Union’s £400k for Red Len’s flat

THE giant union Unite has stumped up more than £400,000 towards the cost of a plush London flat for its militant leader Len McCluskey, it emerged last night.

Land Registry documents reveal it put up 60 per cent of the cost of a £700,000 property he bought in February.

The union, which represents hundreds of thousands of workers on low wages, denied the money was a ‘loan’ and said it would get the sum back when Mr McCluskey’s term of office comes to an end and the flat is sold.

At the age of 66, Mr McCluskey is likely to have struggled to raise a conventional mortgage. But the deal is likely to raise eyebrows. Earlier this year it emerged that he co-ordinated efforts to prop up Jeremy Corbyn from a hotel in Las Vegas while on ‘union business’.

The £417,300 contribution towards the cost of the flat is equal to the annual union fees of almost 2,500 Unite members. A union source said the revelations would raise ‘much disquiet’. Mr McCluskey’s two-bedroom flat is in a modern block near the Shard with views to the London Eye. Unite said the purchase was ‘a shared equity arrangement’ designed to assist senior officials working in the capital.

Howard Beckett, head of legal services at Unite, told The Guardian the agreement was ‘extraordinarily commonplace’, adding: ‘Frankly, if Parliament adopted a similar approach to MPs we would all have avoided the expenses scandal.’ The union said the deal was struck with ‘full authority’ of its executive council and Mr McCluskey ‘neither asked for nor received any loan from the union’.