Tories today attacked Ed Miliband for hiring Ken Livingstone’s former right hand man to handle relations between Labour and the trade unions.
Labour sources confirmed that Simon Fletcher has been appointed as Trade Union Liaison Manager by Mr Miliband. “He’s a hugely talented and able addition to the team,” said a senior party source.
However the Tories said Mr Fletcher was a former Trotskyist who would cave in to the big unions and block reforms.
Esher MP Dominic Raab said: “This is a major lurch to the Left by Labour and further evidence that Ed Miliband is irredeemably in hock to the unions,” said Mr Raab. “It’s another blow to Labour’s economic credibility.”
Mr Fletcher was the most senior member of Mr Livingstone’s inner circle of advisers and a hugely powerful figure at City Hall from 2000 to 2008. He built closer relations with Mr Miliband’s team, including campaigns manager Tom Watson, while working on the former Mayor’s attempted come-back in last year’s election against Boris Johnson.
He began his career working for Tony Benn and was involved with Socialist Action, a faction that sprang from a split in the International Marxist Group, whose members boasted of trying to turn London into a “socialist city state”.
After he met Mr Livingstone in 1992, the two became close partners and Mr Fletcher masterminded his boss’s first mayoral victory in 2000.
Although he mostly worked out of sight, Mr Fletcher has been outspoken on occasion. In 2008 he attacked Gordon Brown, then Prime Minister, for “pandering to the BNP or the lies that it has promoted” over housing. He also rounded on Prince Charles for criticising the £3 billion development plan for Chelsea Barracks by the rulers of Qatar, accusing the Prince of “reactionary views”.
Mr Fletcher did not respond to requests for a comment.
