Decisiveness of a Dishcloth

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, possesses a rare talent - the ability to make a highly political point in a humorous way - combined with a memorable turn of phrase.

So, Bojo's barb about Ed Miliband showing the "decisiveness of a dishcloth, the backbone of a jellyfish and the firmness of purpose of the Grand Old Duke of York" is funny - because just enough of it rings true as an accurate assessment of Ed Miliband's character - for the Labour leader to dismiss the attack as routine, as the predictable words of a political opponent.

In the fight to show who runs the Labour Party there can only be one winner - and if Ed Miliband is not seen to come out firmly on top, then he's toast - not just with his own party but with the wider electorate.

But the omen are not good - the latest union boss to enter the fray is my old chum, Dave Prentis of Unison - who is reported by the Guardian newspaper as saying that Unison will not abide by the results of an ongoing review into the link between Labour and the unions - which is due to report to a special Labour Party conference in the spring of 2014.     

Milisecond (n): the time it takes Ed to do the unions’ bidding

The Falkirk debacle shows Labour is still in hock to Unite – and that’s bad for all of us, writes Boris Johnson

If Ed gets into Downing Street, he would have McCluskey barrelling in and plonking himself on the sofa Photo: PA


Oh dear, oh dear. I know we shouldn’t be too hard on poor old panda features. But never in all the beery, baleful and halitotic history of relations between the Labour Party and the trade unions has there been such an abject display of limp-wristed wimpitude.

Two months after Ed Miliband promised to fight the union bullies at Falkirk, he has folded. He has bailed, he has scuttled, he has bolted and generally run up the white flag. Never mind what he says this week at the TUC – where he will doubtless make some renewed pretence of independence. In battling Len McCluskey and the entryists of Unite, he has shown the decisiveness of a dishcloth, the backbone of a jellyfish, and the firmness of purpose of the Grand Old Duke of York.

If you think I exaggerate, remember what he said in early July, when the shenanigans were exposed. Ed said he was “incredibly angry”. Unite was “wrong” to try to fix the selection process for the Falkirk seat. It was “malpractice” that the union was essentially buying party memberships, en bloc, for people without even telling them, and thereby creating a 21st-century rotten borough. It was “machine politics”, he said, and “besmirching the reputation” of the Labour Party, and he was jolly well going to sort it out.

Labour campaign manager Tom Watson resigned, and two members of the Unite plot were suspended. A big inquiry was announced, and the promise of a new relationship with the unions. Then Ed went off on his well-deserved summer break, and managed to keep his nerve.

The unions plotted their revenge. On September 2, Unite announced that it would boycott the Labour Party conference unless the two conspirators were reinstated. On September 4, the GMB union announced that it was stripping the cash-strapped Labour Party of £1 million in support. On September 6, it suddenly emerged – miracle of miracles – that key evidence to the Falkirk inquiry had been eaten by someone’s dog. The Unite members have been reinstated to the party and all is apparently forgiven. It turns out that no one has done anything wrong at all! Isn’t life grand?

You don’t have to delve far into Labour history to understand what has gone on: you just have to look at the election of Miliband minor to the party leadership in 2010. As you will recall, his older brother got more votes both from MPs and Euro-MPs and from ordinary Labour Party members. David Miliband won on the first ballot, on the second ballot, and even on the third ballot. He only lost on the fourth ballot, by 1.3 per cent, because of thousands of orchestrated votes from the likes of Unite and the GMB – which sent out ballot papers in envelopes marked “Vote Ed”.

The whole procedure was really a bit of a disgrace, and the result is that we have a party that is still financially dependent on the unions – Labour has taken £12 million from Unite since the election – and whose leader bobs pathetically on his strings. Ed Miliband’s handling of Falkirk shows that he cannot operate independently of the union barons – and that is potentially disastrous, since the polls show, even if by an ever-dwindling margin, that it is still technically possible that he could be prime minister.

Let me give an example of the kind of disaster I mean. Just 25 miles from where I sit, they are putting the finishing touches to a stupendous and brilliant project – a new deep-water port for London and the UK. With the help of colossal investment from Dubai, we will next month be opening the DP World port at Thurrock. This will begin to undo the damage that was done in the Sixties and Seventies, when union militancy and government hopelessness brought the London docks to ruin. We failed to invest, we failed to expand and to meet the challenge of containerisation – and we saw our business go to Rotterdam. The population of London plummeted; thousands of jobs were lost; the docks were turned into a wasteland.

Now all that is being reversed, and at breathtaking speed. Canary Wharf is bigger than the whole financial district of Frankfurt; Chinese investors are putting billions towards a third financial district at the Royal Albert Dock. With the DP World port, London will be able once again to handle the very biggest ships, and a huge logistics park is being created at the site. There will be about 27,000 jobs and £2.5 billion worth of growth.

And what is the response of Unite members? Are they celebrating the good news for working people? On the contrary, they are picketing the site, jumping on cars and hurling abuse like something from the Seventies. Unite has done nothing to bring this investment to Britain. It didn’t think of it. It didn’t promote it. Yet the union somehow believes that it has a right to be a partner in the running of the port, and that the owners should be compelled to deal with it rather than with their employees. McCluskey wants to run the place, just as he wants to run the Labour Party, and he threatens exactly the same madness that brought this country to its knees in the Seventies – the strikes and the militancy that drove investors away, and that cost London its port.

With the right employment conditions, and the right infrastructure, I have no doubt that London is going to lead the rest of the UK in an astonishing commercial and industrial renaissance. But the global competition is intense, the margins are small, and if vital facilities are in the hands of men like McCluskey, our chances are much diminished. Unite cannot bully this Government. Whatever he claims at Bournemouth on Tuesday, Miliband is a different story.

What is the definition of a milimetre? The distance between the positions of Miliband and his masters in the trade unions. What is the definition of a milisecond? The time it takes for Miliband to do their bidding. What is a Miliband? A rubber band that is twirled between the fingers of militants. The Falkirk debacle has exposed the reality of Labour’s relations with the union barons. If Ed ever got through the door of Downing Street, he would have McCluskey barrelling in first and plonking himself on the sofa. It is a disaster we cannot allow.