Unite chief blames MI5 for protest violence

Sometimes, just when you think that the craziest left-wing ideologues have gone off to tend to their gardens, up one pops. Meet Len McCluskey, the head of Unite, who tells The Times’s Rachel Sylvester (£) that Fidel Castro has been a “heroic” leader of his people. That would be the same Cuban dictator who jails journalists and trade unionists. Odd choice of hero.

But it gets better. McCluskey seems to think that MI5 encouraged violence at the last anti-cuts protest. I kid you not:

“Mr McCluskey believes that the secret services, in particular MI5, may have been working under cover to encourage the violence as part of a conspiracy to undermine the peaceful message of the march. ‘Perish the thought that Machiavellian forces could have been at work but it has been know before,’ he says. “Agents provocateurs have been a common usage of governments throughout history, including our own.”