A14 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2 , 2019
BY WILLIAM BOOTH
AND KARLA ADAMlondon — Political rabble-rous-
er and talk-radio host Nigel
Farage announced Friday that
his potentially vote-splitting
Brexit Party will field candidates
for every seat in Britain in the
December general election —
unless Prime Minister Boris
Johnson agrees to abandon the
withdrawal deal he negotiated
with European leaders and form
an alliance with the most zealous
Brexit backers.
Farage flung the ultimatum at
Johnson at a Brexit Party cam-
paign launch, staged just a few
blocks away from the House of
Commons, which party chair-
man and real estate tycoon Rich-
ard Tice disparaged as this
“stinking, rotten borough of
Westminster.”
Farage had already made
some election news with a
Thursday radio interview with a
caller from the White House. In
that call, President Trump
disparaged Johnson’s Brexit
plan, saying it could nix a free
trade deal with the United States.
But he also praised the British
prime minister and urged Farage
and Johnson to form an electoral
pact, saying the duo would be an
“unstoppable force.”
Many observers said the U.S.
president didn’t seem to know
what he was talking about — and
that a dynamic duo between
Farage and Johnson would ruin
the Tory party.
Johnson on Friday ruled out
an alliance with Farage or any
other party, “because I don’t
think it’s sensible to do that.”
He also delicately dismissed
Trump’s assertion about trade.
“I don’t wish to cast any
aspersions on the president of
the United States, but, in that
respect, he is patently in error,”
Johnson told Sky News.
“Anybody who looks at our dealcan see that it’s a great deal.”
But Farage, in his remarks
Friday, called Johnson’s deal “a
sellout Brexit.” He compared the
prime minister to a used-car
salesman trying to sell a lemon to
a rube.
Farage wants Britain to crash
out of the European Union’s
trading club without a deal and
do business with Europe, its
closest economic partner for40 years, as a “third country”
under World Trade Organization
rules.
“Boris tells us this is a great
new deal. It is not,” Farage said.
“It is a bad old treaty and simply
it is not Brexit. What we are
doing here is kicking the can
down the road.”
Further, Farage said, if John-
son and the Tories do not join in
a “leave alliance” with the BrexitParty, and make a pact over
which seats to contest, then the
Faragists will field candidates up
and down England, Scotland and
Wales. That could lure voters
away from the Conservatives and
deny Johnson the majority he
wants to get his Brexit deal
through Parliament.
Asked whether he could —
paradoxically — be the last hope
for those “remainers” who want
to stay in the European Union,
Farage said “the risk of the vote
being split is very real.”
Farage has never won a seat in
Parliament, despite trying seven
times. But he is a potent force in
British politics.
His new single-issue Brexit
Party won big in the May
elections for the European
Parliament, taking 31 percent of
the vote, far ahead of Labour
(14 percent) and the Conserva-
tives (9 percent). It was an im-
pressive showing for a party
founded only in January, even if
much of its support came in the
form of protest votes.
Farage himself was first elect-
ed to the European Parliament in
1999 — a body he holds in
contempt, though he does accept
the comfortable salary, home
and travel allowances, pension
and money for staffing.
The Conservative Party line, as
chairman James Cleverly put it
Friday, is that “a vote for Farage
risks letting Jeremy Corbyn into
Downing Street via the back
door.”
Corbyn is leader of the opposi-tion Labour Party and a commit-
ted socialist who surprised many
in the 2017 election when his
movement surged and denied
Conservatives a majority govern-
ment.
In his radio interview with
Farage, Trump dumped on Cor-
byn, saying he “would be so bad
for your country, he’d be so bad,
he’d take you on such a bad way.
He’d take you into such bad
places.”
Many in Britain, both left and
right, felt discomfort at hearing
an American president so force-
fully meddle in domestic politics.
Trump’s predecessor, President
Barack Obama, was widely criti-
cized, too, for his remarks
against Brexit in 2016.
Corbyn tweeted, “Donald
Trump is trying to interfere in
Britain’s election to get his friend
Boris Johnson elected.”
