 When Labour was led by Jeremy Corbyn, senior staff members sought to undermine the party during a general election. How did the BBC react to this news? Silence. However, this Thursday, Newsnight set aside a whole 20 minutes to expose the scandal of Unite the Union organising to deselect a few right-wing MPs. A movement founded with the highest of ideals. A movement always bedeviled by profound differences. And in recent years, a movement laid low by bitter divisions. It's the honour of my lifetime to lead this great movement. A new era now with the leader pledged to restore unity. But as Keir Starmer experiences a tough period, divisions are bursting into the open. Foul play comes to cry from adversaries of the left as Newsnight sees evidence of the depth of planning on the left to challenge established Labour figures. I think up and down the country there were attempts to destabilise Labour MPs, to get rid of them. I think if people had known that these conversations were taking place when they were taking place they would have been real shock. I think even Jeremy Corbyn would have condemned that kind of behaviour. So you've got the gloomy music. Nick Watt, the host, is talking about the depth of planning on the left. Tom Watson is saying the plans were so scandalous that Jeremy Corbyn would have opposed them. This was all people trying to destabilise Labour MPs. Let's take a look at what this sinister plot amounted to. It's explained by Nick Watt via some leaked emails. A new flare-up of old embers after Newsnight saw emails by a West Midland Unite activist outlining plans to try and unseat leading Labour figures. In an email dated 12 February 2018, addressed to a senior Unite official Howard Beckett, the activist Steve Price outlined plans to influence the selection of councillors and to put the skids under the former Minister John Speller and Tom Watson, who was then Labour's deputy leader. Newsnight has also seen internal Unite emails in which officials discuss Mr Price's first email. One said that one hour may not be enough time to deal with all the issues he had raised. In a second email on 15 March 2018, addressed to Howard Beckett, Steve Price wrote of how his networking was vital in building up trusted left roots in 59 constituencies. Finally, Steve Price wrote that it had been agreed that he would be paid, but he needed a form of worth to describe what he was, wait for it, not doing. This is not a big deal, right? Trade unions are supposed to have an influence in political parties. Trade unions have always tried to influence selections. If you want to influence who is an MP in a Labour seat, what you're first going to have to do is deselect a Labour MP. This is all completely normal and it's especially normal considering that in 2018 you had Tom Watson actively working to undermine the electoral chances of the Labour Party. I don't understand how they've managed to get a story out of this, but they have and they've employed all the old usual suspects to essentially pretend to be outraged that anyone could possibly fight battles within the Labour Party instead of battling the Tories. It's outrageous that a time when all our focus should have been on defeating the Conservative government in the interests of the people whom we're elected to represent, that unite our biggest union, that there was a discussion going on about how to undermine sitting MPs and get rid of them in something like 59 constituencies, that there was a discussion about getting rid of councillors who didn't meet the political agenda of the few people at the top of unite, there was a discussion about sacking key officials at the Labour Party, the General Secretary and the official in charge of looking at anti-Semitic complaints and there was a discussion about placing people in seats when MPs were retiring or those seats were seen as a marginal. It is appalling to envisage that all that was going on when we were all trying to defeat the Conservative government and as a trade union never has it been more important for them to do their day job, which is to defend their members' interests against all the changes that come from the gig economy, from insecure Labour and from the challenge to employment rights. Now, if I had any more hair, when watching this I would have teared most of mine out because watching Margaret Hodge complain about people who dared to organise inside the party instead of battling the Tories because the only priority should be battling the Tories. It's bananas, quite frankly. Margaret Hodge spent the past five years at every opportunity undermining the electoral chances of the Labour Party by going on the radio and calling the leader a racist. She had a vote of no confidence in the democratically elected leader. She had no interest in Labour winning any elections during those whole five years yet she's allowed to go on Newsnight and claimed to be outraged that anyone did any completely legitimate organising within the Labour Party. She even made it sound sinister that Unite wanted to help select MPs even in seats where the sitting MP was resigning. No one in their right mind thinks that's remotely sinister. I'm obviously in favour of mandatory deselection. I think it's perfectly within any activist's right to try and deselect a sitting MP who they don't feel is properly representing them. But she made it seem like even placing an MP where someone is resigning is a problem. I mean, you've also got to take some of those examples. They were trying to get rid of the person who was in charge of anti-Semitism complaints. Now you've got to remember Margaret Hodges the rest of the time is saying the anti-Semitism complaints were dealt with so poorly. Why do you think they were maybe trying to get rid of that