McCluskey warns Miliband that Labour must be bold – or risk losing Unite’s support

There are many reasons why someone might agree to be a guest speaker at the Parliamentary Press Gallery lunch. It might be to challenge perceptions about them, to set out their agenda, to speak clearly to a room full of hacks in a way that addresses them all at once, and of course – to get media coverage in the broadest possible range of media outlets.

Len McCluskey’s appearance before the assembled crowd in Westminster today aimed to achieve all of these. But perhaps most of all, it threw down the gauntlet to the Labour Party and Ed Miliband.

Yet it wasn’t the speech that will be reported at length, most likely it will be the answers to the Lobby’s questions. Potential rifts were examined, disagreements probed and differences challenged. In the age of Twitter it’s easy to have long answers (and these were long and involved answers) boiled down to bite size attention grabbing tweets.

Some will claim that McCluskey threatened to disaffiliate Unite from Labour – he didn’t, nor if he wanted to would that be exclusively in his gift, that would be for Unite members to decide. But the implication of McCluskey’s response to the probing from the lobby was clear – that if an insufficiently bold Labour Party were to “shrink the offer”, head into the next election without a plan for how to rebuild Britain and lose as a result, then there could be consequences for Unite’s future relationship with Labour.

Their members might find themselves disappointed and disillusioned. Questions would be asked. The answers that Labour might give could be insufficient. Not a threat as such, but certainly a warning, with McCluskey adding his voice to the chorus that says Labour can’t go small come 2015. (And as an aside, when asked for his views on Douglas Alexander – who has come under fire in recent days – the Unite General Secretary was throat-clearing, rather than full-throated, in his support.)

Losing the affiliation and support of Unite or other unions would be a nightmare scenario for Labour, undermining not only the party’s funding, but Miliband’s stated aim of building a bigger party rooted in the workplaces of Britain. A Labour Party without the union link would scarcely be a “labour” party at all – which is why so few within the party would seek such a change. As a Unite member I’d certainly fight tooth and nail against such a move (it’d do damage to both the union and the party, in my view) but to argue that a significant chunk of Unite’s membership couldn’t be won around to a disaffiliation argument would be false. McCluskey’s warning should be seen in that light.

He not just to warn though, but to charm too, and the speech itself – as opposed to the Q&A session – was a charmer. Gentle mockery was dished out to the less than supportive media outlets (at one point McCluskey said he’d pause so The Sun could catch up), but there was self-effacing humour too. The room, not a friendly one by any means, began to warm up as the lunch went on. No doubt some in the room had already pre-written their copy before lunch, peppered with “Red Len” this and “direct action” that, and McCluskey will have given them the ammunition should they choose to do so, with criticism of big business and their less than transparent impact on our politics.

But one of McCluskey’s most interesting critiques was not with the Labour Party alone, but with politics in general. He despaired at a politics that few feel part of, where few vote, where too few join parties and where debates take place, unreported, resulting in parliamentary votes that are foregone conclusions.

Strip away the Kremlinogy around Labour, and that’s a concern that should be shared by those who care about politics – from all parties and none.