Labour’s union paymasters are once again trading blows with Labour’s Southside HQ, this time over the sacking of Transport Minister Sam Tarry and the party’s opposition to the rail strikes. Just this morning, Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs’ Association – a union which even nominated Starmer to the leadership two years ago – wrote a scathing attack in House Magazine, claiming:

“As a Labour-affiliated union, our union is ashamed of the actions of the Labour Party leadership and the anti-worker anti-union message it is sending out… Sam’s crime was attending our TSSA picket line at Euston station and doing media interviews in support of striking rail workers – putting the blame rightly on the Tory government. Sam is one of us.”

Unite’s Sharon Graham has also gone on the offensive (again), saying Labour are “becoming more and more irrelevant to ordinary working people”, with GMB’s Gary Smith chiming in to claim it was a “huge own goal” to sack Tarry and “turn a Tory Transport crisis into a Labour story”. Unite have already threatened to bankrupt Labour this year. Starmer’s lucky the party managed to raise more cash than the Tories last quarter. Open warfare with the unions isn’t going to be cheap…