A world of skulduggery, smears and secret plots

Our hero, the MP for West Bromwich East and Deputy Labour leader, claims there is a secret plot involving Mr McCluskey’s Unite union to hi-jack the party.

The plot – which isn’t actually very secret – by Jeremy Corbyn’s friends in the Momentum movement is to ensure the next party leader is another left-wing extremist.

It’s all very murky, as Labour’s internal politics usually is. But basically it’s claimed Momentum’s leader Jon Lansman and Unite, which gives Labour £1.5 million a year, are plotting to seize control from what are now considered ‘moderates’, that is to say the majority of MPs.

Mr Watson says this could destroy the Labour Party and, given its pathetic opinion poll ratings and its ineffectual leader, he’s probably right.

To make matters murkier still, Mr McCluskey and Mr Watson used to be mates.

The MP used to share a flat with the union baron and they worked together in a controversial, but ultimately failed, bid to ‘fix’ the candidate selection for the Falkirk by-election in 2013.

That row led to one of Mr Watson’s resignations from top Labour jobs though he was ultimately exonerated of accusations he tried to orchestrate a string of parliamentary selections to secure seats for Unite members or their allies.

Mr Watson has waxed lyrical about Mr McCluskey’s love of poetry and his inability to sing the Kings of Leon hit ‘Sex on Fire’.

The two fell out after Mr McCluskey would not support Mr Watson’s bid to get Jeremy Corbyn to stand down as Labour leader.

Mr McCluskey now says of his old friend: ‘A world of skulduggery, smears and secret plots, that is where you will find Tom Watson. When Labour has needed loyalty, he has been sharpening his knife looking for a back to stab.’

Not only is the Labour Party falling apart but Unite is in the throes of its own election. Mr McCluskey is fighting to retain his job as General Secretary of Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union with 1.4 million members.

The 66-year-old called the election early to postpone his retirement and ensure he was still in the job at the next General Election.

But he’s up against Gerard Coyne, who has worked as the union’s organiser in the West Midlands for 15 years.

Mr Coyne, who is seen as a moderate, is also a chum of Mr Watson’s and recently declared Unite’s decision to give tens of thousands of pounds to the Momentum movement ‘a huge mistake’.

He went on: ‘We should not be funding internal Labour Party factions, especially not ones dedicated to far-left politics and policies totally opposed to the needs and interests of our members.’

Key to Mr Watson’s attempt to rescue the Labour Party is the election of Mr Coyne as Unite’s boss.

If Mr Coyne replaces Mr McCluskey there is every chance Unite would help return the party to the political mainstream.

Apart from anything else, Mr Coyne says if he led Unite he would stop meddling in Westminster politics. He said at the start of his campaign: ‘I'm not going to fall into the trap of trying to determine who the leader of the Labour Party is.’

However Mr Coyne, who is from West Bromwich, is not entirely above meddling in politics. Last year he received a final written warning as a union official from his boss, Mr McCluskey, because he spoke at a meeting of moderate Labour MPs.

Mr McCluskey said it was ‘a serious breach of trust’ because the MPs were refusing to serve in Mr Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet.

The Corbynite Momentum movement claim they occupy the centre ground in Labour politics while Blairite and Brownite MPs – the people who actually won elections and formed Governments in the past – are irredeemably right-wing.

Yet the MPs who are unhappy with Jezza’s leadership and the party’s lurch to the left are not simply careerists who are only in it for what they can get.

They are genuinely horrified at the prospect of Labour becoming unelectable whereas the Momentum movement does not seem to care about winning seats in Parliament.

Mr Corbyn and his army of supporters are more at home taking their protests to the streets than they are in the more difficult and intellectually-demanding realms of real politics.

The re-election of Mr McCluskey would put his union and its money at the service of the hard left which is why Mr Watson is trying to expose their plot.

All this internecine warfare is like the scene in Monty Python’s ‘Life of Brian’ where The People's Front of Judea attack the Judean People's Front, the Campaign for a Free Galilee, and the Judean Popular People's Front with cries of ‘splitters’.

But British politics needs a functioning Opposition party which might make a credible Government. If Mr Watson’s warnings go unheeded, Theresa May become leader of a one-party state.