Labour party

Today’s broadcast from Len McCluskey Land was always going to be fun. For those of us who only lived through the tail end of the 1980s, the Unite General Secretary’s speech was a useful glimpse of that decade and the one before. It was also peppered with some great characters: a chap who Len called Paul Dackery who, when not editing a national newspaper that made a rather embarrassing editorial judgement 80 years ago, apparently likes to go around licking people’s boots. McCluskey addressed Dacre and his colleagues at the Mail, saying ‘we know you like to kick the poor while licking the boots of the rich’. Apart from anything

Alan Johnson’s interview with Total Politics highlights one of Ed Miliband’s two big problems for 2015. One is the influence of trade unions over policy, or at least the perceived influence. The second, which Johnson expounds on, is whether it is too much to ask voters to trust Labour again when its top team contains so many familiar faces from the last government. Johnson tells Sam Macrory: ‘Everything is focused on what the chancellor is doing, not what the shadow chancellor is doing, and it’s a tough call. He’s also got to turn round this defeat, where for a long time the myth was created that it was because we

Ed Miliband was clear yesterday when he announced that he will run a special party conference next spring to vote through his reforms to Labour’s relationship with the unions that there would be a ‘cost’ to the party. Now we have the first indications of how great that cost might be. Lord Ashcroft has released one of his inimitable polls, this time of Unite union members. It finds that only 30 per cent of members would choose to opt in to Unite’s political fund, while 53 per cent said they would not and 17 per cent had not decided. There wasn’t much support for the current opt-out system, either, with

As a rule, public bill committees aren’t really the kind of thing even the most insular Westminster bubble inhabitant buys popcorn to watch. But last night, James Wharton’s private member’s bill found itself the subject of midnight drama in the committee room. Labour MPs decided to filibuster on a series of troublemaking amendments, with the whips calling a late night cooling down break in an attempt to move the proceedings on. Even though Wharton and Tory colleagues on the bill committee may be rather dozy this afternoon, the late night drama, eventually resolved at 12.30, does allow them to make a political point out of what is normally a very

One of the striking things about politics at the moment is how the Tories are behaving like an opposition, campaigning against Labour with even more intensity than they managed in 2009. The Tories intend to use the Keogh report, out tomorrow, to — in the words of one Number 10 insider — give Labour ‘both barrels’ over the NHS. As one Tory minister puts it, ‘Labour’s argument about Mid-Staffs is that it is one isolated, bad case. Keogh disproves that.’ As part of this, the Tories are going after Andy Burnham. The Tory leadership is convinced that Ed Miliband will move Burnham in the reshuffle, there’s a reason why people

One of David Cameron’s better lines at Prime Minister’s Questions was that the trade unions ‘buy the candidates, they buy the policies and they buy the leader’. In his final response to Ed Miliband, he said: ‘What is Labour’s policy on Royal Mail? It is determined by the Communication Workers Union. What is its policy on health? It is determined by Unison. What is its policy on party funding? It is determined by Unite.’ To underline that point, Jeremy Hunt has sent a letter to Andy Burnham this afternoon asking for ‘clarification about union influence over Labour health policy’. The letter, which you can read in full here, says Burnham

Tony Blair has welcomed Ed Miliband’s “big speech” on reforming Labour’s relationship with its Trade Union backers. And so has Len McCluskey, chief potentate at Unite, the Union whose allegedly nefarious activities in Falkirk have prodded Miliband towards reform. Blair expects Miliband’s proposals to change everything; McCluskey, presumably, is confident any changes will prove largely cosmetic. They can’t both be right. But, actually, it is a little unfair to put “big speech” in inverted commas. This was, or at least has the potential to be, a transforming moment for the Labour party. Granted, no-one is quite sure how this will happen  – and the detail matters – but everyone agrees

While the Tories bask in the glory of Abu Qatada’s deportation, the progress of James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill, and the general good atmosphere in the party, Labour is trying to work out what the best response to its terrible week is, and how to get to a situation where it is on top of the story, rather than jogging after it. The Independent on Sunday quotes one senior figure today as saying that Ed Miliband only has two weeks in which to resolve the Falkirk row, and his acolytes were out in force today to underline that the fightback is already under way. Michael Dugher has just appeared on

Wham! Len McCluskey and Ed Miliband have spent this afternoon hitting criticisms back and forth over the Falkirk row. Earlier, the Labour leader sent a challenge shooting over the net to the Unite boss, telling McCluskey he ‘should be facing up to his responsibilities’. Then the Labour party said it was referring the matter to the police. McCluskey slammed back on Sky News, saying Unite had ‘done nothing wrong’. He said: ‘I’m afraid the way it has been handled by the Labour party headquarters is nothing short of disgraceful.’ And he warned Ed off having a confrontation with the unions: ‘It’s depressing that Labour leaders seem to want to have