With the Labour Party already in a precarious financial position, overspending by some £1.7m last year, there is more bad news coming down the line. Their biggest donor Unite are agitating before their conference in June for which Left Futures have the agenda.

Amongst the usual noisy motions – “Conference notes and applauds UNITE’S policy to win back the Labour Party from the right-wing neo-liberals who have infested the party over the past 20 years” et cetera –  is a pending headache for Ed. Obviously concerned that his £600,000 per meeting is not value for money, Len McCluskey is apparently gearing up to restrict donations to Labour by 10%. Given that staffers constantly complain about how broke the party is, almost to the point of being unable to properly fight local and police commissioner elections, this is hardly going to help matters…

Unite assistant General Secretary Diana Holland is getting a lot of coverage today due to the ongoing chaos her union is threatening, not over the price of fuel but how much money already well paid drivers get to distribute it. What the TV news seem to be ignoring is that she is also the Treasurer of the Labour Party.

Labour try to suggest the connection to their biggest donor is arms length, but Holland is about as plugged in as they come. Her husband Joe Irvine was a Commander of the Forces of Hell as Brown’s Political Secretary and also the “brains” behind Ed Balls For Leader. Cosy!

As Guido reported yesterday, Bob Crow has sent a laughable legal threat to the Boris campaign. He used the trade union ambulance chasers Thompsons to sabre rattle, but if their past form is anything to go by, the Mayor shouldn’t be too worried. Last year the Director of the Taxpayers Alliance skewered Unison’s Dave Prentis live on the Daily Politics:

A few months later Thompson’s weighed in:

From: Tom Jones (Thompsons Solicitors) 
Sent: 26 November 2011 11:23
To: Taxpayers Alliance
Subject: Dave Prentis and UNISON

Dear Sirs,

We act for Dave Prentis General Secretary of UNISON. You currently have a clip on your website which shows Dave Prentis apparently on The Daily Politics Show on 26 March (no year is given). You have manipulated the image to show his nose growing longer when he says his salary is ‘nowhere near’ £127,000.

Your depiction of our client treats him and the union with contempt. The clip does not show the whole discussion and takes our client’s comment out of context. The manipulation of his image is defamatory and subjects him to mockery. You fail to make clear that the figure you quote is gross and includes, for example, national insurance contributions and as such it is misleading.

Please confirm if you have authority from the BBC to use the clip. If you do not then your use of the BBC footage is an infringement of their copyright. The infringement is further compounded by what we assume is unauthorised manipulation. Youtube is also infringing copyright by showing the clip.

My client accepts that in his role he is likely to be the subject of media interest but it is not acceptable that he is subject to vindictive and personal attack. Please confirm that you will immediately take the clip down from your site and from Youtube.

Yours faithfully
TPR Jones
For Thompsons Solicitors

-

From: Matthew Sinclair
Sent: 29 November 2011 13:24
To: Tom Jones (Thompsons Solicitors) 
Subject: RE: Dave Prentis and UNISON

Mr. Jones,

Thank you for your email regarding the video clip on our website of Dave Prentis on the Daily Politics Show. The clip – which YouTube shows was released on 26 March 2010 – is scrupulous in its presentation of the facts.

It shows the actual page in the Annual Report of the Certification Officer that was the basis of our claim about your client’s total remuneration, which is in turn based on returns from the unions themselves, and is absolutely explicit that the £127,436 figure is composed of ‘salary’ and ‘benefits’. As such, it seems to us that any potentially defamatory allegation (you fail to identify what that would be) is based upon truth (at the very least, substantially), and is not misleading.

The comments are not taken out of context. The entire discussion of his remuneration is included. The degree to which it may harm the reputation of your client, whether that be exposure to hatred, ridicule or contempt, is no more than that to be legitimately expected by someone who, in the public eye, is misleading the public over the matter of their remuneration, where that information is of public interest.

We sent the clip to BBC journalists at the time, feeling they would be interested in how we followed up after their programme. The use of a short clip to produce a satire, and expose a public figure to legitimate scrutiny, is not likely to be upheld as an infringement of their copyright. To the extent that it even might be though, we will await hearing from the Corporation’s lawyers. Copyright does not exist as a vehicle for public figures prominent in ongoing public discourse over matters of public concern to suppress legitimate criticism and scrutiny of their positions.

A well paid trade union official leading strikes that will disrupt the lives of millions of people should be subject to proper scrutiny. Your client enjoys no legal protection against mockery. Our clip does not constitute an invasion of privacy, harassment, an appropriation of commercial personality rights, or any similar such interference with his rights.

Similarly, UNISON has no right to reputation defensible under English defamation law, even if any such reputation were somehow impacted by the clip.

Your client is welcome to laugh it off or to rebut our claims if he can.

