Unison chief Prentis hits out at Labour infighting

Labour cannot “degenerate into infighting”, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis has warned.

His intervention comes just days after Corbyn made it clear to his Shadow Cabinet that he expects greater public loyalty from the frontbench.

Now Prentis, who is currently running for re-election, says that critics within the party should “recognise that the real enemy is [the] Tory Party”. According to The Guardian, he said:

“Right now our members – many of them low-paid women – are lying awake at night, wondering whether they will have a job in a few months or fretting about how they are going to feed their children once the tax credit cuts hit. Meanwhile we have a Labour party which does not seem to be focused on standing up for them. Labour cannot afford to degenerate into infighting.”

He said that it put across an unattractive vision of the Labour Party to voters. “People will not vote for a divided party so Labour has got to get its act together,” he said. “They have got to recognise that the real enemy is a Tory party devastating the lives of millions of low-paid families – not other people within the Labour Party.”