guy? Right? Just as they were trying to get rid of the general secretary. We know from the Labour leaks that the general secretary partook in conversations where people were incredibly disappointed that Labour had taken Theresa May's majority off her. So for Newsnight to allow this to be pitched as there were some left-wingers who were too distracted to win elections when literally talking to some of the people who were most obsessed with undermining Labour's chances is very, very bad journalism. The story doesn't end there because Hodges didn't just sort of take pride of place in this Newsnight segment. She has also used this story of these leaked emails, which I find very inoffensive, to notify the police. She's told the police on Unite the Union, in particular Howard Beckett. Let's go to a tweet. This is what she sent during the show, as it was airing. Yesterday I wrote to the Met Police concerning an alleged criminal offence by the trade union Unite that I have been made aware of. I have now called for an immediate police investigation. Why is this a police investigation? Obviously, they might complain about MPs getting deselected from their jobs for life. That's not a police issue. Her claim is what's dodgy is the funding of this or the potential funding of this. Let's look at her explanation of what she thinks was unlawful. I have recently seen emails suggesting that Unite top officials have been covertly funding political activities, keeping this secret from its hardworking members. If true, this is unlawful. The emails in question were shown in the Newsnight report there from an activist, Steve Price, who suggested that Howard Beckett, who's the Assistant General Secretary of Unite, had agreed he would be paid for the organizing he did. Now, this would be problematic if it happened and was not declared when trade unions do political campaigning with their money, which is perfectly legitimate. They're supposed to say they've done it and say how they spent it. So, if this happened without being declared, it would be problematic. But there is no evidence that happened. All there is evidence of is one activist saying, oh, someone told me I could get paid and no one replied. On Newsnight, Howard Beckett, who is the person who these allegations are essentially being targeted towards, he responded to the allegations. Yes, Steve made a proposal to me and I decided to go in a different direction. There was nothing wrong with the proposal that Steve made. The idea that Tom Watson is shocked by this is quite extraordinary. But I decided to go in a different direction and treat our political officers. So, no, the arrangement that never was formalized with Steve. But as I said, there's certainly nothing wrong with the suggestions that was made in New Zealand. You say never formalized. You went in a different direction. But it is very odd language. For instance, can you explain what's going on here? I need a form of words to describe what I am not doing. If there's nothing wrong with that, why does he need a form of words to describe what he isn't doing? No idea. I have no idea why Steve chose that language as over three years ago. But obviously Steve is an activist in the West Midlands, a good activist. He obviously had ideas in his own mind as to how he could generate activism around the West Midlands. And he wanted some financial remuneration with it. I decided in the end that I would go with our political officers. And I wanted to see that activism that Steve talked about organically grow, rather than have a fiduciary relationship. But there was nothing wrong with Steve's suggestions at all. And there was nothing shocking about it. First of all, he's saying quite rightly, well, he said he thought he was going to get paid, but we never paid him. Maybe a misunderstanding happened. These things happen all the time. By the way, I have no idea if they did. I just think it's ridiculous that this story from 2018, which at most, I mean, how much money could this have involved if it actually happened? How is this worth a big deal, news night story? Also, it's worth saying, she's saying, unless this was deeply sinister, why would he have said I need a turn of phrase to explain what I'm not doing? Right? And I mean, for me, it's obvious what that would mean, which is that, unfortunately, despite lots of campaigning that we did on the left, to campaign to replace your sitting MP, you have to do lots of negative campaigning because we don't have open primaries. You have to deselect them first before you get to select someone better. Now, obviously, trying to deselect a sitting MP, at the very least, it's a little bit awkward. You don't normally say, oh, I'm organizing in this CLP to deselect the sitting MP because people will look at you a bit funny, right? So it's quite natural that you're not going to necessarily say that that's your explicit plan. The reason that's necessary is because the structure of the Labour Party are so awful. The big picture here is this is all from 2018. The amount of money, I assume, is involved. If there is any money involved, doesn't say there's no proof. That's all of these denials from Unite would be tiny. This is being dug up now because there are elections for the general secretary of Unite going on now. Howard Beckett is one of the candidates and members of the PLP don't want him to win. So they've leaked these pretty innocuous emails to Newsnight and Newsnight have decided to do a whole 20-minute piece on it, interviewing all of these people who spent five years wrecking the Labour Party as if they're serious authorities on questions such as this. Why I find it so shocking is because we had another report that was full of leaked emails of people who were actually very willing to undermine