 A big question we keep coming back to on this show is what leverage, if any, the left have over Keir Starmer as Labour leader. So the answers we keep coming back to, members, if they get organised, they might get some wins in the party, maybe they can get some representatives on the NEC, it's a bit of an uphill struggle. Also, you could have social movements sort of pressuring the party from the outside, or I think potentially quite significantly left-wing MPs having some influence if and when Keir Starmer were to enter government. He will not have a massive majority, which will mean that 30-odd MPs can actually have quite a big effect. The other big one though, the other big pressure group who could potentially make life difficult for Keir Starmer and so have some leverage over him, force him to take on more left-wing policies than he otherwise might do, are the trade unions. And there was some big news about a backlash from Britain's biggest trade union this week. On Tuesday, the Executive of Unite voted by 23 to 21 to reduce its funding to the Labour Party by 10%, adding up to almost a million pounds per year, adding up to almost a million pounds per year. Before the vote, Len McCluskey spoke to Newsnight about his dissatisfaction with the direction of the party under Keir Starmer. We give significant money to the Labour Party, and I well remember when I first took over as General Secretary of this union 10 years ago. My members everywhere were saying, why are we giving the Labour Party so much money? Because they felt that new Labour was letting them down. And there will be that demand again, I've no doubt, if things start to move in different directions. And ordinary working people start saying, well I'm not sure what Labour stands for. But the Labour leadership should be cognisant of the possibility that, as you say, if things go in a different direction, your members might start to query funding arrangements. I think funding arrangements is undoubtedly an issue that may come up. There's already, I've got an executive next week and there's already some anger at the fact that the Labour Party paid out significant sums of money to individuals involved in that panorama programme. There's a lot of anger over that. I'd be interested to see what my executive says next week on that. But I'm... Why are they angry? Well, they're angry because they thought it was an absolute mistake and wrong to pay out huge sums of money to individuals who were suing the Labour Party based on the panorama programme when Labour's own legal people were saying that they would lose that case if it went to court. So we shouldn't have paid them anything. That was Len McCluskey speaking to Lewis Goodall at Newsnight before the United Executive made that decision. He seems to clearly be in support of the idea that Unite should spend less money on the Labour Party. And interestingly, actually, it's been reported that Unite have indicated they might spend the extra cash on sort of smaller or more grassroots organisations within the Labour Left. That to me seems like probably what's the most significant part of this. Aaron, I want to go to your thoughts on this. So first of all, the obvious question is Keir Starmer going to care that a big supporter of Jeremy Corbyn, a big left winger who is associated with the previous leadership, has come out and distanced himself from Keir Starmer. I mean, Keir Starmer could well be very pleased with this. It's only 10%. Yeah. It's not a huge amount of money. Yeah. No, I think there's something to that. And I think you're right. I mean, every time that Keir Starmer attacks the left, there seems to be a sort of bump in the polls in terms of, oh, he seems really authoritative. You know, he can take the tough decisions. And basically, taking on the left is seen as shorthand for taking difficult decisions. Taking difficult decisions isn't standing up to the Murdoch press or the government. It's attacking a very weak Labour Left. Let's be realistic. It's about 20 MPs. That's one part of it. We agree on that. The second part is that ultimately, the Labour machine that Starmer inherited was very big, very expensive. Why? Because you had this massive membership that was made possible by the Jeremy Corbyn leadership. Members are leaving. We don't know how many members are leaving so far. We know that direct debits to go through takes around three to six months as a churn. We know some members have left. It might not be many. It might be 20, 30,000. It could be 100,000. If it's towards that larger number and you get United saying, well, we're going to cut what we've given you by 10%, and you don't get the revenues raised by conference, which, by the way, actually, had been going down during the Corbyn years. You hadn't had the big corporate presence that you had previously. Actually, I think maybe in 2018, I think it went up again, people thought they were going to form a government, but generally speaking, they weren't as healthy. But that generally raises money. This year it didn't, obviously. So all of a sudden, you're here, Starmer, and you're saying, we've got to fight local elections in 2021. We need money. And obviously, they think in the longer term, they can replace those resources from private donors. And perhaps they can. I suspect they can't get all of it, but I suspect they can get a significant part of it. The point is, so far, most of those donors have remained cold. You've had United withdraw some money. You've got some members going. United gave, I think, seven million to Labour last year, was it? I think a huge amount. They've been keeping loads. I mean, because other than members, no big donors gave money to Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. So the unions really had to step in. Yeah, well, especially last year. By the way, Labour under Jeremy Corbyn did phenomenally well in terms of raising money. 