A SCHOOLBOY LIVING IN CLOUD CUCKOO LAND
As another union slashes Labour’s funding, barons deliver their withering verdict on Mr Miliband...
BRITAIN’S union leaders branded Ed Miliband a ‘schoolboy’ yesterday – and warned the Labour leader he was ‘ living in cloud cuckoo land’ if he thought his party reforms would succeed.
Dave Prentis, general- secretary of Unison, said Britain’s biggest public sector union would cut its annual funding to Labour by £210,000 after the number of members saying they wanted their fees to go to the party plummeted. He also claimed Mr Miliband’s reforms would lead to a landslide defeat in the next election.
Mr Prentis said Unison would simply ignore the Labour leader’s proposed reforms to the historic links between the unions and the party, whatever the conclusion of a special conference to be held on the issue in the spring.
‘If the powers that be both in the Labour party and the trade union movement believe that having squabbles and a special conference is going to get our members to vote Labour, they are living in cloud cuckoo land,’ he said.
Mr Miliband will issue a defiant pledge to press ahead with his reforms when he addresses the TUC tomorrow. They include ending the system under which millions of union members automatically pay affiliation fees to Labour even if they do not support the party. Under Mr Miliband’s changes, they would have to ‘opt in’ before their money could be handed over. Many Labour figures are warning the move could cripple Labour financially. GMB general secretary Paul Kenny fired an angry broadside at Mr Miliband’s ‘opt in’ proposals, saying they appeared to have been ‘dusted down from some drawer of a schoolboy project’.
Mr Kenny said it was ‘inevitable’ union donations to Labour – worth £9 million a year – would ‘plummet’ if Mr Miliband presses ahead with reforms designed to weaken the party’s link with the unions.
Mr Prentis also said Mr Miliband was creating divisions which could see Labour go down to the kind of landslide defeat suffered by its sister party in Australia at the weekend. The move by Unison comes days after the GMB cut its funding to the party by more than £1million a year.
As the Trades Union Congress got under way in Bournemouth yesterday, the giant Unite union also appeared to suggest it could follow suit unless Mr Miliband agrees to drag Labour further to the Left, saying he had failed to
‘Dangerous
moment’
‘close the deal’ with traditional supporters. General-secretary Len McCluskey’s demands include a 75 per cent top tax rate, the renationalisation of swathes of industry and the reversal of Margaret Thatcher’s union reforms.
He said: ‘Ed Miliband’s challenge now is to genuinely demonstrate to ordinary working people, including trade unionists that he is on our side.’ Mr McCluskey said Unite had been ‘vindicated’ by Mr Miliband’s humiliating climbdown over allegations that the union tried to fix the outcome of a Labour selection meeting in the safe seat of Falkirk.
Mr Miliband infuriated Unite by calling in police to investigate claims the union had signed up local activists as party members without their knowledge to stuff the constituency with union supporters.
On Friday night, Labour stated there was no evidence of wrongdoing and reinstated two Unite activists who had been suspended.
But senior Labour sources claimed key evidence had been ‘withdrawn’ and suggested people may have come under pressure from fellow Unite members to drop their claims. ‘No one should be claiming vindication,’ the source said.
In a sign of growing concern among Labour’s high command, the party’s deputy leader Harriet Harman will make a desperate plea to union barons to stick with them. At the TUC conference tonight, she is expected to say: ‘I am proud of the link between the Labour party and the trade unions. I do not want it weakened. Nor does Ed. We want to see it strengthened and deepened.
‘If we don’t have unity, there is going to be winners and losers. The winners will be the Tories and the losers will be our constituents and your members. This is a dangerous moment.’
David Blunkett warned that Mr Miliband’s speech to the TUC tomorrow marked a ‘a critical juncture in his leadership’. The former Home Secretary warned ‘the entire Labour project could be jeopardised’ if he failed to ‘recharge our economic and foreign policies’.
Labour MP Jim Sheridan said: ‘This is a big, big gamble by Ed Miliband, I think he’s doing the wrong thing and I’ve told him that. Ed Miliband and Len McCluskey will come and go but the Labour Party must remain.’