Red Len blames MI5 ‘He threatened to phone my dad’

UNION firebrand Len McCluskey has suggested the bullying of Labour MPs has been orchestrated by MI5.

The hard-Left boss claimed the abuse was devised by spies wanting to discredit Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr McCluskey, whose Unite union is the largest single donor to the Labour Party, made the allegations in The Guardian. Asked if he believed the online abuse was posted by people posing as supporters of the leader, he said: ‘Of course, of course. Do people believe for one second that the security forces are not involved in dark practices?’

He added: ‘Anybody who thinks that that isn’t happening doesn’t live in the same world that I live in.’

Former Labour Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said the remarks were ‘a downright insult to the dedicated staff of MI5 who are working day and night to protect us from terrorism’.

JEREMY Corbyn was yesterday forced to reject claims he is a bully after he allegedly threatened to call a Labour MP’s father to curb his criticism.

The Labour leader said that he would contact Connor McGinn’s father – a former Sinn Fein councillor – to apply pressure on his son to stop him speaking out, it is claimed.

Mr McGinn, a Labour whip, accused Mr Corbyn of hypocrisy over his actions after he previously said he stood for a ‘kinder, gentler politics’. ‘Jeremy does not know my father, so I can only presume that because of the much-publicised fact that my father was a Sinn Fein councillor, Jeremy felt that they would share a political affinity and was proposing to use that to ask my father to apply pressure on me,’ he said.

Mr Corbyn did not go ahead with the call, which Mr McGinn said would ‘not have been well received’.

The Labour leader’s office denied the claims. Mr Corbyn told Sky News: ‘I wish some of my colleagues would concentrate on political issues. I regret the language that’s been used, by all of them.

‘I don’t do any abuse, I don’t do any bullying, I don’t allow it to be done anywhere to do with any of my campaign teams and I’m very surprised and very disappointed they should say that because politics has to be about bringing people in.’

But Mr McGinn said he and other Labour MPs had been subjected to a ‘torrent of abuse and threats’ from supporters of Mr Corbyn. He claimed one group had threatened to disrupt his surgeries.