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Labour government is ‘heading backwards’ with spending cuts, warns new boss of RMT
7 May 2025, 12:32 | Updated: 8 May 2025, 07:21
Eddie Dempsey, the straight-talking newly elected boss of the RMT Union says the government is "heading backwards" by focusing on spending cuts.
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The head of the influential Rail, Maritime and Transport workers union (RMT) has told LBC that the Labour government needs to invest heavily in "infrastructure, housing, and jobs" in order to win back disaffected voters, after a disastrous set of local elections for the party.
Eddie Dempsey, who replaced Mick Lynch as RMT boss in March, claimed that the British public are "feeling alienated" and are "mistrustful of politicians" which is being exploited. He called for trade unions to be given an elevated role within communities
"If you want to bring people back together in areas where they're divided, you need to put us back in there, put the trade unions in there. We'll bring people together".
"You need to invest in giving people decent work and decent housing, and that's how you'll address problems of people feeling angry and disaffected".
The RMT, which endorsed Labour at the last election, has been unaffiliated from the party since a dispute dating back to when Sir Tony Blair was the party leader. The new general Eddie Dempsey has signalled that is not likely to change, and fired a warning shot to Sir Keir Starmer to keep the union onside.
"We are independent. We don't affiliate to any political party. If politicians are doing a good job, then we'll thank them for it. And if they're not, then we'll give them a taste of our medicine", he told LBC.
A former member of station staff and a train driver, Mr Dempsey also made clear his opposition to cuts to Winter Fuel Payments as well as Personal Independence Payments (PIP). "We're opposed to that. If you're going to have a productive economy, you have to invest".
"If the government is just going to cut public spending, then we're heading backwards, I'm afraid, and the people that are going to feel the pinch the most, as usual, are those at the bottom". He warned that the UK was heading for "permanent decline" if the government felt it could "cut away into a better country".
The Union are also calling to end what they describe as an "army of outsourcing" blighting the railway industry. Eddie Dempsey claims that workers are being "siloed off" whilst "huge amounts of money leak out of the system through commercial profits".
This situation, the union believes, means workers are prevented from progressing against a backdrop of 50,000 railway workers due to retire within the next five years.
