Sickly Ed Miliband risks further anger from unions

ANYONE who thought Ed Miliband looked a bit sick being heckled by the trade union activists who bothered to turn up for the TUC conference yesterday, should wait to see how his big speech goes down with the brothers and sisters at Labour's annual party conference in a couple of weeks.
 
Miliband risks further enraging the party's paymasters - who, let's not forget, handed him the Labour leadership last year - by introducing a change to the Labour constitution which the Miliband camp are calling his 'Clause Four' moment, a reference to the way Tony Blair dramatically modernised the party by dropping the reference to state ownership from New Labour's creed.

As forecast by the Mole, Miliband wants to throw open Labour's doors to everyone. Unfortunately for the unions, this will have the effect of watering down their remaining hold on power within the party, and they won't be happy.

The idea is to allow members of the public to register as supporters, rather than members, and have a say in choosing party leaders. It would also widen Labour's base to a registered supporters network, allowing them to recruit non-party members to campaign on single-issue campaigns, such as local service cuts.

This 'Big Idea' was to have been included in David Miliband's conference speech if he had not been stabbed in the back by his brother with the help of the unions. It was proposed by Peter Hain, chair of the national policy forum, who wants to see MPs - such as the embattled Sir Stuart Bell - doing more to engage with their local constituencies by signing up to a new contract to do more campaigning with their voters.

Several commentators glibly said that Ed Miliband would have been delighted to be heckled at the TUC for opposing the unions' strike action over pension cuts while negotiations were going on. It was all about 'triangulation', said the commentators - the Blairite theory that by opposing a fringe group, he would gain support among the masses.

But the public are likely to have a different view - that it was just another example of Ed being hopeless. They are less than convinced that Miliband has what it takes to run the country, never mind his own party.

A Times Populus poll on the eve of Ed's first anniversary as Labour leader shows that almost two-thirds of the public (63 per cent) find it hard to imagine the Labour leader running the country. Very nearly half of Labour supporters (49 per cent) say the same - they find it difficult to see him in Downing Street.

Ed may now decide that if he faces a fight with the unions then, like Blair, he should show his muscle. But it will have its costs.

As Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite, Britain's biggest union, said yesterday, Miliband opposed the unions striking while pension negotiations were on-going - but which way will he jump when the negotiations are over?

The public sector unions are now promising a series of damaging one-day national strikes and "rolling" strikes on a scale perhaps not seen since the Winter of Discontent. That is when the union paymasters have a right to ask: "Whose side are you on, Ed?" 

After Miliband lays out his plans to further dilute their power and influence, the unions are likely to be in a mood at Labour's conference in Liverpool for strangulation rather than triangulation. And they could do that by turning off the money he is relying on to fight the next election. ·