Revealed: The unions’ sinister hold on Corbyn
They bankroll majority of the party’s candidates in key battleground seats
Labour’S election hopes are pinned on the trade unions, figures show today.
The vast majority of the party’s candidates in winnable seats are sponsored by union paymasters.
Labour is now even more dependent on union funds than it was under Ed Miliband at the last election.
In the 13 Labour-held seats where MPs have stood down, 12 of the vacancies have been filled by candidates who are members of a union or are partially funded by one.
They include Dan Carden, a key aide to hard-Left unite leader Len McCluskey, in ultra-safe Liverpool Walton. In the 50 marginal seats Labour needs to win, 41 candidates have union links. Nineteen of them are connected to unite, Jeremy Corbyn’s main source of funding.
The Tories, who carried out the research, said it showed the stranglehold that Mr McCluskey has over Labour. If he becomes prime minister, Mr Corbyn has pledged to scrap anti- strike laws by repealing the Conservatives’ Trade union bill.
The Conservatives point out that Labour’s election campaign is being bankrolled by the unions – since april 18 they have given the Labour Party £5million.
The links mean that the union barons will strengthen their grip over Labour whether or not Mr Corbyn remains leader after the election. Tory party chairman Sir Patrick McLoughlin said: ‘Jeremy Corbyn’s union paymasters put him in charge of the Labour Party and these figures show they would put him in charge of the country too.
‘Theresa May only needs to lose six seats for the Conservatives to lose their majority – leading to Jeremy Corbyn in Downing Street propped up by the SNP and Lib Dems in a coalition of chaos, bankrolled by militant union barons like Len McCluskey.
‘The price for this support would be to drag britain back to the 1970s by ripping up anti-strike laws, piling misery on ordinary working families and crashing our economy.’
The unions have bankrolled Labour to the tune of £17.8million since Mr Corbyn was installed as leader. Since the start of the election campaign, Labour has taken £5.2million from the unions – two thirds of its total donations.
under Mr Miliband in 2014 Labour relied on the unions for 54 per cent of its funds – but this increased to 67 per cent in 2016 under Mr Corbyn.
The new leadership is vociferously in favour of new legislation to please trade unions.
John McDonnell, the Shadow Chancellor, has vowed Labour would rip up union laws enacted since 1979 – paving the way for a new ‘right to strike’ in law. It wants to allow the return of secondary picketing – ‘flying pickets’ – where groups of strikers move from location to location, disrupting workplaces.
Flying pickets were used by striking miners to target power stations and coal depots, bringing the economy close to a standstill.
The Conservative analysis concentrated on the 13 candidates who have been parachuted in to replace Labour MPs who are stepping down.
The unite union has close links to three candidates other than Mr Carden.
Tracy Harvey, candidate in Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, and Jo Platt in Leigh are members. and Laura Pidcock, who is standing in North West Durham, is a unite activist.
birmingham Edgbaston’s Preet Gill is a member of another large union, unison; while Mike Hill in Hartlepool is a unison regional organiser.
Liz Twist in blaydon is funded by unison and Eleanor Smith in Wolverhampton South West is a former unison president.
Two Labour candidates are linked to the GMb. Stephanie Peacock in barnsley East is an employee of the union, while Ellie reeves in Lewisham West and Penge is the GMb-favoured candidate.
UNION’S SINISTER HOLD OVER MILIBAND
The Mail, April 21, 2015