According to the polls, Nigel Farage is set to sweep the country in tomorrow’s local elections. But one man who appears singularly unmoved by his populist pitch is TUC general secretary Paul Nowak.

In a rare intervention over the weekend, the putative chieftain of Britain’s workers branded Reform’s leader ‘a political fraud and a hypocrite’. Farage is a ‘public school-educated ex-metals trader cosplaying as a champion of the working class. There’s a massive contradiction between what he says and what he actually does in practice,’ Novak raged.

There’s some truth in the charge. Over the past couple of weeks, we have seen the man who once made a mint playing the steel markets suddenly popping up in a hard-hat alongside the Scunthorpe blast furnaces demanding the industry’s immediate renationalisation. Quite the political U-turn, given two years earlier he’d tweeted, ‘Why should the government bail out the company now?’ And that when he was a Ukip MEP he was one of only a handful of members who voted against legislation aimed at preventing steel dumping.

But by highlighting Nigel Farage’s blatant opportunism, Paul Nowak has inadvertently raised an awkward question. Namely, how is it that senior trade-union leaders – indeed, the trade-union movement as a whole – have let this supposed public-school chameleon sideline them and supplant them in their historic role as tribunes of the British working-class?

After Farage appeared in Scunthorpe alongside the workforce demanding the plant’s salvation, his appearance was immediately condemned by the Community Union, who accused him of not just appropriating their membership, but their campaign literature. ‘Farage is holding old posters and does not represent steelworker interests,’ a union spokesman charged.

But when was the last time a trade-union leader standing alongside their members in a fight for their livelihoods generated such widespread media interest? If you showed a photo of Roy Rickhuss – Community’s General Secretary – to the working men and women of Scunthorpe, how many would be able to cite his name? Or that of Paul Nowak?

You can be sure they’d recognise Nigel Farage. To some people this disparity is just a further example of the long, slow but inexorable decline of the British trade-union movement.

Yet the bald numbers tell a different story. This morning Reform’s membership tracker stands at 226,380 members. That is the size of Nigel Farage’s populist army.

Nigel Farage remains the only figure of substance in British politics prepared to speak for the working-class with a clarity and vigour that actually provokes some sort of reaction, writes Dan Hodges 

TUC chief Paul Nowak sought to highlight Farage's blatant opportunism in relation to the crisis surrounding Scunthorpe's blast furnaces

In contrast, according to the latest figures, the TUC currently represents 48 unions, with a combined membership of 5.5million members. Paul Novak’s divisions dwarf those of Farage. But he is utterly incapable of properly connecting with them, never mind mobilising them.

And the reason is nothing to do with history, or the reconfiguration of modern working patterns, or a raft of anti-trade union legislation from a succession of hostile governments. It’s because Britain’s trade-union leaders are no longer capable of talking the language of the British working-class. Or, at least, are no longer willing to.

Look at the issue dominating British politics. A poll conducted yesterday by More in Common found in those areas where Britain is set to go to the polls, Reform is now outperforming both Labour and the Tories. And two-thirds of those voters claim they are supporting Nigel Farage because of one main issue – his stance on immigration.

This is Paul Nowak’s own stance: ‘Every migrant is my sister, my brother, and this Government shames us all because our country should never turn its back on those fleeing persecution, poverty or war,’ he told his annual conference in 2023. ‘When I hear the Home Secretary talking of a “migrant invasion”, that her dream is to deport people to Rwanda, when I see immigrants housed on a barge with legionella, or hear that the immigration minister ordered a mural for kids painted over, for me it is personal.’

These are noble sentiments. Nowak is himself a grandson of immigrants from Poland and China. But they are not the sentiments of the vast swathes of working Britain who want the small boats stopped and net migration slashed.

Take another issue currently dominating the headlines: trans rights. The law is now clear, and it is aligned with the bulk of British working-class opinion. A woman is a biological woman, and a man is a biological man.

But this is the TUC’s opinion: ‘Trade unionists are champions of equality, including equality for trans and non-binary people. And we recognise the need to change the process for gender recognition, which is often lengthy, humiliating and expensive. We need urgent reform to the outdated and stigmatising Gender Recognition Act 2004 across the whole of the UK. We need a simplified, free, statutory gender recognition process based on self-declaration while maintaining the Equality Act 2010 as it stands,’ it said in a 2023 statement.

Again, these may be compassionate words. But they are not words that encapsulate the views of millions of working women who have been appalled at the potential erosion of their own workplace rights, and have had to fight through courts – without the support of the most senior trade-union officials – for legal redress.

There are some exceptions to this abandonment of trade unionism’s core mission. Unite General Secretary Sharon Graham has spoken strongly against the excesses of Ed Miliband’s messianic Net Zero strategy. Two days ago GMB leader Gary Smith blasted the decision not to issue more oil and gas licences as ‘madness’.

But the fact these concerns are simply brushed aside by Keir Starmer and his ministers plays into Nigel Farage’s hands. And it underlines his central charge that Labour – and by extension the unions that bankroll them – is no longer any more receptive to the fears and aspirations of working people than the long-despised Tories.

Paul Nowak can rage at Farage and Reform all he likes. But when the votes are counted on Friday, all he will be doing is further underlining his own inability to speak to and for working-class Britain.

It’s completely irrelevant to the men and women who stand on the nation’s shop floors and tend to its furnaces whether Nigel Farage is a charlatan or not. So long as he remains the only figure of substance in British politics prepared to speak for them with a clarity and vigour that actually provokes some sort of reaction, what other choice do they have?

Paul Nowak believes Reform’s leader is a fraud. But he’s the TUC General Secretary who has allowed a Dulwich College-educated city-slicker to shunt him aside as the voice of Britain’s workers. So, remind us who’s really cosplaying as the champion of Britain’s working class.