With Friends Like These.....

The GMB’s decision to ask its membership if it should cut its funding to the Labour party is a significant appraisal of New Labour’s drift to the right.

Whilst there are still some, and always will be some staunch trade unionists in the Labour party the fact remains that over the last ten years the Labour party has not represented the trade unions in the manor that it would expect. Many times I have been at a trade union rally and heard union branch secretary’s label the Government as traitors. Suggesting that union coffers have supplied the government with the bullets to shoot them down.

A slash in funding would be a major blow for the Labour party. Not only would it have an economical impact, leaving the party struggling to cope with the financial challenge of an election against Cameron’s rejuvenated Tories, but it is yet another vote of no confidence for Gordon Brown. At a time when private donations are tinted with sleaze and are drying up for an ever increasingly unpopular Labour party the possibility of loosing union backing could be the final straw on the back of Browns leadership camel.