UNITE general secretary Len McCluskey has warned Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer against reneging on the left policy pledges he campaigned on.

In an interview with the Observer published online Saturday, Mr McCluskey said he was keeping Mr Starmer’s 10 campaign pledges — which include higher tax on the wealthy and the abolition of tuition fees — “front and centre” in the coming months and years. 

“The fact is that Keir Starmer ran on a radical programme, some might say a Corbyn programme, and of course I keep this to hand,” he said.

“For me, he has to recognise that the ship he is sailing, if it lists too much to the right, then it will go under,” he said. He said he had warned the previous Labour leadership that backing a second referendum would be “disastrous,” and when Labour went down to defeat “of course, the left and the so-called Corbyn project, socialism, took a major hit.” But rumours of its death in the party were “greatly exaggerated.”

Mr McCluskey also condemned the leadership’s decision to pay huge damages to former party workers over the BBC Panorama documentary on alleged anti-semitism in Labour, describing the settlement as a “huge miscalculation” and said that there was “no doubt” the union’s executive committee will now want to review its donations to Labour. 

Since the start of 2019 Unite has given £7 million to the party, according to Electoral Commission records.

Rumours that the Unite leader is on his way out before his mandate ends in April 2022 were also put to bed. 

“There’s lots of people who would be delighted to see the back of me, but they’re gonna have to put up with me a little longer,” he said. “I’m going nowhere.”