Len the loser

It is not only Russian oligarchs and multinational corporations who run to the ‘capitalist courts’ — as we used to call them on the left. Have an argument with Len McCluskey and you find that the leader of Unite is prepared to spend his money, or more likely his members’ hard-earned dues, on hiring the libel lawyers of Carter-Ruck at £550 an hour (plus expenses, of course).

Carter-Ruck can charge a little more than the minimum wage because its many wealthy clients know that its lawyers will push as hard as they possibly can to defend clients’ interests, as our spat with McCluskey showed.

Last week I published a brisk blogpost on The Spectator’s site in which I said that the Labour party should recognise that Unite was its enemy. The cliché that Labour and the unions were in a marriage was apt, I said: they fight all the time and don’t have sex. But few marriages survive adultery — and McCluskey’s eyes were always wandering.

Only last year he threatened to sever Unite’s links with Labour if the party’s policies did not comply with his wishes. He would put his union’s money behind a new workers’ party to the left of Labour instead. Perhaps he could take Unite-sponsored MPs with him, I speculated. After all, Unite has attempted at least once to use its influence to place its men and women in parliament; in Falkirk, a Labour party investigation said there was ‘no doubt’ that Unite had recruited party members in an effort to ‘manipulate’ the selection of a parliamentary candidate.

Meanwhile, in Tower Hamlets in the East End of London last month, McCluskey’s sidekick Andrew Murray announced, after an election court had disbarred the mayor Lutfur Rahman for electoral fraud, that Unite was ‘proud’ to support Rahman.