Unions and Lab' MPs back leadership 'dream ticket'
A powerful coalition of mainstream Labour MPs and leaders of Britain's biggest unions is backing a right-left 'dream ticket' of Alan Johnson and Jon Cruddas to lead the party into the next general election, having given up on Gordon Brown's premiership. The plan to install Johnson, the centre-right Health Secretary, and Cruddas, a centre-left moderniser who came third in last year's deputy leadership con-*test*-('"), is gaining support as the way to thwart the ambitions of David Miliband, the arch-Blairite Foreign Secretary. The depth of union dismay at Brown and the New Labour agenda is revealed today in outspoken comments from Tony Woodley, the joint leader of Britain's biggest union, Unite, which will have a crucial role in any leadership con-*test*-('"). Savaging Brown's record as Chancellor and Prime Minister - and making clear that he would never accept a Miliband leadership - Woodley told The Observer that 'with the wealth gap widening, job insecurity rife, justified anger over inequality' and soaring fuel, energy and food prices, the Labour government desperately needed to get back to its roots and 'get a grip'. Woodley, one of several union leaders who are said to have privately discussed a Johnson-Cruddas ticket over the past fortnight, accused Brown of merely 'managing decline' rather than showing 'forward-thinking' leadership - and of failing traditional Labour voters whose concerns had been 'seemingly ignored'. He said: 'Labour needs to be on the side of ordinary voters, huge swaths of whom are union members wanting to see less appeasement of business people who do not and never will vote Labour.' snip http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/10/alanjohnson.tradeunions So the price of the unions bailing out the Labour party is likely to be the installation of "one of their own" as leader. Is this effectively a union takeover bid for the governing party?
A powerful coalition of mainstream Labour MPs and leaders of Britain's biggest unions is backing a right-left 'dream ticket' of Alan Johnson and Jon Cruddas to lead the party into the next general election, having given up on Gordon Brown's premiership. The plan to install Johnson, the centre-right Health Secretary, and Cruddas, a centre-left moderniser who came third in last year's deputy leadership con-*test*-('"), is gaining support as the way to thwart the ambitions of David Miliband, the arch-Blairite Foreign Secretary. The depth of union dismay at Brown and the New Labour agenda is revealed today in outspoken comments from Tony Woodley, the joint leader of Britain's biggest union, Unite, which will have a crucial role in any leadership con-*test*-('"). Savaging Brown's record as Chancellor and Prime Minister - and making clear that he would never accept a Miliband leadership - Woodley told The Observer that 'with the wealth gap widening, job insecurity rife, justified anger over inequality' and soaring fuel, energy and food prices, the Labour government desperately needed to get back to its roots and 'get a grip'. Woodley, one of several union leaders who are said to have privately discussed a Johnson-Cruddas ticket over the past fortnight, accused Brown of merely 'managing decline' rather than showing 'forward-thinking' leadership - and of failing traditional Labour voters whose concerns had been 'seemingly ignored'. He said: 'Labour needs to be on the side of ordinary voters, huge swaths of whom are union members wanting to see less appeasement of business people who do not and never will vote Labour.' snip http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/aug/10/alanjohnson.tradeunions So the price of the unions bailing out the Labour party is likely to be the installation of "one of their own" as leader. Is this effectively a union takeover bid for the governing party?
