Unite general secretary says mood music at Labour conference is that Labour are ‘taking away from the poorest’

• Starmer vows to protect public services from fresh austerity
• Labour heads to conference in a spin
• Interview: Starmer defends his record

Sharon Graham, the Unite general secretary, has accused the Labour government taking the country towards “austerity mark 2”.

In interviews ahead of the conference, Keir Starmer specifically rejected this. (See 8.25am.) But, in an interview with Sky’s Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips, Graham said:

The mood music here is that they are taking away from the poorest in our society now. And actually the conversation they’re having is walking us into austerity mark 2. Nobody wants to see that. Workers don’t want to see it, communities don’t want to see it. And I can tell you, the pensioners don’t want to see it either.

I get that people are angry, I get that people are upset.

I think the transparency is there so people can see that. Now, if there is a national debate about how we fund politics and how we do that, and I hear that people are frustrated with that, but we have a system at the moment that says if you get donations, that has to be declared and the rules have to apply to everybody.