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.