Do unions like Unite want Labour to win the next election? A fair few people, including a number of Labourites, have been asking this question since the union announced its backing for Jeremy Corbyn at the weekend, but it’s a something that those involved in the election campaign were asking as polling day approached, too, for slightly different reasons.
The party found that it had a problem with Ukip during the election campaign – and some wise figures like John Healey had been urging the leadership to get to grips with Nigel Farage’s party long before election chiefs actually did do anything. While there is now a general acceptance among the leadership candidates that Labour must work at winning back voters from Ukip, none of them have yet addressed one of the ways some of those who support their party are making this more difficult.
Anyone who followed Ukip around in the election campaign quickly became familiar with the crowd of angry protesters who popped up outside every town hall where Nigel Farage was speaking, and tried to follow him around, chanting insults and waving placards.
Owen Bennett’s book, Following Farage, contains a number of accounts of encounters between Ukippers and the protesters, including an amusing conversation in which the journalist tried to find out what in particular made some activists in Doncaster think made Ukip a racist party, and ended up getting insulted himself.
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