party’s plan to tackle smuggling gangs “just will not work”, calling for Sir Keir to adopt a “humane and practical” approach to Channel migrants.

His comments come as the Labour leader prepared to visit The Hague to meet officials from EU law agency Europol to discuss how a Labour government would tackle smuggling gangs.

He is set to outline plans to “smash” criminal gangs that smuggle people to the UK, and says Labour will “bring order to the border”.

Mr Serwotka said the approach amounted to a “sticking plaster”. “People will always try, so if you knock out a criminal gang it does not deal with the real issue,” he said.

If Labour presses on with its approach “they will get into government and still have the issue of small boats coming in after two years’ time”.

It will also fail to deal with the “human misery and desperation” facing those crossing the Channel, Mr Serwotka said.

He called on Labour to “be brave and grasp the nettle”, setting out what he called a “humane and practical” policy to end small boat crossings.

Mr Serwotka has previously attacked the Labour leader as untrustworthy, telling LBC this week that “if you get elected by making ten solemn pledges and when it comes to face the electorate you have actually ripped up the majority of those pledges, you don’t stand very high in the list of Labour leaders in my book”.

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Serwotka, who will step down later this year after more than two decades at the helm of the PCS, told The Independent that Priti Patel and Suella Braverman are “two of the worst home secretaries I have ever seen”.

He said: “Given Theresa May sent vans around highly ethnic-populated areas saying ‘go home’, that is quite a charge.

“For them, it is the disregard they seem to have for any of the normal rules of operation.

“The fact that they’re prepared to break the law, the fact that Ms Braverman was prepared to spend masses of money even if there’s just one person on a flight to Rwanda.

“It is just politics in the raw for them. I think that they think the politics for them plays.”

PCS’s alternative to the government’s Rwanda policy would see a “safe passage visa scheme” introduced for those considering risky Channel crossings.

Mr Serwotka said he has pitched the policy proposal to shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, who has rejected it.