Did trade unions break the rules to get Ed Miliband elected?

By Tim Montgomerie

I'm grateful to the Observer for highlighting this envelope that the GMB used to send its members ballot papers for the Labour leadership election:

Labour rules forbid the inclusion of a candidate's literature being put inside an envelope containing ballot papers.

What the GMB appears to have done is send their members the ballot papers inside one envelope but that one envelope was despatched in a second envelope that included a magazine with Ed Miliband on the cover and also a letter from the GMB endorsing the union-friendly Miliband.

But there is concern at senior levels in the Labour party over whether the literature fell within the principles set out by the party.

Professor Mark Wickham-Jones of Bristol University told The Observer:

"The GMB appear to have broken the spirit of the rules guiding the conduct of the Labour party leadership election by sending out a strong recommendation for Ed Miliband together with the ballot paper for political levy payers... It may well suggest that the margin of his victory depended on votes cast in dubious circumstances. It will be particularly uncomfortable for a candidate already seen as being close to the trade unions."

Tory Chairman Sayeeda Warsi issued a warning yesterday evening. "The fact that Ed Miliband owes his position to the votes of the unions does not bode well," she said. "At the moment this looks like a great leap backwards for the Labour Party."

Ed Miliband won overwhelmingly in the union section as the graphic below records:

Unison sets out how it intends holding Labour to ransom over the coming years

By Jonathan Isaby

Last week we had the GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny threatening to withdraw funding from Labour if David Miliband is elected leader, over his younger brother, who his union has endorsed.

Today it is the turn of Unison boss Dave Prentis to set out how his union intends holding the Labour Party to ransom over the years to come.

As The Observer reports, Prentis and Unison are backing Ed Miliband in the contest, but in expectation that his elder brother will win the day, they have now effectively set out their demands for Labour under his leadership.

Prentis tells the paper:

"He is very much part of the New Labour agenda which did seek on many occasions to beat up the trade unions... part of a New Labour agenda which is very comfortable with our members going through the trauma of privatisation... We will not go back to a New Labour agenda based on privatisation, and fragmentation and globalisation that we have had over the past few years."

The report continues:

Prentis said that the unions were gearing up to regain a greater role in policymaking. He said that they would unite behind a vote allowing the Labour party conference – where they have 50% of the votes – to vote on policy rather than just make recommendations.

He also called for reform of the party's national policy forum, a body seen as toothless by the unions, to give ordinary members a greater input into policy. "We don't seek to dominate the party. We don't seek to dominate the government. But we expect to be able to play a constructive role within the party itself and stand up for our values, which are the same as the Labour party's values.

Whilst Prentis reportedly rejects suggestions that he might threaten to withdraw funding from Labour if his demands are not met, at a time when the Labour Party is bereft of cash, it will surely find it difficult not to pay heed to its paymasters.

GMB leader in threat to withdraw funding for Labour if David Miliband is elected leader

By Jonathan Isaby

The splash on this morning's Times (£) carries the stark headline "Put our man in or we cut off funding, union warns".

The paper has been speaking to GMB General Secretary Paul Kenny - a vocal supporter of Ed Miliband, whose union has also made a contribution to the shadow energy and climate change secretary's leadership campaign.

The underlying message of what he has to say is that Labour would not be guaranteed to continue receiving the millions the union has given it if the bookies' favourite, David Miliband, is installed as leader and takes the party in a direction of which he disapproves:

“If the new leader offers us more of the same, many unions — including our own — would have to consider where we are at. Ed Balls and David Miliband represent where we’ve been. They are not without talent. I would not rubbish them. But if the direction of the party went off chasing some right-of-centre ground...”

He added his concern the shadow foreign secretary would, like Brown and Blair before him, treat the unions with condescension:

“We were smiled at like we were elderly relatives sat in the corner with a party hat on. Access was never a problem — the question was the outcomes.The fundamental difference between Ed and his brother is that when David said ‘Let’s reach out to the middle classes’ he made the same mistake as Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Labour can’t function without its grass roots.”

