The Battle For Labour

The resurgent confidence of the militant tendency among the leadership of Labour's giant union financial backers is a clear sign that a vicious civil war has started in the Labour movement. Charles Moore's article for Saturday's Telegraph on this disturbing development, in which he provides bullet proof evidence that the far left, who long ago infiltrated and took control of the unions, are planning to seize power, is dynamite. He says, for instance:

Unite is led by Tony Woodley. From today, he is pitting his union against hundreds of thousands of holidaymakers in a strike designed to break the will of British Airways, which could go bust. And yesterday Unite's traditional allies in the rail union RMT promised an Easter strike of signal workers.

Mr Woodley is backed by the faction in his union called United Left, which declares that it wants "a socialist economic, social and political system", and wishes to "regain" the Labour Party. It has a motion down for the union's policy conference after the election that calls for the union to "give no support" to any Labour MPs who do not seek to abolish the "anti-trade union laws". This threat could be powerful: Labour campaigns in 148 constituencies are funded by Unite, and 167 Labour MPs and candidates are members of the union. Unite produces a quarter of Labour's money.

This is just a taste. The rest of the article is so powerful, I would hazard it could turn the election. That is if, as Moore says, Cameron starts to move with a bit more political athleticism in taking advantage of it. The stakes are so high, it's difficult to frame them. We are now faced with the real possibility, if Cameron gets it badly wrong (and he would have to get it very badly wrong, admittedly), not just of five more years of Gordon Brown (hideous though that thought is) but of a hard left Labour regime in Westminster.

Whatever the speculation about policy and the intricacies of poll variations, one thing is now clear: the real fight, the fight for the nation's soul, has now begun. And it's a fight we, and the Conservative Party, have to win. Or we all lose.