Ed Miliband fudges the union link, zero hours contracts and free schools

By Harry Phibbs
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It is difficult to say how anyone could regard the Labour leader Ed Miliband's speech to the TUC this morning as a triumph. How wasn't cheered enough - the reception was lacklustre. So he could not claim to be inspiring and motivated his core supporter.

But now was he booed enough either. This wasn't a Kinnock moment - of the type when his predecessor confronted the Militant Tendency.

The only really rousing point came when a questioner said he was confusing.

I got under way with a reference to the Conservative Prime Minister Lord Derby legalising the trade unions. He was the 14th Earl of Derby said Mr Miliband pointedly. (When you think about the Labour leader is the 14th Mr Miliband.) But Lord Derby name was Edward. Would he be called "Red Ed" today for saying trade unions should be legal. Er, no.

Miliband's defeat in the trade union battle threatens Labour's entire election strategy

By Mark Wallace
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Ed Miliband's increasingly dysfunctional relationship with the unions has many facets: the potential perverting of democracy, the gloomy prospects for Labour's finances, the insights into Miliband's weak character and weaker authority, the list goes on.

Left wing optimists would argue that in the long run it makes little difference to the electorate. "It's a Westminster bubble story", Owen Jones mutters to himself as he tries to sleep. 

That may be true in part. The story has many twists and turns, claims and counter-claims, and most people have more important things to do than follow it closely. However, Falkirk worried Miliband enough to try to tackle it, so even Labour think the issue has some cut through. By the same token, his failure in attempting to deal with the problem will reach some of the electorate and cause damage.

Whether people follow the detail or not, though, the symptoms of the row will reach everyone.

A clear, direct strategy is absolutely essential in any communications, but particularly in politics. Blair's New Labour strategy was written on one sparse page - from its overriding message to the tactical messages that flowed from it. Election winners tend to be able to sum up what they are about in one sentence - and that clarity means everyone else, friend or foe, can do so, too.

A clear strategy makes a campaign focused, concise and free of stumbling blocks.

The union row, and his failure to emerge from it victorious, means Miliband now cannot create and pursue such a strategy (even if he was capable of doing so in the first place).

He knows that for a strategy to be created in simplicity and to remain so when it is implemented, there must be a clear chain of command with one ultimate authority. His need to keep the union leaders happy, and the ever-present threat of them intervening publicly, makes such organisation impossible.

He knows that the messages used must be in keeping with the strategy and targeted at the right audiences. But his internal political and financial conflictsforce him to adopt messages that the public dislike, such as on welfare reform.

He knows that the troops implementing a strategy on the ground must be loyal to its architects and its aims. But Unite and others now boast of "their" MPs, and have reportedly tried to seize ever more influence within a number of Constituency Labour Parties.

There is an old military maxim: order plus counter-order equals disorder. Thanks to his failure to deal with Labour's trade union problem, Ed Miliband is about to demonstrate how true that saying is.

In July, Miliband said Falkirk was the dying "old politics". Now, he gives it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation

By Paul Goodman
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The deal seems to be that Karie Murphy is reinstated as a Labour member (which pleases Len McCluskey), that she withdraws from the contest for the Party's Parliamentary candidacy in Falkirk (which pleases Ed Miliband) and that Labour says that there is no proof of wrongdoing either by them or Unite - which will delight McClusky and embarrass Miliband, who denounced Unite's behaviour in Falkirk as "a politics that was closed. A politics of the machine. A politics that is rightly hated. What we saw in Falkirk" - the Labour leader concluded, as recently as July - "is part of the death-throes of the old politics".

To which the only proper response can be that the old politics seems to be alive and well this morning.  Michael Crick's tweet at the top of this piece reports that witnesses to wrongdoing were allegedly persuaded to withdraw evidence under pressure: Miliband will be well aware of these claims.  He evidently decided that, with the TUC Conference looming next week, it was better for him to suffer a final embarrassment over Falkirk yesterday than remain exposed to it during the coming week. And as Dan Hodges points out, "the Falkirk constituency stays in special measures, McCluskey’s favoured candidate will not be contesting the seat".  So although Miliband is embarrassed by the deal, he isn't humiliated.

