Red Len’s deadly grip on Labour’s future

AS the battle for the heart and soul of the Labour party raged on yesterday, the overwhelming question was whether anyone could prevent union baron Len McCluskey forcing it even further to the Left – and into electoral oblivion for years to come.

The hardline Socialist boss of the Unite union – Labour’s chief paymaster and sponsor of more than 60 per cent of its MPs – has a visceral hatred of Blairite ‘modernisers’, who seek to reconnect the party with aspirational families following its humiliation in the general election.

And he’s doing everything in his power to drive them out.

Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy – a prominent Blairite – was the latest casualty. His resignation, deferred for a month, came at the weekend over what he described as the ‘ poisonous’ war being waged by Mr McCluskey and his supporters against the modernisers.

In a bitter statement, he warned that allowing Mr McCluskey to select the next leader – as he did the last, with such disastrous results – would be ‘the kiss of death’ for Labour and send it hurtling towards ‘Ground Zero’.

But who will stop him? Over the last parliament, Unite donated £19million to Labour – a third of its total income.

Now Mr McCluskey threatens to pull this funding unless the party selects a leadership candidate of whom he approves (probably Unite member and fellow Liverpudlian Andy Burnham) and of course who continues to pursue the suicidal borrow, tax and spend policies that sent Ed Miliband crashing to defeat.

So will Labour stand on principle, or risk being pushed to the brink of bankruptcy?

The Mail has little sympathy for the party’s plight. It’s entirely its own fault that Mr McCluskey is so powerful he can hold it to ransom. After all, it didn’t have to take his money. But what this f i asco shows most chillingly is what an utter calamity an Ed Miliband-led government would have been for Britain and what a lucky escape we’ve had.

With ‘Red Len’ and the SNP pulling the strings and spending money we don’t have, how long would it have been before the economic recovery came juddering to a halt?