Labour ally Len McCluskey infuriates as he drinks CHAMPAGNE in The Ivy after election loss

The General Secretary of Unite was seen leaving the up-market restaurant where his staff were having their Christmas do. One diner told The Sun: “Len was drinking champagne and his group shared a toast, they looked very happy with themselves. He was sitting with his group right down the end of the restaurant, he was very clever.

“It annoyed me so much, it wound me up, a socialist sitting in the corner drinking champagne in the Ivy, I mean you can’t make it up.

“They were raising glasses, with one bottle of champagne on the table immediately after they arrived.

“It was a table of six, they arrived at around 2.30pm and started cracking on, they were celebrating.

“It’s the last person you expect to see in the Ivy.

“He is the leader of the union, maybe I’m being naive but I just thought after the election it’s the last person you expect.”

When asked what the occasion was for champagne, Len said: “Champagne – it’s our Christmas staff do.”

Unite the Union, backed Labour’s hard-left plans on the run-up to the general election.

Mr McCluskey has continued to support Mr Corbyn but also is in agreement that the Labour leader should stand aside in three months time.

READ MORE: Labour leadership ‘identity politics’ are ‘unimportant’ to voters lost

He set the blame at the feet of remain-backing Labour MPs who “hankered after the New Labour past” and led a “slow-motion collapse into the arms of the People’s Vote movement”.

The general secretary said Labour needed “a new leader early in the near future” who could “understand the communities that gave birth to the Labour movement”.

He told the Huffington Post UK: “It is pretty obvious where the essential reason for Thursday’s hugely disappointing result can be found.

“When our losses are concentrated in former coalfield constituencies and other post-industrial communities that voted heavily ‘Leave’ in the 2016 referendum, and yet we happily retain our position in London more-or-less unscathed, it is staring us in the face.

“Others will try to make a different case, either because they have volubly hankered after the New Labour past throughout the years of Corbyn’s leadership of the party, or because they lack the honesty to accept the consequences of their advocacy of keeping Britain in the EU at any political price.”

But he also acknowledged “mistakes” made by the party’s leadership throughout its campaign, including what he called an “incontinent rush of policies which appeared to offer everything to everyone immediately”.

The Unite chief added: “Both Labour’s target seats, and the ones most at risk in the north and the Midlands, were preponderantly in Leave-voting areas with very small Liberal Democrat and Green votes.

“Put bluntly, there were far more coalfield seats to lose than there were Canterburys to win.

“As it is, a year of worrying about and placating exclusively Remain voters has produced the backlash which some of us predicted.

“Better by far that we had stuck with some updated variation of the 2017 Brexit position, rather than its negation.”

Mr Corbyn has vowed to quit after a “period of reflection”, and earlier on Friday said: “The responsible thing to do is not to walk away from the whole thing, and I will not do that.”

source: express.co.uk