The decision by the Unite union to suspend the membership of Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner is a shock, but not necessarily a surprise. Members of the union passed an emergency motion at Unite’s annual conference in Brighton earlier today (July 11). It is the unseemly climax of a dirty war between Rayner and Unite, whose members working in waste disposal have been in dispute with the Labour-run Birmingham City Council since January – culminating in on/off strike action and thousands of tons worth of bin bags and rubbish strewn across England’s second city.
Labour’s backsliding over striking workers and the unions in recent years has finally come to a head. This week, resident doctors announced five days of strike action at the end of July. Sharon Graham, Unite’s general secretary, has been the most dissenting voice and has led most of the union backlash against Labour. Graham’s union, in light of banishing Rayner – who reportedly ended her membership months ago – said it would “re-examine” its funding with Labour should any of its members in Birmingham be made redundant. Unite is Labour’s biggest union funder, both to the party itself (its members affiliation fees total £1.2m a year) and individual MPs (£553,900 was given to a total of 86 Parliamentarians in the year prior to the 2024 election).
Along with her members, Graham has seemingly had enough of Rayner and Labour. When she was standing to become general secretary in 2021, she said that Unite’s “obsession with the Labour Party needs to end”. Her question to Keir Starmer in 2022? “Which side are you on?” adding that, “If I closed my eyes, sometimes I wouldn’t know whether it was the Labour party or the Tories who were speaking”. In 2023, Graham told my colleague Anoosh Chakelian that Labour has “been immobilised… because it thinks too much about focus groups and all that jazz.” Following the Housing Secretary’s backing of Birmingham council and its refusal to meet Unite’s demands, Graham’s rhetoric has only sharpened: “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.”
The move to suspend Rayner presents the Deputy Prime Minister with a unique challenge. One completely different from the usual internal Labour Party wranglings she’s become hardened to. The Labour Party is in a “difficult financial position”, an internal document notes, and is under a “recovery plan” in 2025 in order to bring finances to a “planned but manageable deficit”. Losing some or all of Unite’s funding would be the last thing the party needs. Graham and her union, and indeed Rayner knows this; effectively tying the Deputy Prime Minister’s hands. The potential snowball effect from other unions – which donate hundreds of thousands to the party – could be ruinous.
The dispute over the bins in Birmingham, which catalysed the current tensions, is still dragging on. Resident doctors, meanwhile, will go on strike at the end of the month. Labour and Rayner, long seen as allies of the unions, will seemingly have to deal with the financial and political baggage of industrial disputes for a while yet.
[See more: If Jake Berry is the answer then what is the question?]
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