Sir Keir Starmer is between a rock and hard left place - Bernard Ingham

This should be of concern to every citizen. Without a credible alternative government in Opposition governments get lackadaisical. I can personally testify to this.

They called the years immediately following Margaret Thatcher’s first and overwhelming landslide in 1983 the ‘Banana Skin Years’.

If there was one lying around you could be sure they would step on it such was their lethargy after the Falklands campaign and the weakness of Michael Foot’s Opposition continuing as Neil Kinnock’s got his feet under the table.Don’t forget, Peter Mandelson christened their 1983 manifesto “The longest suicide note in history”.

Imperfect though Labour’s 13 years in office, substantially under Tony Blair, were from 1997, they should at least teach Labour one fundamental lesson.

There is no future in Britain for a left wing party. Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan and Blair were essentially politically moderate men and so, in fact, was Gordon Brown who eventually succeeded Blair.

It is here, perhaps, that we can point the finger at Labour’s fundamental problem: the trade unions. Having founded the Labour Party as their political arm, they now seem dedicated to making it ever more unelectable.

They harried Wilson and eventually brought Jim Callaghan crashing to earth with the ‘Winter of Discontent’ of 1978-79. Blair and Brown wisely decided not to undo Mrs Thatcher’s legislation which had brought a relative peace to British industrial relations after the 25,000 recorded strikes, costing 128m working days lost, in the 1970s.

The Thatcher reforms also had the effect of slashing union membership.

It is now roughly half the 13m who caused such havoc in the 1970s and concentrated in the public services to test the political resolve to hold the line for the taxpayer.

And what do we see now? With Labour torn between the hard left and moderation, the unions are mounting a summer assault on the Tory Government – and, of course, the long-suffering public.

They may argue that the worse they make it for Ms Truss the more likely it is that the electorate will turn its backs on the Tories in two years’ time. But will they?

Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer, knows they are doing his cause no good. In fact, they are exposing his weakness all too clearly. First, he is for Labour front-benchers joining strike pickets, then he isn’t. He sacks one for doing so but not others.

To borrow a word from Mrs Thatcher’s dictionary, he is ‘frit’. And no wonder. The unions substantially fund his party. He is in a cleft stick. How can you build an election-winning party if your paymasters are determined to make life difficult for voters going about their daily business?

If anything, things are getting worse. It is not just transport workers causing disruption these days.

Why even barristers go on strike and doctors seem to be in a permanent state of threat, apart from refusing to see patients face to face.

We may, of course, be up against an alarming surge in inflation but that has predominantly been caused by a pandemic and now Vladimir Putin’s ruthless war on Ukraine.

In any case, the way to minimise it is for unions not to go out on strike for more money. That will merely twist the inflationary spiral.

But they have never exercised power with responsibility. Their leaders, often from the hard Corbynite left, are in the business of class war, their members mere cannon fodder.

In short, they are in the business of politics with the aim of installing a hard left totalitarian government which would cement their position in the ruling elite. Sir Keir is in an impossible position unless he ditches the unions and tries to establish a moderate party with its own source of finance.

I doubt whether he is made of such stern stuff. But sooner or later – and preferably sooner – the Labour Party is going to have to confront the issue. It has been harried by the unions – its progenitors - for years and so long as the two are in bed together its road to power is likely to be blocked.

I have reached the conclusion that a schism is inevitable if we are to have a potent Opposition that is so essential to the working of our democracy. Otherwise, God help us.