The problem for the Labour leader is that voters, in so far as they are following the Falkirk story at all, won't grasp the niceties: all they'll see is that Miliband said something was badly wrong in Falkirk...and that Labour has now told the world to move on - as far as Falkirk is concerned - and that there's nothing to see.  The whole sorry business doesn't exactly project an image of strength, exactly the quality Miliband will need to see his proposed union funding reform plans through; exactly the quality which, on immigration and welfare and Leveson and Syria, he hasn't convinced voters that he possesses.

GMB cuts its Labour affiliaton fees by 87% - and the balance of power shifts even further to Unite

By Mark Wallace
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It has now been two months since Ed Miliband made his big speech intended to nip in the bud the crisis over Labour's trade union funding.

We still don't have any answers to the many questions about how his reforms will work in detail - most notably whether he will reject money from unions who refuse to implement an opt-in and how Labour's constitution will be rewritten. 

But we can already see some of the fallout of his inept response to teh scandal.

In high dudgeon, the GMB have cut the affiliation fee paid to Labour from £1.2m to £150,000. Whereas the union previously automatically affiliated 420,000 people to Labour, it now estimates that those who would actually choose to affiliate only number 50,000.

Tower Hamlets council give £64,000 and a recruiting base to Unite

By Mark Wallace
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Campaigning journalist Ted Jeory, who keep a close eye on politics in east London, has an interesting scoop. 

Having clocked that Len McCluskey of Unite and Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman had suddenly become best buddies earlier in the year, Ted did some digging through the council's papers. 

Lo and behold, Tower Hamlets have given £64,000 of taxpayers' money to a Unite community centre (the union is putting in £140,000 and Barclays is contributing £60,000).

The stated aim of the centre is to help people find work or gain new skills. However, it has another purpose:

"The Unite Community Centre is also a Unite recruiting office. The staff are all very friendly, but also very enthusiastic about their employer. The office is stuffed full of leaflets on the negative effects of Coalition cuts and how to join and fight these. One man who’s been in there said he was encouraged to join during a discussion on how the centre could help him."

So this isn't just the commissioning of public services from an outside body, it's a taxpayer-funded platform for political campaigning, too. It's a classic entryist tactic - go in with an apparently respectable mission, then use your newfound status (and cash) to pursue political ends.

Gove praises union members but attacks union leaders

By Harry Phibbs
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Once again the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, has ventured far wider than his portfolio to challenge the direction of the Labour Party. The latest offering from Mr Gove was delivered this morning at CCHQ and concerned the trade unions in general and their relationship with the Labour Party in particular.

This is a strong Conservative theme - a recent YouGov poll for Prospect magazine found that 41 per cent agreed that Ed Miliband "is in the pocket of the trade union leaders." 34 per cent disagreed. However, Mr Gove sensibly differentiated between trade union leaders and trade unionists.

This was a distinction that Margaret Thatcher was invariably careful to remember. She would give speeches at conferences of the Conservative Trade Unionists. Her union reforms - on the closed shop, ballots, picketing - were about reducing the power of union leaders to bully union members. Norman Tebbit would frequently remind people how he had been a BALPA shop steward when he was a pilot.

Mr Gove also offered a "back story" to balance his criticisms:

Chuka Umunna, "the unions' representative in Parliament", hits choppy waters

By Mark Wallace
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I doubt today's Sun on Sunday was popular at Chuka Umunna's breakfast table. A leaked memo written by former Unite political director boasts of the influence the union has over Labour's business, regulation and wages policies.

By coincidence, the ultra-smooth Shadow Business Secretary and his Constituency Labour Party have received a whopping £47,000 from various unions over the last 5 years.

