The TUC conference is a bit like a dress rehearsal for the Labour Party conference two weeks later. Some years they’re even in the same venue.
The leaders of the big trade unions strut their stuff on the stage and put down a marker on the demands on the Labour leadership they’ll make in a fortnight’s time.
And when a Labour leader comes to speak to the TUC, usually every other year, the speech is often very similar to the one given on the big stage at the party conference. Ed Miliband was the worst offender.
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This year in Brighton, the TUC conference was dominated by the four Ws: wages, winter fuel payments, workers’ rights and a wealth tax.
And the same issues are likely to be dominant once again in Liverpool, at the Labour conference starting on Sunday 22 September.
This year, just weeks after the general election, the Conservatives are claiming the government has handed bumper pay rises to train drivers and junior doctors as a payback to the unions for bankrolling the Labour Party.
But in his speech in Brighton on Tuesday, Sir Keir Starmer issued a tough message to the unions on wages.
Don’t they always?
At a TUC conference in Brighton some years ago, journalists were briefed by Number 10 that Sir Tony Blair would read the riot act to the unions on pay in his speech at the general council dinner.
That after-dinner speech, always in a smart hotel (this year it was at the Grand, next door to Brighton’s conference centre), is behind closed doors with no pesky reporters or TV cameras present.
And on that occasion, it turned out that the prime minister had not said a word of the briefing given to journalists. But Mr Blair – as he was then – had got his message across. Job done.
