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Labour’s union trouble

Rachel Reeves

It’s arguably been a good week for Labour, as the Tory party becomes more and more implicated in the Greensill lobbying scandal, which saw the former PM David Cameron ringing around ministers last year to secure emergency cash for the flailing financial firm.

Labour leader Keir Starmer certainly seemed to enjoy the ongoing revelations about Greensill at PMQs this week, when he said Boris Johnson was overseeing the ‘return of Tory sleaze’. Wiser heads wondered though if the Labour Party should be championing a crackdown on outside organisations influencing politics, considering its own close links to the unions…

Lo and behold, that appeared to play out last night when Labour’s Rachel Reeves appeared on ITV’s Peston. The Labour shadow minister was asked on the show if Labour’s proposed transparency measures would also apply to the unions, and said she was ‘quite relaxed’ about them being added to a lobbying register.

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