Len McCluskey, general secretary or the Unite union, speaks to the TUC’s conference in Brighton last year [Image: Mary Turner/Getty Images].

They’ve been right-wingers, centrists (a misnomer), plotters, rebels, traitors (a banned word! Naughty!), moderates (another misnomer – nothing moderate about them), and a few other things besides.

Now Len McCluskey has added a couple more words: Invertibrates and hysterics.

But This Writer thinks the best word for them is a word they have misused themselves many times over the summer: Abusers.

They have abused party democracy; they have abused party members who don’t agree with their sub-Tory policies; and they have abused their fellow Labour MPs who respected Jeremy Corbyn’s mandate as leader.

While Mr Corbyn has been growing olive branches and is keen to offer them to anybody willing to accept one, it should be for the members to decide whether these deeply unpleasant and disturbing characters should be allowed to remain in national politics.

That is why it is so important that the so-called “democratic reforms” of the party must be voted down, when they go before the party’s conference tomorrow (Tuesday).

They are calculated to diminish Mr Corbyn’s influence and grant dominance to the abusers once again.

While I’m not at the conference, and I understand many left-leaning delegates have been refused entry by the abusers, I hope enough people of good conscience remain who are willing to do the right thing.

We’ve all had enough of this selfishness and – again – abuse.

Len McCluskey has criticised Labour MPs for walking away from their roles in the shadow cabinet in what he described as a fit of “mass hysteria”.

The general secretary of Unite said opinion polls had showed Labour level with the Tories, adding “in fact a few of them were showing that we were ahead”, up to the point at which the mass resignations began in June.

It came as Jeremy Corbyn addressed another mass rally at conference today with hundreds of people gathering in Liverpool city centre.

McCluskey defended the leader, saying his ability to connect with voters had triggered the wrong reaction from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).

“Are they not pleased of that, proud of that? Do they have to moan and groan about handfuls of so-called Trots who have infiltrated?”, McCluskey said.

The PLP could learn from Betty Tebbs, a 98-year-old member Unite, he added.

“I was just thinking that perhaps we should get Betty to address the next meeting of the PLP. She might be able to tell them what courage, principles and backbone are all about”, he said.

Source: McCluskey: Shadow cabinet quitters succumbed to “mass hysteria” | LabourList