LABOUR’S left has united to demand a “major reset,” demanding the government take a different path to deliver for working people.

The moves comes as the leader of Unite, one of the party’s largest affiliates, said an early move to ditch Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer looked inevitable.

General secretary Sharon Graham warned that the May elections for local authorities in England and the Scottish and Welsh parliaments would be the trigger for a challenge — and added that her union may end up disaffiliating from the party.

“I think after the May elections there will be a move to change leader because I think Labour are going to pretty much be decimated in those elections,” she said.

“I don’t think that they understand themselves how bad that will be — what anger is out there about the fact that they haven’t backed workers, the fact they have to be dragged kicking and screaming into doing things that we would expect a Labour government to do — for example, have a wealth tax.

“It’s not radical. It’s pretty obvious that that’s the sort of thing that we need to be looking at when the gap between the rich and the poor is as wide as it is,” she told Sky News.

The Unite leader did not commit to backing former deputy premier Angela Rayner, who has been setting out her stall ever more openly, in any leadership election, saying she needed to see more policy details.

The union has recently slashed its affiliation to Labour by 40 per cent, or nearly £600,000 a year. And she warned it could go further and quit Labour entirely: “If that decision was being taken today and the rules conference was being called today, I would bet my mortgage that that decision would be to disaffiliate, because I know how angry people are up and down the country. I know how angry my own members are.”

Her warnings echo the message of the Labour Reset statement, launched today. Its significance lies in it bringing together both Momentum, the socialist campaign body established under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and Mainstream, a “soft left” grouping set up more recently and closely associated with Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham — a left unity not seen for many years.

Its statement, also signed by 19 Labour MPs as well as a number of councillors, trade unionists and activists, is blunt about the party’s crisis.

“We stand against the insular, centralising approach of the current leadership that refuses to draw on the energy, talent and ideas of our whole movement, the continued underfunding of public services and local government, and the pandering to the talking points of the far right,” it reads.

“Labour can only survive — and actually deliver for people and communities — if we choose a different path: fair taxation of the wealthiest, real investment in public services, taking essential services like energy and water into democratic ownership, and promoting peace and internationalism abroad.

“Labour must be bolder, braver and broader than ever before to rise to the immense challenges of the current moment.”

The statement, which endorses a joint slate of six candidates for the party’s ruling national executive committee, follows Ms Rayner’s intervention along similar lines earlier this week.

It also calls for a radical democratic renewal of the party itself, including “restoring genuinely open parliamentary and other selections,” ending the suspension of dissenting MPs and abandoning “top-down control.”

MPs backing the initiative include John McDonnell, Clive Lewis, Ian Byrne, Jon Trickett, Brian Leishman, Richard Burgon, Alex Sobel, Neil Duncan-Jordan, Steve Witherden, Paula Barker and Rebecca Long Bailey.

The candidates supported for the executive’s constituency section are sitting members Cat Arnold, Gemma Bolton and Yasmine Dar, plus Minesh Parekh, Kerry Postelwhite and Jovan Owusu-Nepaul.

Mr Owusu-Nepaul was Labour’s candidate against Nigel Farage in Clacton in the 2024 general election. He was ordered by party bosses to stop campaigning after attracting media attention, to the dismay of local activists who felt the Reform leader was being given a free run by the Starmer leadership.