If it hadn’t been for coronavirus, Len McCluskey would have had his swansong by now. The 69-year-old had been expected to announce his retirement as general secretary of Unite at the trade union’s biennial policy conference, scheduled for this month in his home city of Liverpool, a stone’s throw from the docks where he became a shop steward half a century ago. The conference, now postponed until March 2021, should be McCluskey’s last before his term runs out by 2022 (he was first elected in 2010) – an emotional Merseyside farewell to the country’s highest-profile and, at least until the fall of Jeremy Corbyn, most politically influential union boss.
But trade union politics abhors even a potential vacuum. On Saturday (18 July), hundreds of shop stewards and other activists from United Left (UL), the organised faction which has long dominated Britain’s second-biggest trade union, will log into a digital hustings to decide which of two Unite officials they want to succeed McCluskey in an election expected next year. The two other biggest unions, Unison, which endorsed Keir Starmer as Labour leader, and the GMB, which backed Lisa Nandy, will also be electing new general secretaries. But the election in Unite, Labour’s biggest donor, will be the most closely watched.
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