It's up to the unions now

Communications union CWU is backing Ed Balls, rail unions Aslef and TSSA have plumped for Diane Abbott, while Community and Usdaw are behind David Miliband.

Party chairman hopeful Jon Cruddas, who was backed strongly by Unite and other unions for the deputy leadership last time round, has also placed himself in the David Miliband camp.

Cruddas suggests that, while disagreeing with Miliband "on a lot of policy," he is impressed with his leadership style.

Many trade unionists believe that Labour has projected a surfeit of style over content ever since new Labour rose to prominence in the party.

Given the current widespread revulsion against Tony Blair's record of wars, subservience to the City, dishonesty and self-enrichment, it's difficult to recall what an asset to Labour he appeared in the mid-1990s.

His relative youth, toothy smile, self-deprecating comments and switched-on sincerity convinced vast swathes of society that this was something new, open-minded and progressive.

Labour would probably have won the 1997 election whoever was its leader, given public awareness of the Tory Party as divided and corrupt.

But the assiduous efforts of Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson to seduce and, if necessary, browbeat the media created an image of Blair as a messiah who had rescued Labour single-handedly from the knackers yard, dragged it kicking and screaming into the modern era and was unique in his ability to communicate with voters.

Even though the writing was on the wall within days of Blair entering Downing Street, with the scandal of Bernie Ecclestone's £1 million withdrawn gift to the party, this image persisted.

The unions gave way to the new Labour fixers in allowing them to transform annual party conference into a Nuremberg rally without the jackboots.

And even once Blair's feet of clay were fully apparent, trade unionists who were critical of his programme of illegal wars and privatisation still allowed themselves to be dragooned into joining the ritual standing ovations for the war criminal.

And instead of demanding a change of political direction on behalf of their members who were abandoning Labour in droves, the unions continued to fund the party at a time when new Labour's City sugar daddies were returning to their first love now that the Tories were deemed electable.

Union finance has, despite the profligacy of the new Labour clique, maintained the very existence of the party. But the unions cannot continue to act as paymasters without insisting on guarantees that their members' contributions to each union's political fund will not be wasted on polishing professional politicans' egos.

All of the leadership candidates bar Diane Abbott were new Labour ministers who loyally parroted the Blair-Brown line.

John McDonnell, who could have projected a principled political position based on the union-approved People's Charter, was not even allowed to stand for fear of posing a valid alternative and doing better than the machine wanted.

Labour members, including the affiliated union membership, have been denied the right to a real choice based on a broad spread of policies.

This situation places the onus on the unions, whoever is elected, to use their influence so that we don't see a rerun of the new Labour debacle, starring a new vapid, grinning figurehead.