Whatever happens in coming
weeks, the next Parliament will
look very different.
More than 50 lawmakers are
planning to step down, including
Ken Clarke, the longest-serving
lawmaker in the House of
Commons; Rory Stewart, who
will turn to trying to win next
year’s London mayoral race; Jo
Johnson, the prime minister’s
brother, who resigned citing
“unresolvable tension” between
his family loyalty and the
national interest; and John
Bercow, the flamboyant speaker
of the House of Commons.
[email protected]
[email protected]Farage tells Johnson to abandon Brexit deal in coming election — or else
SIMON DAWSON/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, speaks to the media during the launch of the party’s general
election campaign in London. He discussed British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.BY ELI ROSENBERGThe workers were chanting
“Shut it down!” when photogra-
phers turned to a figure ap-
proaching from the end of the
block, a Dunkin’ donuts box in
her hands.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-
Mass.) had shown up at a picket
line manned by striking Stop &
Shop workers in Somerville,
Mass., during the 11-day strike at
the grocery chain last April.
“These giant companies think
they can knock unions back,”
Warren told the crowd through a
bullhorn. “They think they can
push us back. But what they need
to understand is that unions are
here to stay!”
A few days later, former vice
president Joe Biden was at an-
other Stop & Shop picket line,
excoriating Wall Street bankers
and CEOs. “You built America!”
he boomed to the crowd.
The next day, Sen. Amy Klobu-
char (D-Minn.) and South Bend,
Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg met
with the striking grocers. Other
presidential candidates, such as
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), voiced
their support on social media.Barely a week old at the time,
the strike of 31,000 workers at
about 240 stores had suddenly
found itself at the white-hot cen-
ter of the 2020 campaign.
The road to the presidential
nomination next year is sure to be
full of unforeseen twists and pot-
holes as a crowded field of Demo-
cratic contenders dukes it out in a
volatile political climate. But
about a year into their race, one
thing is clear: It leads through a
thicket of striking workers, in a
number of states, whether they
are in front of a grocery store, an
automotive factory or an elemen-tary school.
This push comes as they try to
dislodge some of the support
President Trump has found in
states that have lost tens of thou-
sands of union jobs in recent
years, including Wisconsin,
Michigan and Pennsylvania. Hil-
lary Clinton beat Trump in union
households by only nine percent-
age points in 2016 — half of the
18-point margin Barack Obama
won over Mitt Romney and well
below the 30-point advantage Bill
Clinton had in 1992, according to
exit poll data. Questions remain
about how those hundreds of
thousands of votes potentially
affected the race.
Democratic candidates are
telegraphing their support for
workers in a variety of ways.
Warren launched her campaign
in Lawrence, Mass., in front of a
mill that was made famous by a
1912 strike led by a group of
female workers.
“I am a union man,” Biden said
during his announcement a cou-
ple of months later. Nearly all the
candidates have dramatically
pro-union and pro-worker policy
proposals in their platforms.
Political observers said the
rush by 2020 hopefuls to embrace
striking workers marks a new
chapter, although unions have
been nominally aligned with
Democratic politicians on and off
for years.
“Democrats have held their
distance in several decades,” said
Erik Loomis, a labor historian at
the University of Rhode Island
and the author of “A History of
America in Ten Strikes.” “Now,
going on a picket line is almost a
requirement to be considered a
serious candidate for the Demo-
cratic nomination. That’s basical-
ly unprecedented in American
history.”
During the six-week strike that
shut down production at General
Motors, workers were greeted by
Sanders, Klobuchar, Sen. Kamala
D. Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Cory
Booker (D-N.J.), Biden and War-
ren, as well as former congress-
man Beto O’Rourke (D-Tex.) and
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), who
have since dropped out of the
race. The parade of candidates
was so dizzying that some work-
ers at the Detroit-Hamtramck
plant, which Klobuchar, Sanders
and Warren visited — twice —
said they had lost track of which
ones had come by.
“They did earn some points,”
said Hamtramck worker Chris
Viola, 36, adding that Warren
came to stand with picketing
workers during a downpour.
