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.