Labour's electoral chances. We know that when Labour actually performed surprisingly well, there was a conversation including the general secretary, including head of elections, where they were all incredibly disappointed that Labour had done well. That was a scandal, right? There is no evidence that Unite didn't want Labour to win the general election. There is tons of evidence that many top staffers had no interest whatsoever in Labour winning a general election. As far as I know, Newsnight never covered that. Newsnight never covered that. That was actually scandalous. There was actually evidence of wrongdoing. Here, you've got in 2018, a trade union organised to deselect some MPs, like give me a break. What's most infuriating here is listening to Margaret Hodge sort of talk about how dare people not be 100% focused on Labour winning a general election. What I find most embarrassing here is Newsnight thinking this was worthy of a 20-minute segment. 20 minutes for a really flimsy piece of journalism, where there isn't a smoking gun, where you can point to it and go, okay, money did leave how I'd beck it or unite and did pay this activist. Here, we've got the proof it wasn't declared. Then you've got 20 minutes essentially of speculation based on an exceptionally boring email thread in which there is no clear evidence of wrongdoing. The idea that that amount of journalistic time, and I use my journalistic here quite loosely, has gone into something which doesn't even deliver the coup de grace. I just think aren't there better stories to cover? Was this a slow news day? Could you really not think of anything else? If I was an editor at Newsnight, I'd be saying, well, go back and get me that missing piece of evidence, which proves beyond the shadow of the doubt that there was wrongdoing and not declaring payments. It's a really bad, flimsy, insubstantial piece of journalism without that. It's also incredibly boring. Let's also talk about how it's put together. The BBC is supposed to be balanced. What that balance is, we all know is fiercely contested. There are guidelines, but there's also something in the eye of the beholder. One of the things that I thought would involve being balanced would be putting tougher questions to Tom Watson and to Margaret Hodge. When she's coming out and she's saying, this is when all of us should have been focused on defeating the Tories, I think quite fairly good, but didn't you put a motion of no confidence in Jeremy Corbyn the year before? If you've got Tom Watson saying, I don't even think Jeremy Corbyn would approve of such behaviors. Wouldn't there have been a conversation about, well, hang on, momentum, the campaigning organization close to Corbyn was trying to make open selections of reality. It was yourself and many others who put the kibosh on that. The very basic forms of stress testing that you would expect from journalists to be put to these figures didn't happen. For the BBC, I think it is worse than embarrassing. It's actually undignified and, I think, raises serious questions for the credibility of all those involved. When you've got a story like this, which is essentially so bureaucratic, tedious, and flimsy that it doesn't have a killer blow, you have to squint at it to see what the picture is. It's impressionistic. Essentially, what this is trying to achieve is an overall, I think, smear of Howard Beckett, who is one of the left candidates in the race to replace Len McCluskey as General Secretary of UNITE. But it's also, I think, serving this purpose of trying to delegitimize the role of unions in the Labour Party. The Labour Party came out of the trade unions. It came out of the Labour movement. Obviously, as a lot has changed in terms of trade union membership, trade union militancy, and also the decline of industrial labour, of course, there have been huge changes in terms of that historic role of the trade unions within the Labour Party. But essentially, the principle is that the party is itself the political expression of organised labour. That's still supposed to be the point. Now, you do have a tendency, a wing within the Labour Party, most perfectly encapsulated by Peter Mandelson, who thinks that that shouldn't be what the Labour Party is about, that they should essentially be a kind of technocratic, managerial, and sort of bit more redistributive party, which from a lofty distance operates in the interests of those who it deems to be the less well-off, but fundamentally isn't about empowering them. And the Peter Mandelson theory is that if you do break the reliance of the Labour Party on its trade union funding, then, well, you just rely on big money donors. The problem is, is that under the leadership of Keir Starmer, there has been a decline in trade union funding, and there hasn't been a huge return of the big money donors that the likes of Peter Mandelson would like to see come back to the party. So, in terms of political strategy, this is, I think, entirely counterproductive, because, one, one of the broad brushes that the public emerges with is like, oh, this is another labour infighting story, all right? None gives a shit about 2018. You know, a few people could tell you the real difference between Tom Watson and Jeremy Corbyn, all right? These aren't things which anyone other than, you know, really like, clued in politicos will care that much about, right? The bigger picture is one of our, oh, Labour's a bit of a mess again. Two, you're alienating one of the party's biggest funders without an alternative stream of funding in place, right? These big money donors are not coming back. And three, what you end up with, I think, is a strange thing to do, which is if you're the Labour right and what you want is for Howard Beckett to be