At the end of the day, the likes of Mr Kenny are far more hostile to the Coalition than they would be to any individual senior Labour figure such as David Miliband, so I am not entirely convinced that he's intending to go ahead with withdrawing funding for the party.

Rather, it is all about positioning in advance of negotiaitons about policy - it's not as if it would be the first time that unions have held Labour to ransom.

Arthur Scargill to be expelled from the National Union of Miners

By Paul Goodman

I know, I know: as a headline, it's roughly comparable to: "Norman Bates to be expelled from family motel".  It's not easy for people of my generation to imagine the NUM without him.

Still, according to the Press Association -

"Mr Scargill, who led the union through a bitter, year-long strike over pit closures in the 1980s, is among a number of people who have received letters saying they no longer qualify for membership. Mr Scargill, the union's former president, has told friends he intends to fight the move,

He retained an honorary position within the NUM after standing down as a full-time official and has been engaged in work for the union.

Ken Capstick, who has worked for the union for 30 years and currently edits its Miner magazine, has also been told he is being expelled.

"We have been told that the reason we are being expelled is that we don't qualify under the union's rules," Mr Capstick told the Press Association.

On second thoughts, forget the Norman Bates business.  After all, Bates was insane.  Soviet Union-supporting Scargill, on the contrary, had (and I presume still has) all his wits about him when he tried to utilise mass violence to overthrow an elected Government.

Lest we forget, have a look at this.

Prescott admits that Labour is "on the verge of bankruptcy" and dependent upon "the goodwill of the Co-op bank"

By Tim Montgomerie

Today may not have been a great day for the Conservative fundraising operation but the resignation of David Rowland before he even became Tory Treasurer is a small problem compared to Labour's financial problems.

John Prescott - who is running for the position of Labour Treasurer - has written in tomorrow's Guardian that his party is "on the verge of bankruptcy" and facing a "crisis in funding". He says that the party has debts of £20m, its membership is declining and is only remaining a going concern because of "the goodwill of the Co-op bank".

He also puts a price tag on the decision by Brown to abort the honeymoon election of autumn 2007. Estimates at the time suggested a £1m hit. Prescott puts it at £1.5m.

The new Labour leader will be hampered in two ways by the fact that Brown left his party as well as the country in bad financial shape:

• He will have to spend a disproportionate amount of his time fundraising. Hague from 1997 to 1999 in particular was not able to campaign on the scale he would have liked because of the dire state of Tory finances. He and Lord Ashcroft had to fight a battle to stop the Tories from going under. That he succeeded is one of the under-reported achievements of the Hague leadership.
• The new Labour leader will also need to lean heavily on the unions if he is to keep Labour afloat and this will restrict his policy options. The public sector unions, in particular, might decide to fund their own political campaigning if they do not see the Labour leadership defending their members' job security and perks.

> From ConHome's General Election Review: The Conservative Party enjoys a massive financial advantage over Labour and the Liberal Democrats

Tony Benn and his pals on the extreme Left seek to organise a "broad movement of active resistance" against the Government

By Jonathan Isaby

A hotch-potch of extreme Left-wingers have written for Comment is Free to express their support for a sinister-sounding "Coalition of Resistance" against what they describe as "the most savage spending cuts since the 1930s".

Tony Benn is the lead signatory, with others backing his move including Respect leader Salma Yaqoob; Green leader Caroline Lucas; trade unionists Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka and Jeremy Dear; and Left-winf London Labour MPs John Mcdonnell and Jeremy Corbyn. The name of former Ken Livingstone sidekick Lee Jasper is there, but strangely absent is that of Livingstone himself: he's obviously on his best behaviour as he seeks the official Labour nomination for the 2012 London mayoralty.

They claim:

"The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.

"Women are expected to bear 75% of the burden. The poorest will be hit six times harder than the richest. Internal Treasury documents estimate 1.3 million job losses in public and private sectors."