This is yet another addition to Chuka's growing reputation for being two-faced. He's cosying up to Tony Blair in public, wooing Labour centrists, while simultaneously taking a fortune from the unions and pushing Unite policy in Parliament. When someone claims to be a Blairite and a McCluskeyite at the same time, suspicions start to grow that they might not have any principles at all.

He reportedly secured the Streatham nomination by convincing a number of different cliques that he was their guy - but I suspect that trying to be all things to all men won't wash forever, and certainly not at a national level.

The Sun's leader column delivers a direct warning - something they only normally do if they intend to pursue an issue further:

"If he wants to live up to his reputation then he needs to stop acting as the unions’ representative in Parliament and start behaving as a man focused on helping business prosper."

It seems the glitter is starting to wear off "Britain's answer to Barack Obama". Will he change his ways, or stick to his tried and tested tricks?

Unite officials, retreads and washed-up Brownites picked in Labour's troubled MEP selections

By Mark Wallace
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Labour have now published the results of their selection process for next year's European elections (the full regional lineups are available on LabourList). It makes for interesting reading.

As Tim Shipman of the Daily Mail has spotted, "Unite candidates or officials have the top spot in every region in Labour's MEP lists apart from East Midlands, where they are 2nd".

Quelle surprise! The union embroiled in a scandal over their plans to unduly influence candidate selections has coincidentally seen its people top the ballot almost everywhere.

Not that that's the only problem with the candidates selected.

Andrew Gimson: The fighting speech Miliband should have made when Cameron denounced McCluskey

By Andrew Gimson
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Ed Miliband’s attitude to the trade unions is hopelessly confused. He has not defined himself, and proved to Middle England how sound he is, by picking a fight with them in the manner of a latter-day Tony Blair. The present Labour leader owes too much to the unions for such a pose to carry conviction.

But Mr Miliband also shrinks from showing pride in Labour’s links with the unions. He treats them as if they are embarrassing relations from an earlier generation. He knows he owes them a lot, but takes care not be seen very often with them in public, and hates it when unkind people point out that he still relies on them for financial support.

In his recent speech on union funding, Mr Miliband attempted to finesse these difficulties. His plan is to distance himself from the unions, while becoming closer to union members: “Men and women in trade unions should be able to make a more active, individual choice on whether they become part of our party.”

According to Mr Miliband, this “could grow our membership from 200,000 to a far higher number”. It is a pleasant dream, but unless it actually happens it will remain no more than a dream. As so often, by trying to find a subtle way through a problem, Mr Miliband has ended up sounding weak, indecisive and desperate to be all things to all men.

To Tory eyes, this is curious. The country is no longer wracked by strikes. The unions have lost their legal immunities, and are no longer strong enough to bring the country to a halt. In 1979 they had 13 million members and now they have 6.5 million.

Small wonder Labour are enthusiastic tax-avoiders - the party is in dire financial straits

By Mark Wallace
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Today's Times contains an awkward revelation for Ed Miliband - despite turning a surplus last year, Labour managed to organise its tax affairs so efficiently that the party paid no corporation tax whatsoever.

Of course, there's no suggestion they did anything illegal, but given Miliband's regular drum-beating about the immorality of tax avoidance it is more than ironic to see his party's accountants engaged in such nifty footwork. Had they paid tax on the headline surplus, their bill would have been over half a million pounds.

But it's small wonder they are looking after the pennies so carefully all of a sudden.

The battle with Unite, and Miliband's proposed reforms to the union relationship, are set to reduce their income by several million quid a year; the Evening Standard reports that the party still owes £7 million dating back to the "loans for lordships" scandal in 2006; and there is a growing row about the millions of pounds worth of extraordinarily cheap credit Labour obtained from the crisis-stricken Co-Op Bank.

The party's money problems are so bad that not even Ed Miliband's enthusiastic tax efficiency can dent them. It would be embarrassing if Labour were to go bust - but at least it would be a reminder of how little they can be trusted with money.