The RMT union teamed up with an organisation run by UKIP donor Arron Banks to fund a Leave campaign at the EU referendum.

The RMT union teamed up with an organisation run by UKIP donor Arron Banks to fund a Leave campaign at the EU referendum.

Their collaboration went ahead despite Banks’ attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and the RMT’s long standing support for the Labour leader.

Electoral Commission records show that the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) donated £30,000 to the Trade Unionists Against the European Union campaign during the EU referendum.

The rest of the campaign’s funding was supplied by Better for the Country Ltd which donated £54,000. Better for the Country Ltd is owned by Arron Banks, who has personally donated over £178,000 to UKIP.

Banks has personally suggested that Jeremy Corbyn is a communist spy, a supporter of terrorist organisations and is worse than useless. The Leave.EU Brexit campaign which Banks owns has been even more vicious since the referendum, posting crude graphics of Labour’s leader dressed as an ISIS terrorist and taking party in an orgy with members of his Cabinet.

This stands in stark contrast to the RMT who were one of the first trade unions to support Jeremy Corbyn’s initial leadership bid, and who have donated £50,000 to him since then. The union’s general secretary Mick Cash has called Corbyn a “long-term friend and comrade”.

It raises questions over why Cash agreed to work with Banks despite his aggressive campaigns against the Labour Party and rejection of trade unions.