Steve Richards: Tensions may rise, but the Government and the unions still have a lot of common interests

Compared with the 1970s and 80s, the mood of this gathering is almost conciliatory

The Government's relationship with the trade unions reminds me of a Woody Allen joke in Annie Hall, a film worth watching every couple of months or so. Allen's joke is about two friends at a restaurant. One complains that the food is awful. The other agrees, adding: "And the portions are so small." Allen compares this exchange with life. It is bleak, but we cannot get enough.

On a slightly less epic scale, ministers like to berate the unions and yet, at the same time, they cannot get enough of them. In advance of the annual trade unions' conference, they let it be known that their message will be tough. Yet they queue up to attend the seaside gathering like children waiting to see the latest Harry Potter film at the cinema. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had to take it in turns to speak at the TUC, as if there was a danger that they could get too much of a good thing. The ministerial turnout at this year's conference, and the advance briefings, reflect the ambivalence. Everyone is there. Yesterday, Gordon Brown spoke. Today his ministerial ally, Ed Balls, rolls up. One way or another, most of the leading members of the Cabinet will make an appearance. Yet, quite often, once they arrive they wield the stick: "Fairness not favours ... toe the line on public sector pay ... don't expect to have as much power at Labour party conferences in the future ... oh and please invite me back to speak next year."

Partly, the ambivalence is easily explained. After the cash for honours affair, Labour is reliant once more on cash from the unions in the build-up to the next election. One of the reasons Tony Blair wooed business leaders was so that he could show Labour was less dependent on the unions. When the wealthy handed over millions to Labour, Blair looked forward to taking a triumphant bow, with cheers all round from the anti-union media and Middle England voters. He did not expect the overblown attentions of a police investigation.

Still, that is what he got and that means his successors are more dependent on traditional sources of income. At the same time, Brown and co do not want to appear as if they have their eyes focused solely on Labour's so-called core vote amongst trade union activists, so they tick them off while asking for their cash.

Yet there is genuine common ground between the two sides. Gordon Brown might not talk publicly about inequality very often, fearing that he will be led fatally towards a vote-losing debate on taxation. But privately he is gripped by the issue of inequality and always has been.

As for the unions, the characteristically measured tone of the general secretary, Brendon Barber, in his speech yesterday is more representative of the wider mood. Most union leaders recognise that on several fronts, often the less publicised ones, the Government has delivered. At the same time, they fume with varying degrees of justification that ministers are not doing more.

Compared with the 1970s and early 1980s, the mood of this gathering is almost conciliatory. Whenever Labour's former chancellor from the 1970s, Dennis Healey, reflects on his stormy period in office, he notes that Brown is lucky because he does not face the union militancy that made his life hell 30 years ago, so hellish that even the robust Healey fell ill with the strain. The current threats of industrial action over public sector pay are the equivalent of a country dance compared with the riotous punk rock of the 1970s.

Yet the possibility of more strikes in the coming months is damaging, not so much to Brown but to the unions themselves. In some ways the clash helps the new Prime Minister in his role as leader of the nation, smashing into further pieces the previous caricature of Brown the Old Labour tribalist. The caricature was always wrong, not least because Brown has displayed a consistently tough line over public sector pay.

It is a myth that, as Chancellor and aspiring leader, he arrived at the annual trades' union conference telling the audience what it wanted to hear. He has always delivered lectures on the need for tight public sector pay awards for the sake of economic stability.

The trade unions respond with a destructive parochialism. By definition, union leaders represent the interests of their members while political leaders seek a big enough coalition to win elections and retain power. Even so, most of the union leaders have failed dismally to put their case in a way that appeals beyond their activists.

I recall a recent speech from Derek Simpson, the leader of the mighty Amicus union, in which he called on the Government to implement policies for "our people". He used the phrase "our people" at least 20 times, as if they were distinct from everyone else, with a set of interests and aspirations that could be realised only if others, probably the majority of voters, made appropriate sacrifices. It is an approach guaranteed to lose elections.

In this respect, the senior Brownites have good cause for their ambivalence. Some of them appeal more subtly to what they call the "self-interested altruism" of the entire electorate. That is a much more compelling and potent phrase. When union leaders argue narrowly that council workers must get bigger pay rises or else they will strike, who are they seeking to win over? Which voters will leap with joy at the argument and the threat? When Tube workers cause chaos on the London Underground, what coalition of support do they think they are building?

The key to winning progressive arguments in Britain, a country with a strong right-wing media and an economy built precariously around a self-interested City of London, is to make the wider connections. If there is not more investment in transport, for example, even the wealthiest will be stuck in their new Mercedes in endless traffic jams. If issues relating to poverty in Britain are not addressed, including through redistribution, the subsequent crime and disorder will make life hellish for the more affluent.

We cannot all live in gated communities. It is in the interests of the better-off to support progressive policies, to display a self-interested altruism. Persuading them that it is in their interests to do so is always challenging. Unions threatening to take action that will punish voters do not advance the progressive cause a single millimetre.

But Brown's fear of moving publicly on to terrain such as the extreme inequality in Britain, preferring yesterday to re-package existing proposals and wrap them in the Union Jack, does not advance the progressive cause either. Both sides need to work on the relationship. A Labour government will only be truly secure in power when ministers can come to trade union conferences and complain about the small portions because they like the food so much.

s.richards@independent.co.uk