Unite has suspended a £10,000 donation to Labour’s West Midlands mayoral candidate, Siôn Simon, in a move that could have severe implications for the battle for the mayoralty as well as the union’s general secretary election.
Simon faces an uphill battle to defeat the Conservative candidate, Andy Street, the former John Lewis boss who is now favourite for the mayoralty.
Unite’s West Midlands regional board had approved a £10,000 donation to the Labour campaign, according to minutes published in the Birmingham Mail, but a spokesman said money would not be handed over until it had investigated “evidence of interference in its internal elections by people associated with the Labour party in the West Midlands”.
“Any donation to Mr Simon’s campaign will have to await resolution of these matters,” a Unite spokesman told the Guardian. A Labour source said the accusations of interference were a mystery.
The Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, a key ally of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, is running for re-election this year, challenged by Gerard Coyne, who has pledged to spend less time involving the union in Labour party politics.
Over the weekend, Labour’s deputy leader, Tom Watson, whose constituency is in the West Midlands and who is a close friend of Simon, said McCluskey should be prepared to defend Corbyn’s leadership after the defeat in the Copeland byelection.
Watson, who was critical of Corbyn’s leadership during the summer’s leadership challenge, said prominent backers should be more vocal in their support, rather than allow constant accusations of disunity.
Watson said he and others had been defending Corbyn since his re-election last summer, but the Labour leader’s trade union champions had been either critical or silent.
“If I’ve got some frustrations, it’s that those people who are Jeremy’s cheerleaders, who made sure that he was elected a second time last September, they should be sticking with their leader in the bad times, not just the good,” he told ITV1’s Peston on Sunday.
“I’d say to you this morning: where’s Len McCluskey defending his leader in this difficult time? It shouldn’t be just down to me.”
A Unite spokesman hit back at Watson, saying McCluskey would “take no lessons in loyalty from Tom Watson” but gave no explicit backing to Corbyn.
On Thursday, another of McCluskey’s challengers for the Unite job piled pressure on him to reiterate his backing for Corbyn. Ian Allinson, the socialist candidate, said he should give an “unambiguous statement about his support for Jeremy Corbyn at the earliest possible opportunity”.
Allinson said: “Len McCluskey needs to end the confusion about how reliable his support for Corbyn is, and whether that will continue if he is re-elected. He is avoiding giving a direct answer to questions on this, even with all the rumours of a ‘soft coup’.”
A spokesman for Simon’s campaign told the Birmingham Mail: “Siôn is a Unite member. He was supported by Unite during the selection. I am not aware of us asking them for money. As far as we are concerned, he continues to have the support of Unite. He’s cracking on as a Unite candidate.”
A source close to Simon’s campaign said: “Siôn’s got great support from all across the Labour movement in the West Midlands, including lots of Unite members. We’re united in our goal to see off the Tories’ man from London and to be back in government in the West Midlands this summer.”
