Keir Starmer’s grip on Labour could be strengthened by new leaders of the big three unions

It is at least possible that candidates friendly to Starmer could win a clean sweep in the forthcoming leadership elections in Unite, Unison and the GMB, writes John Rentoul

Elections for a number of trade unions could provide interesting results for Keir Starmer (PA)

Ernest Bevin built the mighty Transport & General Workers' Union by sheer force of personality and a series of reverse takeovers – mergers of small unions with larger ones. As the Second World War approached, he was the most powerful union leader in Britain. He helped depose George Lansbury, the pacifist Labour leader, in 1935 and replace him with Clement Attlee, with whom he formed a lifelong partnership.

Andrew Adonis’s new biography of Bevin is a fine reminder that Labour’s history is not just of nationalising things and founding the welfare state; it is also of opposing appeasement, fighting communism and founding Nato.

Bevin would be horrified to see the hollowed-out shell of the once-great union he created, renamed Unite through a series of mergers designed not to expand but to avoid contracting more quickly, and fallen into the hands of the type of revolutionaries he despised.

Thus it was that his successor, Len McCluskey, became one of the powers behind Jeremy Corbyn, the Lansbury of his day. And it is often assumed that, with other unions led by those who share McCluskey and Corbyn’s politics, Keir Starmer has a fight on his hands as he tries to distance himself from his predecessor.

Indeed, it has been suggested that two of the other big three unions, Unison and the GMB, could be about to elect new Corbynite leaders. Given the number of union seats on Labour’s national executive, this could strip Starmer of any meaningful authority over the party organisation.

In fact, the politics of the unions are more complicated than that. All three big unions are going to change leaders. It has been reported that McCluskey will stand down before the expiry of his term in April 2022, and the jockeying to replace him is already well advanced. Meanwhile Dave Prentis of Unison has announced his departure and Tim Roache of the GMB has resigned on grounds of ill health – after allegations, which he denies, were made about his personal conduct.

It is possible that all three unions will elect Corbynite candidates. That would certainly make life difficult for Starmer. But it is more likely that at least two of the three will choose candidates who want to work with the Labour leader rather than against him – and it is quite possible that all three will do so.

To take Unite first. The United Left faction that currently controls the union has chosen Steve Turner as its candidate in preference to Howard Beckett, who ran on an explicitly anti-Starmer ticket. Turner is not exactly a Blairite, having been a member of the breakaway from the Militant tendency who decided to stay in the Labour Party (it’s an interesting story that need not detain us here). But he is more likely to have a constructive relationship with Starmer than either McCluskey or Beckett, who was McCluskey’s favoured candidate.

Nor does the story end there, because if Turner is the United Left candidate, he is likely to be up against Gerard Coyne, who in historical terms is more of a Bevinite, and who ran McCluskey close last time. When McCluskey was re-elected in 2016 he beat Coyne by just 5,000 votes in a union that claims 1.3m members (of whom just 12 per cent took part in the election).

Meanwhile, the contest to lead Unison is shaping up to be between two assistant general secretaries: Christina McAnea, who seems to be the favourite, and Roger McKenzie, who is more of a Corbyn supporter. And the favourite to replace Roache at the GMB is Gary Smith, the union’s Scotland secretary, another one I would put in the “Bevinite” category.

I’m not saying that any of them is Bevin to Starmer’s Attlee, but it is at least possible that candidates friendly to Starmer could win a clean sweep of all three big unions, which would give the Labour leader the base he needs to prepare for government, unencumbered by those hankering for the sectarian politics that lost in 2019.