POLITICS “isn’t a spectator sport” and unions will work with the new Labour government to rebuild public services, shape an industrial strategy for Britain and face down the threat of racism, Paul Nowak told the TUC Congress today.

The TUC leader said unions could be proud of having united to see off Tory threats to the right to strike, winning above-inflation pay awards during the cost-of-living crisis and could be confident as a growing movement with 90,000 more trade union members than 12 months ago.

Its future rested on recognising MPs wouldn’t defeat bad bosses — only unions could do that, he stressed, by showing themselves truly representative of a diverse working class, training up hundreds of new black activists and women reps each year.

In the face of a resurgent far right that seized on the tragic Southport murders to “attack places of worship, to loot shops [and] to attack the same emergency workers who rushed to save lives,” unions must make clear that “we always stand with the decent majority and we will always work to bring communities together,” he stressed, noting that “the overwhelming majority of people in this country are decent, kind and generous: they’re the ones who rebuilt a wall outside a mosque, who swept up the debris after the riots, who gathered not to hate, but to show their love and their grief.”

Mr Nowak also attacked Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as a “fraud” and said his claim to patriotism was undermined by having made excuses for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.