WORKERS must “set the tone for ourselves” after last week’s Gorton and Denton by-election, RMT general secretary Eddie Dempsey has said.

He told a Durham Miners Gala fundraising event the Redhills hall in Durham on Friday that the Greens beating Reform into second place in the former Labour safe seat showed “a rejection of this clique at the top of the Labour Party” and that “the future of our political landscape … is fragmented.

“We’ve got to set the tone for ourselves or we will be forced to sing to the tune of others,” Mr Dempsey said.

He predicted Labour would claim to “speak for us because of the union link, the Greens will claim to speak to us and for young workers in the cities and Reform will claim to speak for the traditional working class in the towns.

“This is a moment where our movement will either find a new relevance … or we’ll find ourselves made irrelevant by the times,” the RMT leader warned.