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Billy Hayes, general secretary of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), speaks to ePolitix.com about why he is backing Ed Balls for Labour leader and his continuing battle to keep the Royal Mail out of private hands.
Explaining his support for Balls, Hayes argues that the candidates can not afford to "sidestep" the economy if they are to successfully challenge the coalition.
"I think Ed Balls, with his background, has really elaborated an economic case against Tories," he says.
"This is a guy whose was an adviser to Gordon Brown, I think he has a much stronger grip of the economics [than the other candidates] and of what the Tories are trying to do.”
The Communication Workers Union (CWU) is the biggest union for the communications industry in the UK with 215,000 members, including postal workers and telephone company employees.
It came out in support of Balls in the Labour leadership campaign in July, explaining that the shadow education secretary "values the contribution that trade unions make to the country and to the Labour Party".
Hayes concedes that David Cameron and George Osborne have managed to capture the narrative by "miraculously" convincing the public that biggest problem in society is the deficit, an analysis he unsurprisingly believes is wrong.
"When there is unemployment you need to invest, yes you have to deal with the structural deficit, but if people don’t have money to spend then people don’t buy the products people make," he says.
"They’ve managed to somehow miraculously convince people that the problem in society is the deficit.
"We had collapse in the banking industry which was almost equivalent to the impact of a war.”
He adds: "I think you have a narrative that explains what is happening in the economy.”
Drawing parallels with the United States he observes that "for all his talents" Barak Obama has plummeted in popularity because the stimulus that the president enacted was not sufficient to deal with the massive problem of unemployment.
"People look at the public sector debt and think that’s just like my credit card, but it isn’t. You can't look at the macro economy on the basis of your personal finances," he says.
"The Tories have not showed any evidence that by cutting back on expenditure that is going to help us get out of recession.”
And Hayes praises Balls for getting "stuck in" to the CWU's campaign against coalition plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail.
Ministers reportedly plan to introduce a bill in the autumn that would allow private sector investment in company.
Liberal Democrat postal affairs minister Ed Davey has warned that the company risks being "dragged down" by a combination of falling mail volumes, low investment and a pension crisis.
But Hayes says that the coalition is pursuing the idea for purely "ideological reasons".
"Royal Mail is a very valuable public institution, we think it can be a success in the public sector, we think it would be Railtrack 2 if they tired to privatise it, it's not necessary," he says.
"We think they are trying to do it for ideological reasons. If it's such a failure why would anyone want to buy it?
"You've got to judge Royal Mail against the general economy for starters; every firm is having difficulties at the moment.”
The public would be "very unhappy" if it were sold to a foreign company that only cared about the bottom line, he adds.
A YouGov poll conducted for the union and Balls' campaign showed 60 per cent of those asked wanted to keep the Royal Mail in public hands, while only 15 per cent wanted to see it wholly privatised.
Yet the policy is not new. When in power Labour attempted to steer a similar bill through Parliament, only to drop it after coming under pressure from unions.
And Hayes is particularly proud of a passage in Lord Mandelson's memoirs, in which the former business secretary reveals his legislation was torpedoed by the CWU.
"The problem was the politics, or more specifically the CWU," Lord Mandelson writes. "The union launched a furious campaign against our intention to 'privatise the Post Office.
"The CWU began to lean on Labour MPs to oppose the reforms and to warn that they would withhold support from candidates in marginal seats who backed the government's plans"
"That was no empty threat. The CWU was one of Labour's largest union sponsors, donating hundreds of thousands of pounds to the national and local coffers.”
Indeed Hayes believes the previous Labour government lost support because it forgot to cultivate its traditional base and the trade unions.
"Now some of that is natural," He acknowledges. "If you’ve been in government for 13 years there is going to be a bit of disconnect.
"The relationship with the trade unionist was simply taken for granted, I think that was a mistake.
"I don’t think Labour can win by just having trade unions supporting it, but I think it is the case that you can't win with trade union members at best indifferent and at worst hostile."
Yet having been at the heart of government for thirteen years does Balls not share some of the blame for that hostility?
"He was part of the Labour government so he has to share some of the credit and some of the blame," Hayes acknowledges.
But comparing the relationship between Brown and Balls to that of the Miliband brothers, Hayes argues that "just because you are related to someone it does not mean you are the same as them. You are your own person".
"Yes Ed Balls worked for Gordon Brown, but doesn’t mean to say everything Gordon Brown did he has to underwrite, similarly I think it's also true just because David Miliband helped to write the 2005 manifesto doesn’t mean he is responsible for every dot and comma, just as Ed Miliband wrote the 2010 manifesto.
"There's some kind of proximity, but the end of the day Ed Balls is the candidate supporting Ed Balls.
"He isn’t Gordon Brown's candidate and neither is David Miliband Tony Blair's candidate."
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