Best,
Matthew Sinclair

Matthew Sinclair, Director
The TaxPayers’ Alliance

And that was the end of that.

In the madness of yesterday Guido missed Bob Crow’s hilarious threat to sue Boris for associating him with Ken. Nice try Bob. Things must be getting really toxic for Ken. Something tells Guido this one won’t be reaching a court room. If it did all they would need to do is play the clip from Bob’s appearance on Ken’s LBC  show from June last year:

Crow: I’ve never been apart from Ken. We have differences like I have with my brother and sister but overall, Ken’s a good bloke.

Ken: I can hear that going on the Tory leaflets already…

Crow: Give us a shout Ken when you want some money…

No further questions m’Lord…

Some of the  heat was taken out of the stand-off between the Labour high command and their unhappy HQ staff last week by a promise that all future jobs would be advertised internally. The row over the appointment of a new Labour Party Executive and a reorganisation of the party structure reached a peak with HQ staff calling in the unions to try find a solution. Guido has now got hold of a letter from the Joint Trade Union Committee (GMB and Unite), to the Labour’s General Secretary Iain McNicol outlining the complaints:

The new confused chain of command and  in particular the ex-Goldman Sachs adviser turned Labour Chief Exec Sir Charles Allen comes in for serious criticism, as does Ed’s leadership on this and his team’s handling of the whole process. Now the row looks set to boil over again. Despite a promise from Ed’s Chief of Staff Tim Livesey that all future jobs would be advertised, Guido can reveal this lunchtime that various senior positions have been filled without due process. Staffers claim that there were not even interviews for the following jobs:

• Mr Paul Harrington - Head of Field Operations
• Mr Joe Derrett- Head of Press for Ken Livingstone’s Campaign
• Ms Veronica King - Press and Campaigns Officer for Ken Livingstone
• Ms Anneliese Midgley - Head of Events and Visits for Ken Livingstone

Guido hears that at least one Labour staffer is preparing to take the Party to an industrial tribunal…

The row over the Labour Party’s internal restructuring is growing. Guido understands that Labour HQ staffers have gone to union arbitrators from the GMB as their dispute over the appointment of the new Executive Directors continues. Given that the party managed to overspend by £1.7m last year, a strike might just save them a bit of cash…

Chief of Staff Tim Livesey is said to be in despair at “what an amateur operation the whole thing is…”. In an attempt to take the heat out of the ongoing battle he has told staff that, from now onwards, all appointments will be advertised internally, though that current employees should not hold their breath for selection.

Sir Charles Allen, who is overseeing the transition that will squeeze the National Executive Committee and other elected officials out is, Labour always emphasise, a former chairman of ITV. What the Labour Party are less keen to mention is that he is also a former Senior Private Equity Advisor at Goldman Sachs. Given Goldman’s are back in the headlines after one of their execs spectacularly quit and told the New York Times that they think their clients are Muppets, it’s no wonder one Labour insider said Allen is “treating HQ like muppets…” Well it’s a step up from ferrets…

Nick Hurd has confirmed that the government consultation into “Pilgrims” is “about to start imminently”. He told a feisty Westminster Hall debate on taxpayer funding of trade unions:

“We will seek to review and rebalance the amount time off for Trade Uion duties… the current level is significantly more that the private sector… The consultation I’ve just described is focussed on the civil service, where my responsibilities as a Minster lie. However other colleagues who have responsibility for these matters in the wider public sector have been asked by the PM to review the position in their sectors.”

A good starting point is why should the taxpayer fund those that want to destroy the Olympics, costing the taxpayer even more money…

If Ed has a moment today between PMQs and rubbing shoulders with the French socialist presidential contender François Hollande, he might want to make some very loud noises about Unite boss Len McClusky’s call to arms this morning:

“The attacks that are being launched on public sector workers at the moment are so deep and ideological that the idea the world should arrive in London and have these wonderful Olympic Games as though everything is nice and rosy in the garden is unthinkable,” he said. “The unions, and the general community, have got every right to be out protesting. If the Olympics provide us with an opportunity, then that’s exactly one that we should be looking at.” He also said members of the public should support the campaign by engaging in “civil disobedience”.

Ed might struggle though, what with Unite being his biggest donor…

Citing the Data Protection Act, the Bank of England have refused to tell Guido how much they pay Alison, their full-time trade union official. She’s seconded to Unite the Union, though seems to do nothing that an HR title couldn’t cover.

Why they feel the need for a union recruiter in the central bank beggars belief. 

The bank’s website seems very proud of this arrangement. Many would argue she’s a strange choice for their profile of typical employees. Before she became a Pilgrim, Alison tried her hand at being a bank regulator. That went well…

UPDATE: Guido forgot to add that the Bank pay for her to have an assistant as well.