The icy silence...
Rayner’s cold shoulder for Sir Keir after he sacked her MP boyfriend
ANGELA Rayner last night refused to back Sir Keir Starmer’s decision to sack her Labour MP partner – who defied the party leader by joining a rail strike picket line.
Sir Keir said he removed Sam Tarry as his shadow transport minister for giving unauthorised media interviews and making up ‘policy on the hoof’ while speaking from the RMT picket on Wednesday.
Miss Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, who is said to have begun her relationship with Mr Tarry earlier this year, has not commented on the move, which has infuriated the Left-wing of the party and major trade unions.
Last night she declined to comment amid Labour’s internal chaos, although she tweeted calls for Tory ministers to resolve the strikes and tackle the state of the NHS.
Miss Rayner previously raised eyebrows when she backed last month’s rail strikes after shadow ministers were warned to stay away.
But Sir Keir broke his own silence on the controversial sacking, saying: ‘Sam Tarry was sacked because he booked himself on to media programmes without permission and then made up policy on the hoof, and that can’t be tolerated because we’ve got collective responsibility.
‘The Labour Party will always be on the side of working people, but we need collective responsibility.’
Two other Labour frontbenchers – parliamentary private secretaries Paula Barker and Kate Osborne – also joined picket lines but were not sacked. Sir Keir said the party would ‘take each case as it comes’ in future.
His words are unlikely to appease Left-wing Labour MPs and trade union leaders, the latter of whom are now on a ‘direct collision course’ with the Labour Party, according to Mr Tarry. Mick Whelan of Aslef, the train drivers’ union, said ‘maybe it’s time to recognise the link is gone’ between trade unions and the Labour Party.
Kevin Lindsay, the union’s Scotland organiser, dramatically announced last night he is quitting Labour, and urged Sir Keir to stand down.
He wrote in a letter to the party: ‘ I respect that Keir Starmer has been elected leader but his policies are making it impossible for Labour to return to power and that he should be removed from his position immediately.’
On Wednesday, Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said the party was ‘becoming irrelevant to ordinary working people’ after recent events. Senior figures on the Left – including some of the 19 MPs who joined Mr Tarry on picket lines across the country yesterday – also criticised Sir Keir for his alleged hypocrisy. Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell said: ‘This is a completely unnecessary row that’s been invented at a time when the Tories are tearing themselves apart.’
Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor for Greater Manchester, said the party’s leadership has to be ‘careful’ going forward.
‘We can’t ever be a party that undermines working people fighting to protect their incomes,’ he told GB News.
‘If we’re not careful, that’s how we might come over. People are going to have to fight to protect their incomes and Labour should be supporting them.’