drummed out of the United Leadership race, well, at the moment, there are multiple left-wing candidates, right? And if you keep all of them in the race, you have an increased likelihood of someone who is, you know, kind of more affiliated with the right of United, you know, coming through as the left-wing vote gets split. So, I think doing a big hit job on Howard Beckett is, you know, what if he did, you know, leave the race? Well, that's actually a bit worse for your guy, because you still get another lefty coming through and perhaps winning the general secretary position. So, yeah, just embarrassing, poorly thought-out, unstrategic. And I just, I was watching that segment mostly because you told me to, Michael. And I was like, how is this going on for so long? You can go and watch that on iPlayer if you want. Thursday night on Newsnight. I laughed out loud a few times just because of how ridiculous it was. One thing I do want to mention, right? So, there are two ways that story could have been relevant. So, one, it's the whole sort of like deselection is an illegitimate thing to do, right? Which I've explained enough times why I think is ridiculous. The other is, this is a bad story of money being used illegitimately in politics. Now, you've got to think here. I've got no idea if this money changed hand. Obviously, Howard Beckett's denying it seems like their evidence is very, very weak. But the amount of money you'd pay an organizer to help deselect some people is not much money. You're talking a couple of grand or something. Again, this is completely hypothetical. Now, yesterday, another story about money in politics broke, which was that a lord who Boris Johnson gave a peerage despite objections from the House of Lords Ethics Committee gave the Conservative Party half a million pounds three days after being sworn in to the House of Lords. Now, that's a genuine story about money in politics. That's a lot of money changing hands. And it's a lot of money changing hands between an elite with vested interests and the party in power. This was a trade union whose job it is or one of their key jobs is to organize to make political change and who have every right to organize in selection campaigns. Potentially, they've denied it. But the allegation is paying one activist a bit of money to tie him over while he's organizing. It's completely ridiculous. We've got one more clip of it for you because I want to show you how biased the host was in the discussion afterwards. Before we do that, if you are enjoying tonight's show, please do subscribe because we don't do arbitrary hit jobs on trade unions with no evidence. And I think what's important here is it really shows you how much disdain Emma Barnett, who's hosting Newsnight in this instance, has four trade unionists and how much deference she has towards MPs. You completely see the different way she speaks to Howard Beckett, the different way she treats what Margaret Hodges said to what anyone at Unite has said, and then the different style of question she asked McDonough, who is on the panel with Howard Beckett. Let's take a look. You think Margaret Hodges is going to the police because she doesn't want you to be in charge of the union. You genuinely think that's why she's doing it? Of course she is. She's got no other reason to go to the police. There's nothing unlawful. She's just listed all those reasons that she said in the film. Well, I'm not sure what she listed, Emma. You must have heard something said that I didn't hear say because what I heard from Margaret Hodges was we should all have been working to defeat the Tories in 2017. Well, she called it appalling. She called it appalling and she's concerned about third party payments and potential criminal activity. Can I just bring it on to, though, I suppose, if you're watching at home? Emma, that's language. Emma, it's just a source I can just say because this is ridiculous language and this is the BBC. There is no criminal activity in respect of this. If we wanted to engage someone to generate activism within the region, or if we wanted to ask a third party to sponsor someone to engage in political activity in the region, that is completely and utterly appropriate. And that is democracy in places of criminal activity. Margaret Hodges is making a political stunt here. And the hypocrisy of her making the political stunt whenever she undermined the efforts to get a social government in 2017 is riseable. Howard, I'll come back to you in just a moment. Siobhan, to bring you in at this point. There's nothing wrong with this, according to Howard Beckett. This is what unions do. All of those questions, whether or not they were put towards Howard Beckett or Siobhan McDonough, were hostile towards Howard Beckett. So first of all, she says, do you really think, are you really suggesting that Margaret Hodges could call the police because of political reasons? It almost implied in her voice that this is an outrageous thing to say. She says, I don't know what her reasons were. She listed those reasons. She called it appalling. She's really challenging Howard Beckett. How could you possibly question the motives of Margaret? Then when she goes to Siobhan McDonough, her question is essentially, isn't what Howard Beckett's saying ridiculous? She says, they say it's completely normal for trade unions to do this. Do you think this? Now, that's not a challenge to Siobhan McDonough. That's an invitation to trash trade unions. As I say, we haven't showed you the whole piece. You can go watch the whole thing yourself. This is definitely a fair reflection of the tone of the whole piece. But I just find the open disdain for trade unionists and especially left wing trade unionists compared to the deference towards MPs appalling.