‘Len McCluskey should be facing up to his responsibilities’: Ed Miliband stands up to Unite

Ed Miliband’s supporters have been arguing that he needs to show muscle on the Unite row before his opponents successfully argue that he is a weak leader in thrall to the union puppet masters. While Conservative MPs joked abut Tom Watson’s ‘Buddha’ comments in the Chamber this morning, the Labour leader did speak out about Len McCluskey and the Falkirk row. To his credit, he has shown that muscle. He is referring the Falkirk allegations to the police this afternoon, and this morning, he said:

We will act without fear or favour. Instead of defending what happened in Falkirk, Len McCluskey should be facing up to his responsibilities. He should not be defending the machine politics involving bad practice and malpractice that went on there, he should be facing up to it.

It’s wrong because we had members being signed up without their knowledge, bad practice, malpractice and frankly instead of defending that kind of thing Len McCluskey should be condemning it.