Unite union moves to suspend Rayner and re-examine ties with Labour

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Unite, the UK’s largest union, has moved to suspend deputy prime minister Angela Rayner and re-examine its relationship with Labour, in a blow to the government as it battles to retain ties with the left wing of the party.

A person familiar with the matter said Rayner, who has long-standing links to the union movement, had already resigned her Unite membership several months ago.

But in a move that marked a rebuke to the deputy prime minister over the government’s handling of the Birmingham bin workers’ strike, Unite members voted at the union’s conference in Brighton on Friday to suspend Rayner.

“Unite is crystal clear it will call out bad employers regardless of the colour of their rosette,” said the union’s general secretary Sharon Graham.

“Angela Rayner has had every opportunity to intervene and resolve this dispute but has instead backed a rogue council that has peddled lies and smeared its workers fighting huge pay cuts,” she added.

Unite is traditionally one of Labour’s biggest financial backers, but has already restricted funding since Sir Keir Starmer shifted the party towards the centre.

On Friday, the union also voted to re-examine its relationship with Labour, citing the government’s handling of the long-running bin strikes in Birmingham over pay, which in the spring led to uncollected rubbish being left to pile up across the city.

Unite said the vote meant that if Birmingham council’s “threat to effectively fire and rehire, on pain of redundancy”, bin workers in the city, “Unite should discuss our relationship with Labour”.

Birmingham City council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Labour is struggling to contain its left flank after a backbench rebellion forced a series of U-turns on welfare cuts.

Robert Ford, professor of political science at Manchester university, said Unite’s vote to re-examine its relationship with Labour was the “rumbling of the volcano rather than the volcano erupting”, given that the party was not heavily reliant on short-term funding from the union.

But he said it could be a threat to Starmer if it was a precursor to Unite funding a more leftwing party that could take traditional voters away from Labour.

Last week, former Labour MP Zarah Sultana and ex-leader Jeremy Corbyn said they were working on building a new political party to challenge the government.

Ford said that if Unite formally disaffiliated from Labour it might subsequently back a new Corbyn movement, but added that Friday’s vote could also be a “shot across the bow” to make the party change course.

Between 2010 and 2020, Unite provided Labour with £42mn in funding under leaders Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn, but at last year’s general election it largely funded left-leaning candidates rather than the party itself.

Labour faces challenges on both left and right, with Nigel Farage’s anti-immigration Reform party leading in the polls and picking up traditional Labour voters in the north of England’s so-called “red wall”.

NHS resident doctors are also threatening to strike over pay, at a time when Labour has made improving the performance of the NHS a central pillar of its re-election strategy.