Keir Starmer has been hit with an overdue public humiliation, after he expelled the newly elected boss of one of Labour's biggest unions! Right, so Keir Starmer expelled Andrea Egan from the Labour Party and then, without missing a beat, congratulated her this week on becoming the most powerful trade union leader in the country and said he was looking forward to working with her. You can admire the nerve, if nothing else. Because what that moment actually tells you is not that Labour has made peace with the labour movement, but that it has lost the ability to control it and is hoping nobody notices. Egan has just been elected general secretary of UNISON, the biggest union in Britain and one of Labour’s biggest donors, by a clear margin, albeit on a turnout so low it has given ammunition to right wing critics suddenly deciding to bemoan democracy because the vote didn’t go their way. She is a left-wing organiser, openly critical of Labour’s direction, already expelled by Starmer’s leadership, and now sitting at the top of an institution Labour still depends on for money, muscle and legitimacy. Starmer has just got an almighty kick in the teeth here and it’s been long overdue. Right, so the UK’s largest trade union just chose a leader who was expelled from the Labour Party by the very leadership now congratulating her, a structural contradiction of modern British politics that shows just how much the Labour project has hollowed out its relationship with ordinary working people while clinging to the symbols of their power. This week, ordinary members of UNISON voted Andrea Egan into the post of general secretary with roughly six out of every ten votes cast, but only about seven per cent of eligible members chose to take part, and that combination, a landslide at low turnout, tells you everything you need to know about the condition of union democracy in this country and the fragility of Labour’s claim to speak for labour as a whole. Egan secured 58,579 votes to 39,353 for the incumbent, Christina McAnea, a roughly two-to-one margin won on the backs of a membership that feels ignored, squeezed and electorally orphaned.