A TOP trade unionist warned Labour their new-found obsession with displays of Union flags would make their conference hall “look like Ibrox”.
In a section of Anushka Asthana’s new book Taken As Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed The Party, there is an amusing reference to what Gary Smith, general secretary of the Labour-backing GMB union, said at the Horseshoe Bar in Glasgow a few days before Labour’s conference in 2022.
The book explains Smith had met with Morgan McSweeney – who has now replaced Sue Gray as the Keir Starmer's chief of staff – in the famous city centre pub where they spoke about how they hoped the conference hall “would be a sea of Union Jacks”.
Asthana then details how Smith said the hall “would look like Ibrox”, where Rangers fans “had turned the stands into a huge Union Jack in honour of the late Queen”.
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“Some fellow drinkers, GMB gas workers, joked that they would happily join them to hammer out ‘God Save the King’ at the top of their voices,” the book said.
The anthem was sung for the first time at Labour’s conference in 2022, something which according to Asthana was seen as a “real gamble”.
It opens with leaders wracked with anxiety, preparing to sing God Save The King hand-on-heart at conference, in front of a billowing sixty foot Union flag. The lads are terrified someone will stand up and quite accurately shout “LOL you tragic, crawling, ball-gargling twats”. pic.twitter.com/3Kx5vNCtAr
— Flying_Rodent (@flying_rodent) October 7, 2024
Making your conference look like an Old Firm game might be seen as more of a gamble, but hey…
Labour have been compared to the Tories dozens of times in recent months, something those on the left find pretty difficult to stomach, but being compared to Ibrox?
They might not be able to contain the nausea over that one.
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