Worryingly, given the riots that we recently saw on the streets of Athens, they add:

"We reject this malicious vandalism and resolve to campaign for a radical alternative, with the level of determination shown by trade unionists and social movements in Greece and other European countries."

The so-called Coalition of Resistance already has its own website, which you can see here.

The TaxPayers' Alliance unmasks the 38 trade union bosses taking home more than £100,000 a year

An excellent piece of research this morning from the TaxPayers' Alliance - the Trade Union Rich List.

The TPA have identified no fewer than 38 general secretaries and chief executives of trade unions whose annual remuneration package is in excess of £100,000 and highlight in particular those from public sector unions who are threatening strikes over the Government's proposed spending cuts:

Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, is scathing about their hypocrisy:

"It is hypocritical for firebrand trade union leaders to be calling for strikes and higher taxes while they themselves live a life of well-paid luxury. It is small wonder that they aren't worried about the tax burden or the national debt when they are so well-off, but it is ordinary, over-stretched taxpayers who will suffer if they get their way. Their bluster should be ignored, and the Government should stop pouring taxpayers' money into union coffers, as they clearly have more than enough cash already."

Click here to download the full TPA dossier.

Jonathan Isaby

Bob Crow calls for civil disobedience and mass strikes in protest at the Government's "fiscal fascism"

As if evidence were needed that RMT general secretary Bob Crow remains the voice of extreme militant trade unionism, this morning's Daily Telegraph reports what he will tell his union's annual conference today.

Accusing the Government of "fiscal fascism" over the cuts it is introducing, Crow is effectively calling for civil disobedience and strike action on a masive scale: 

“This ConDem administration has thrown down the biggest challenge to the trade union movement since Margaret Thatcher took on the National Union of Mineworkers. I have no hesitation in saying that it will take general and coordinated strike action across the public and private sectors to stop their savage assault on jobs, living standards and public services.

“The Trade Unions must form alliances with community groups, campaigns and pensioners organisations in the biggest show of united resistance since the success of the anti-poll tax movement. Waving banners and placards will not be enough – it will take direct action to stop the Cameron and Clegg cuts machine.

“We have a right wing Tory Government propped up by a Liberal Party that has binned every commitment that it gave to voters in the run up to the election in order to grab power. That’s why we say this administration has no mandate for its cuts and that’s why we argue that bulldozing through their austerity measures amounts to fiscal fascism.

“RMT says don’t fear them, fight them. Our Trade Union has a slogan, ‘never on our knees,’ and from Aberdeen we want those words to ring out on the millionaires row of Clegg and Cameron. They started this fight with the working class and we are up for it.”

Jonathan Isaby

Labour's reliance on the trade unions for cash is starker than ever

Today has seen the publication of the donations to political parties for the first quarter of this year, and they show Labour being even more reliant than ever on the unions for cash:

• Between Q4 2009 and Q1 2010 (there was a 10% drop in the number of individual donors to Labour (88 down to 79);
• Trade unions gave £2.9 million to Labour in Q1 2010 out of a total of £4.1 million - equivalent to 71% of the total;
• Unite (political director: Charlie Whelan) gave a total of £1.5 million to Labour in Q1 2010, representing 38% of all donations received by Labour; that represented 53% of all union donations, which totalled £2.9 million;
• 61% of all donations to Labour since 2001 have now come from trade unions - £89.4 million out of £147.4 million.

Jonathan Isaby

Today it's payback time for Labour's paymasters in the CWU over Royal Mail's future

Remember how last year the Communication Workers Union threatened to withdraw its £1 million contribution to Labour unless the Government dropped plans to part-privatise the Royal Mail?

Lo and behold, as the BBC's Robert Peston has spotted, the measure has been dropped from Labour's manifesto, as page six of chapter two states:

"The Royal Mail and is staff are taking welcome and needed steps to modernise work practices. For the future, continuing modernisation and investment will be needed by the Royal Mail in the public sector."

How much else of the manifesto has been negotiated by the unions in return for keeping the party afloat?

Jonathan Isaby