While the Tory leadership candidates continue to tear each other to shreds, Labour has decided to join the party. Keir Starmer’s decision to fire the junior shadow transport minister Sam Tarry after he joined a picket line at Euston station and did a series of unauthorised TV interviews has shifted the spotlight firmly on to the opposition, and to the question of whether Starmer’s Labour is truly on the side of workers. One might have thought rail workers taking repeated strike action, grinding the country to a halt during a cost of living crisis, could backfire on a rudderless government. That’s not quite the way it’s worked out.
To make sense of how, during a toxic Tory leadership contest and an economic crisis, Labour party infighting has managed to become the story, I’ve spoken to the Guardian’s political correspondent Peter Walker. That’s after the headlines.
