Len McCluskey, the Unite general secretary, has dismissed senior Blairite figures as blasts from the past and urged them to stick to their money-making, and stop stabbing their knives into the back of the Labour party.
McCluskey’s remarks come after Alan Milburn and John Hutton criticised Labour’s economic and health plans. Separately, Lord Mandelson has questioned the wisdom of the mansion tax, but has said he is interested in the idea of introducing higher council tax bands as a form of wealth tax.
Speaking to the union’s 1,200-strong officer and organiser core in Birmingham on Monday, McCluskey said his union had “a duty to democracy” to fund Labour to balance the Tories’ immense spending power, allied to their wealthy backers and loyal media.
The union has committed £2.5m to the Labour election campaign and may offer more. He said the election would be a choice between hope and fear, but added: “What it doesn’t need is the Blairite retreads – the people who sucked the life out of the last Labour government – attacking every progressive impulse, like the mansion tax and saving our NHS.
“So I say to Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn and John Hutton: stick to counting your money, and stop stabbing Labour in the back.
“And I say to Ed Miliband: ‘Have the courage of your convictions and ignore these blasts from the past.’”
In practice, the differences over health policy between Blairities and the leadership focus on only one aspect of the policy – the extent to which a Labour government would limit the scope of private sector providers at the margins.
McCluskey said: “The electorate is today poised between fear and hope. Fear is the basis of the Ukip menace – blame someone else for all the problems, usually immigrants or foreigners, and seek refuge in an imagined past.
“But it is hope that is blossoming today as we have seen in last week’s magnificent election result in Greece. Labour needs to bottle some of the Syriza spirit and take that anti-austerity agenda to the people here.
“The Tories are plotting a reduction in the scope and role of the state which even Thatcher could only have dreamed of, taking us back to the days of the 1930s, under the pretext of balancing the books without, of course, asking the rich or big business to contribute. They want to tear to bits every advance working people have secured, every protection we have built up, over the years.
“Let me say today – it’s not going to happen. If a government with the backing of less than one voter in four tries to deny the rights of a movement of millions, we will treat that with the contempt it deserves. And if we are pushed outside the law, so be it. If Unite is ever to die, it will not die on its knees.”
