Widow Twankey takes on the perfect pantomime villain

POOR OLD MILLIBAND has had something of torrid time recently. Seen as a weak leader without an alternative to the Coalition’s austerity measures; and facing an increasing level of backstabbing from his own backbenchers, the Great Helmsman  had to do something to prevent himself becoming a total laughing stock and facing a leadership challenge.

                So over the Christmas period when the limelight no longer demanded his public presence, Ed Milliband put his thinking cap on. He had to come out fighting after the Christmas break and show the country that they were wrong in their negative assumptions about him.                 First of all, he needed to persuade the electorate that he could ‘do tough’. Secondly, he had to demonstrate this new found quality in his character. He needed a stooge that he could take on; a figure more unpopular with the public than himself who he could do battle with.

                Step up Len McCluskey of the Unite union. It was, you will remember, the unions that handed him his leadership. They did so because they shared the public’s assessment of him as someone who was weak and could be like putty in their hands; on top of which they liked his anti-New Labour rhetoric.

                Now this is where it gets clever; so clever in fact that it makes one wonder whether dear old Ed Ball’s was not the author of what was to follow. In need of an economic policy to challenge austerity, they had to settle for supporting the Coalitions austerity package, including the freeze on public sector wages. They had to settle for this because, as the Great Lady herself once said, ‘There is no alternative’.

                Those around the Labour leader knew what the unions would think of such a ‘betrayal’ of their generosity to Ed. They calculated that the ensuing ruckus would give Ed the chance to prove his strength as a leader to the public. Like Kinnock taking on Militant, Ed would slay the union dragon at the next party conference; and between now and then enjoy taking swipes at the likes of Mr McCluskey and his 19^th century brethren.

THE GUARDIAN ALLOWED Len McCluskey to give vent to his feelings, as the Labour hierarchy hoped one union leader would do. The bait was threaded onto the hook, the line was cast, and all that was needed, was to wait.

                Mr McCluskey issued the various time honoured threats to the Labour leadership that they see as betraying them. Betrayal slips off a trade union leaders tongue as regularly as a pronoun does the rest of us.

                McCluskey warns of a leadership coup by New Labour and also warns of withdrawing support for Labour. What he means is financial support - for Labour does not need any other kind from them. The unions have always threatened but never struck. The unions are weaker today than at any other time in their history, and their only channel to power and influence is via the Labour Party; and the two Ed’s have calculated this to be the case. The unions need Labour. Labour will not disappear without the union’s financial support. As in America, the private sector will support the political parties.

                If  Tony Blair got one thing right with New Labour, he proved that the private sector would be willing to support the Labour Party; and even more so if it were detached from the likes of Mr McCluskey.

            In his diatribe in the Guardian, Unites’ general secretary gives vent to his prodigious contempt. He writes 'Ed Balls' sudden weekend embrace of austerity and the Government's public sector pay squeeze represents a victory for discredited Blairism at the expense of the party's core supporters.

'It also challenges the whole course Ed Miliband has set for the Party, and perhaps his leadership itself.

'Unions in the public sector are bound to unite to oppose the real pay cuts for public sector workers over the next year.

'When we do so, it seems we will now be fighting the Labour front bench as well as the Government.

'The political elite which was united in promoting the City-first deregulation policies that led to the crash is now united in asserting that ordinary people must pick up the tab for it.’

HOW CAN SUCH A DERANGED outpouring be taken seriously? If Ed Milliband is serious in his attempt at breaking his own particular mould, he should look this man in the eye and defy him to do his worse.

                Old Labour  still infects  the public service unions. Capitalism will not succumb to the moronic impulses of the Unite general secretary. For him and his like, they see the crises of capitalism as an opportunity to once and for all bury the system itself. Where Arthur Scargill failed, the likes of Len will conquer.

                I no longer support the Labour Party after 40 years of so doing; and it was in part the likes of Len and his fraternity who dissuaded me from, first of all, retaining my Labour membership; and then voting for them.

                There is however another part of the  McCluskey invective which I find proves my point about the union’s true ambition: 'It leaves the country with something like a "national government" consensus where, as in 1931, the leaders of the three big parties agree on a common agenda of austerity to get capitalism - be it "good" or "bad" - back on its feet’.

                You can see what Len really wants, from this part of his Guardian piece. He uses the phrase ‘…to get capitalism- be it good or bad- back on its feet’. It is capitalism that Len and his fellow public sector union leaders really wish to destroy; just like their Old Labour  comrades from the 1970s.

                They hated Blair’s New Labour because it took from them their ancient cause of destroying capitalism. Until Blair, those well paid general secretaries of the unions fostered the ambition of seeing their ancient enemy capitalism finally brought to its ruin.

                I have as little love for Blair nowadays as the likes of Len McCluskey. But he knew that if the Labour party wished to become the natural party of government , as Harold Wilson once referred to it, then it must look toward the Democrats in America. The party could not remain predominantly dependent on trade union finances; and this is why the likes of Len McCluskey took umbrage to Tony Blair’s New Labour…it left them dangling in the background.

                 

ED MILLIBAND IS playing his last card by taking on the unions and squaring up to that poor old stooge Len McCluskey. He hopes to make himself a strong and resolute leader by divorcing himself and his party from union pressure.

                This pantomime, whilst having been written and produced over the Christmas period - it is being presented out of season. There appears to be no end to the stupidity of these trade union leaders of Mr McCluskey calibre. He has taken the bait, and allowed himself to become the perfect pantomime villain to Ed Milliband’s widow Twankey .

                Milliband must be jumping for joy. He can now take the unions on knowing that, his ratings cannot get any worse, while deploying the only strategy that might make them better.