12 years ago, Labour was almost bankrupt as a political organisation, and now it's not. And what was really interesting in the background music to all of this is that in the last general election, the Lib Dems outspent Labour, right? And that's because so much big pro-EU money went behind the Lib Dems. Can I just say it was all fucking wasted, and it just shows you how thick many people are in this country who give major political donations out, but so be it. We know the British ruling class is pretty stupid. That's not news to many people. But that, again, will also be in Keir Starmer's mind. And the reason why you saw the begging letters and caviar with Keir is because they think we can get all that money, which is it's a lot of money so far it's not coming. And so I think in the longer term, they probably can get most of it in the short term. You've got to fight a local election. You've got COVID, right? You don't know how many of your moneymaking operations, you know, sales of things are going to sort of carry on fundraising events, dinners and so on. It's looking very tough for them. And so 10% is very, you can deal with it. If it's more 20, 30%, it starts to look quite tough. And so it is something for Starmer to think about. On the one hand, like you say, the optics politically, I think are fine, good in fact. But at the same time, you can't, it's never good as an organization to lose money. And for Starmer, there's going to be a sweet spot, right? Okay, we'll lose a bit of money to gain a bit of political credibility with the right. And you know, end up on the wrong side of that and they're in big trouble. I mean, I think for me here, when it comes to money, now, I mean, I don't have sight of labor's finances. So I can't give inside information there. But if I just put my, you know, put myself in the shoes of the British establishment and you notice, right? You notice that Keir Starmer is now having to, you know, strike a balancing act. He's working out who's going to be funding the labor party for the next five years. And you see that Keir Starmer, if Unite pulls money and he doesn't have alternative sources, he might have to remain wedded to this left-wing union leader. Or if you, as you know, Mr. J. Sainsbury's or whoever represents for the British establishment say, look, forget about that guy. We can give you a couple of million pounds a year. It's a very cheap, it's a very cheap investment for the British establishment. Your same British establishment who? Well, the same kind of people who funded the Lib Dems who were a sort of basket case going into that election. And they had plenty of money to put into a People's Vote campaign, plenty of money to put into the Lib Dems then. And I don't think they are that obsessed with re-entering Europe. They just want like a sort of centrist who they can relate to to be in power. And so if they think that using their money, they can mold Kirstama in that image, then I'd open my wallet now. So two things. In the long term, I agree with you, but this is about next year's local elections and people in the middle of a pandemic when the economies and collapse aren't gonna give million, two million pound donations to a political party for an election in four years time. That's the first point. Secondly, you're saying that, you know, the British, really, how many members the British establishment would give a major donation to Kirstama as he promises to decarbonise the economy by 2035, as he promises to increase the top rate of taxation as basically he looks to, he's saying, basically he wants to increase tax on top 5% now. I don't believe that will be in Labour's manifesto come 2024 and partly because he'll need these people's money, but right now, you know, there's gonna be a bit of a, how can I put this? There's a timing issue here, right? It's gonna take a couple of years to, the media call it gain their trust, basically means capitulate on anything like resembling socialist policies. But they need that money sooner rather than later, ideally. Especially if you're trying to plan going forward, it's difficult to plan if you haven't got much money. I mean, people know this and I never, let me use a household metaphor. It's difficult to plan your life and, you know, how, what am I gonna do six months time, a year's time if you're living in your overdraft? Labour aren't there yet, but they could be. And so it's gonna be a challenge for him. And look, if you have lots of members leave, and I don't think that's gonna happen, but if you had 150, 200,000 people leave, I do not think that's gonna happen, by the way. Then it's a really serious question. And the Labour right, and they're only a part of the Stalman leadership, but they're a significant part of it, don't want a mass party. They actually think it's good if lots of members leave because it cements them in terms of internal democracy within the party, because these are the people that would be voting for the left. So I do think it's an issue. And I think it shouldn't be, I actually thought the response from Keir Starman's spokesperson to the Labour list editor. I thought it was a very clever piece of rhetoric. We accept what's happened, but ultimately we need to regain the trust of the British public. It was a very clever, huge response. But they don't wanna mess this up because if you've got no money, you don't win elections. You don't win elections. If you have money, it doesn't mean you win them as you've talked about with the People's Vote campaign. But if you're broke, it's very hard to win elections.