Why the election of a new leader of Unite matters to Keir Starmer

If Gerard Coyne takes over from Len McCluskey, what will it mean for the Labour Party, asks John Rentoul

There is no doubt that the Labour Party leader wants Gerard Coyne as the union’s next general secretary (PA)

Len McCluskey’s successor as general secretary of Unite the union will be announced on 26 August, after an election which could mark a turning point for the union, the Labour Party and the country.

Gerard Coyne, who narrowly lost to McCluskey four years ago, tells The Independent that he is “quietly confident”. This time, his opponents are divided. Steve Turner, McCluskey’s favoured candidate, is still the bookmakers’ favourite, but his path to the succession is complicated by the intervention of Sharon Graham, who describes herself as a candidate of the “independent left”.

Turner’s other rival for the McCluskeyite inheritance, Howard Beckett, withdrew from the election after intense discussions that some say ended in a deal to allow Beckett a clear run in a few years’ time.

There is no doubt that Keir Starmer wants Coyne to win. Unite is the last big union currently controlled by supporters of Jeremy Corbyn, and Coyne says he is not interested in backseat driving the Labour Party or in “playing student politics” with the union’s funding of the party.

Unite’s strength in Labour’s internal politics is often overstated: it controls only two of the 42 seats on the party’s national executive, but it holds about 12 per cent of the total vote at Labour’s annual conference and is the party’s largest single source of funding.

Starmer is likely to have a secure majority for most of his positions at next month’s party conference in Brighton, even without the Unite delegation, whose members have been chosen already by the McCluskey leadership. Recent elections in two other large unions resulted in wins for pro-Starmer candidates: Gary Smith as general secretary of the GMB and Christine McAnea as leader of Unison. Along with Usdaw, the shopworkers’ union that has always backed him, that means the Labour leader can generally rely on the support of three unions holding about 10 per cent of the vote each. With the unions and local parties each holding half the votes at conference, Starmer then needs fewer than half the delegates from local parties to give him a majority in any card vote.

Indeed, the balance of power in the party has shifted so sharply away from the Corbynites that one member of the national executive said that the GMB, which had been a “swing vote” between the pro- and anti-Starmer factions, is now, under Smith, “positioned to the right of the leadership”.

Even so, it is generally better in politics to have more votes rather than fewer, and Starmer will find his life much easier at future Labour conferences if Unite’s block vote switches to the leadership’s side.

If Coyne wins, it will mean that Corbyn supporters, who had complete control of the machinery of the party just 16 months ago, will hold no significant centres of power in the labour movement. In the parliamentary party a Corbynite candidate would not be able to muster the number of nominations needed to challenge Starmer (40), and even among the party members the most favoured alternative leader, Andy Burnham, is definitely not a Corbynite even if he is not a Blairite any more.

Unite, the union formed out of Ernest Bevin’s industrial powerhouse, the Transport and General Workers’ Union, will have reverted to its historic role as the ballast of a government-minded Labour leadership.