Does the union have too much influence over the party?

Somebody calling themselves “TrueLabour” posted this on LabourHome yesterday:-

“If the Conservative party had a single donor called UnitePLC that provided 40% of its donations, provided the CEO of the Conservative party, had its Head of PR setup websites for the Conservatives, hired people like Derek McPoison to run smear campaigns, unfairly influenced the process whereby many of its UnitePLC employees become Conservative MPs through donations and Uniteplc block votes in CLPs….. we would all be outraged at the infiltration of the Conservative party by a single company. But if we just changed the word Conservative to Labour in the above and deleted “plc” we arrive at the state of the Labour party.”

I certainly had not appreciated the scale of UNITE’s influence over the party – though almost all discussions relating to Labour at the moment seem to have a UNITE angle.

No wonder the party is worried about calls to cap donations at £50,000!

HatTip to Madasafish who posted this on a recent thread.

The Ipsos-MORI April Political Monitor: First thing this morning I’m heading to London for a presentation by the pollster and I’m hoping that details of the latest poll will be revealed. I’ll post on my mobile phone as soon as I have the numbers – hopefully there will be some news by 10am. In March MORI had C42-L32-LD14.

UPDATE: Mike has asked me to publish that the new Ipsos-MORI April Political Monitor has given figures of Conservatives 41% (down 1%) -Labour 28% (down 4%) – Lib Dem 22% (up 8%). – Morus