“People are realizing that we’re
out here and we want to be
heard.”
The candidates’ visits have
added to a sense of momentum in
the world of labor organizing,
which has seen the number of
striking workers rise to the high-
est level in more than 30 years.
Public support for unions, ac-
cording to Gallup polls, is ap-
proaching a 50-year high. And the
high-profile attention, which
draws extensive media coverage,
has helped turn the spotlight on
the plight of workers and bring it
into the center of the national
political discussion.
But some have viewed the can-
didates’ visits with skepticism.Jane McAlevey, a former orga-
nizer and a policy fellow at the
University of California at Berke-
ley, argued in an essay in the
Nation that candidates were of-
fering workers photo opportuni-
ties but not actual power.
“The GM strike could have
been an incredible opportunity
for Democrats to drive home a
core message: Trump promised
workers not one plant would
close on his watch, and now that
promise is broken,” she wrote in
the magazine. “The Democrats
essentially ignored the chance.”
Vanessa Banks, the president
of the United Auto Workers Local
1590 chapter, which representsworkers at a General Motors
plant in Martinsburg, W.Va., said
she thought of the visits as “just
politics.”
“They’re not helping us in any
way,” she said.
Still, many union officials and
workers said they appreciated the
support.
“There really is an understand-
ing by this crop of candidates that
if you want to face wealth in-
equality and create good jobs,
unions have to be a part of that,
and not just say, ‘Unions matter,’ ”
said Erikka Knuti, communica-
tions director for the United Food
and Commercial Workers Union,
which represents Stop & Shop
workers. “We were very cognizant
of not turning ourselves into a
photo op for politicians, and I
think that the folks that came did
a good job.”
There are other political con-
siderations at play, too.
Despite the fact that union
participation in the United States
has been declining for decades,
unions still have effective “get out
the vote” operations.
Joseph A. McCartin, a profes-
sor at Georgetown University, cit-
ed data from the Bureau of Labor
Statistics showing that Wisconsin
lost 175,000 union members be-
tween 2008 and 2016; Michiganlost 165,000, and Pennsylvania
lost 165,000.
“So key states that Trump end-
ed up winning were states where
unions got hammered,” he said in
an interview. Democrats “saw
how badly those losses hurt them
in those states, and they saw how
[former governor] Scott Walker’s
impact on Wisconsin made Wis-
consin available to Trump.”
Then there is the issue of en-
dorsements. A majority of unions
have yet to weigh in on the race,
cautious perhaps because of the
large pool of candidates.
“I think unions are really kick-
ing the tires on a whole host of
issues,” said Scott Treibitz, a polit-ical consultant who works with
unions in Washington. “They
know Bernie, they know Eliza-
beth, they know Joe, they know
Harris and Booker, but they’re
trying to see how they all react.”
Treibitz works with the Inter-
national Association of Fire
Fighters, which announced its
endorsement of Biden in April.
The Democratic candidates
have, by and large, released de-
tailed plans to radically strength-
en the rights of both unions and
unaffiliated workers.
Sanders wants to give federal
workers the right to strike, ban
“at will” employment — which
allows companies to fire workers
without cause — and double
union membership in the United
States. Warren has called for ban-
ning the permanent replacement
of striking workers and strength-
ening the National Labor Rela-
tions Board, which enforces laws
meant to protect unions and or-
ganizing in workplaces.
Both of them, along with Book-
er, Buttigieg, Harris and Julián
Castro, say they want to ban
“right to work” laws that Republi-
cans have championed in states
throughout the country to allow
workers to opt out of paying
union dues.
[email protected]The hottest stop for candidates on the 2020 campaign trail: The picket line
BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joins striking workers outside the
General Motors Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant in September.“Now, going on a picket line is almost a
requirement to be considered a serious candidate
for the Democratic nomination. That’s basically
unprecedented in American history.”
Erik Loomis, labor historian at the University of Rhode IslandPhoto by Jonathan Newton/The Washington PostHOME DELIVERY CUSTOMERS!
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