The Tories have mounted a personal attack on Charlie Whelan, the political director of Unite. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
The first thing to be said when confronted with comically sinister photos of Charlie Whelan in all the newspapers is that out-of-control trade unions are no longer the problem in modern Britain; out-of-control capitalists are the problem.
Everyone knows this, but some people are trying hard to make us all forget it as election day draws closer. Why not, if we're daft enough to fall for it? It's a free country, more or less.
Eric Pickles, struggling to regain the political initiative as Conservative chairman, is one such. He has unleashed Michael Gove to attack unbridled union power – ho ho – though Ann Treneman neatly skewers this idea in today's Times: Gove is "more meerkat than rottweiler", she notes.
Does that mean that Charlie's return to prominence from disgrace and exile is a good idea – for Gordon Brown, for the government, for the country or even for Unite, the union for which he works so tirelessly? Probably not. Whelan is a resourceful but divisive figure with a lot of toxic history and a weakness for self-promotion.
Does that mean that Unite's political director is helping to organise the strike of BA cabin crew that threatens to protect the environment by wrecking some Easter holiday plans? Of course not.
Is he in favour of the strike? I very much doubt it. He's the political organiser, not the industrial one. Like Gordon Brown and Andrew Adonis ("more Andrew than Adonis", as the old joke goes) Charlie is probably pulling his hair out. He's got lots to pull.
In the photo favoured by Fleet Street this week he is seen wearing a herring bone overcoat and a flat cap with horn-rimmed glasses: Eric Morecambe meets Eric Honecker, the former East German communist leader. Comrade Charlie used to be in the CP too, but he's personally very jolly, more a foul-mouthed version of Eric Morecambe.
Today the papers are also reporting that the US Teamsters, led by James son-of-Jimmy Hoffa (who ended up in a Mafia cement mixer), are preparing to help their British comrades.
That should give BA's militant management pause for thought as they push dangerously hard for a confrontation neither side can afford. Simon Jenkins writes a very enjoyable column about BA as a feather-bedded but powerful lobby in today's paper. According to Simon I must be the only hack never to have got an upgrade: not true, I suspect.
You can't say too often that unions struggle to do their best to protect their members' interests: that usually means avoiding strike action, but a ballot result is a result.
They do so with their hands tied behind their backs these days. When they were untied they abused their power until Margaret Thatcher took them on after 1979.
Now it is the investment bankers, hedge-fund managers, big firms of accountants, venture capitalists and their associates, their hands untied by Thatcher – and certainly not retied by New Labour – who are abusing theirs.
In their heyday the unions did a lot of shortsighted harm to the economy, propping up all sorts of inefficiencies and discouraging investment. But it is hard to think of a strike which did more damage than the banking crisis has done, here and elsewhere.
That hasn't stopped the Tories trying to resurrect the 1978-79 "winter of discontent" theme of old Labour militancy, even the Militant Tendency. Gove's crocodile tears in praise of moderate Blairism is self-serving guff.
Gove – who once joined a picket line at his old paper the Aberdeen Press and Journal – should know better and probably does.
The truth is that Unite isn't leftwing; it's a big ramshackle mega-union, some of whose members are leftwing, some of whom are Daily Mail readers, including plenty in the BA cabin staff. It's so big because unions have been forced to merge – a sign of weakness, not strength.
It even has two general secretaries, Tony Woodley, who is said to favour Andy Burnham (it's the Everton FC connection) for Labour leader, and Derek Simpson who supports Ed Miliband, not Ed Balls – contrary to what you read all over the place (because Balls hacks off a lot of Unite officials, as he does others).
So, no plot, just the usual shambles. "This is just score-settling for Michael Ashcroft," says one Labour apparatchik of my acquaintance. "The idea of comparing a trade union which does good for a lot of people with a dodgy tax exile is shocking," he adds. A good point, I think.
Yes, we all know that unions such as Unite provide two-thirds of Labour's much-depleted funds. Why? Because the alternative, rich donors, were frightened off by a series of media-driven "scandals", backed by questionable police investigations that came to nothing.
Yet we know less than we think about Conservative finances and I observe in passing that the US supreme court has just given the green light to anonymous corporate donations to politics – as serious a development as I can recall on that front.
Read Tristram Hunt's witty take on the "Tea Party" – tax dodgers and demagogues today, as they were in Boston in 1773, he says – for a good angle.
One last thing. The papers are making a big deal out of allegations that the likes of Whelan and Tom Watson MP are stitching up selections for Unite candidates, all lefties naturally, except they're not – and they're not all lefties either.
In the case of James Purnell, who was himself eased into the Stalybridge seat as a Blair protege in 2001 (the seat's former MP got a peerage), he has complained that his own protege, local councillor Johnny Reynolds, has been left off the shortlist.
Well, I suppose that when a chap with considerable talent and potential resigns from the cabinet, stabs his leader in the chest and then quits parliament – contrary to earlier pledges – he doesn't have a lot of leverage left.
Even his mates are cross with him, though Peter Mandelson, victim of past Blair-Brown feuds, has come out in support.
For what it's worth Unite's political committee voted unanimously to back ex-MEP Glyn Ford, famous for red spectacle frames before they were fashionable, for the nomination. What did Labour's selection panel in London do? Left him off the shortlist in favour of regional locals.
It was an understandable reaction after high-flyer Purnell was parachuted in – and tunnelled out so quickly. But hardly deference to the Unite paymasters. And the wannabe denounced as a dangerous Unite apparatchik on the shortlist, Peter Wheeler, is apparently on t the union's right wing – more Blair than Whelan.
I've never met him, but apparently he still lives in a council house up the road in Salford. If he gets the nomination and wins the seat it will be good to have another MP who lives in a council house. Not too many of them these days. I'm told some even have flats in London.
You have characters left
Please read our community standards.
Closing this window without pressing "Post your comment" will result in your words being lost.
Are you sure?
Thank you for your comment. This has been submitted for moderation.
Your comment has been successfully posted.
Sorry, something has gone wrong and this action cannot be completed. Please try again later.