Unions ‘given 90% of vote for Labour leader’

ED Miliband’s plan to reform Labour’s relationship with the unions will strengthen their influence within the party, it emerged yesterday. Union leader Paul Kenny has boasted that Mr Miliband’s flagship changes, which are due to be unveiled this weekend, will eliminate MPs’ ‘golden share’ of the vote in contests to elect the party leader.

Rather than controlling around a third of the vote as at present, Mr Miliband’s expected proposals would mean union members would account for between 50 and 90 per cent of the votes in future elections.

If the new rules had been in place for the 2010 leadership contest, they could have seen him beat his brother David by a landslide rather than only sneaking victory in the final round.

Next week Labour’s ruling body apparently plans to back proposals for future elections to be held using a one-member, one-vote system.

The electoral college – in which MPs, union members who pay a ‘political levy’ to Labour and party members each get a third of the vote – is expected to be abolished under the reforms.

The vote is apparently going to be offered to all party members and those existing union political levy payers who choose to become associate members at a cost of £3 a year.

MPs will still have a role in selecting the candidates for the contest, but after that their votes will only carry the same weight as that of a union or a party member.

Dan Hodges, a former Labour party activist and GMB trade unionist, explained that the reforms could mean union members would control as much as 90 per cent of the votes in future leadership contests.

He added: ‘Ed Miliband isn’t loosening the unions’ control of his party by doing away with the so- called union bloc vote.

‘He’s actually strengthening it, by doing away with his MPs’ bloc vote.’

And Mr Kenny, general secretary of the GMB union welcomed the reforms, expected to be set out in detail by former Labour Party official Lord Collins this weekend.

‘This is a change to what’s called the electoral college that would eliminate the vastly weighted preference that MPs have,’ he said. ‘I think from a trade union point of view we’d actually welcome that.

‘The MPs are making a fuss about this because they’re going to lose this golden share of the vote. But we are not prepared to accept a watering down of our role in the party.’

However former science minister and Labour party donor Lord Sainsbury said: ‘The danger for the Labour Party at the moment is that if there’s not a clear political economy, it would be very easy for the Conservatives to say that this is a return to the past.’