Tories use election funds to investigate trade union ‘rigging’

The Conservative Party is to fund a search for evidence a trade union rigged the selection of dozens of Westminster candidates.

Party sources have revealed they’re diverting money earmarked for the 2015 campaign into “active investigations” in 41 constituencies, several in Scotland, where they claim there has been “strange goings-on” and undue influence by trade union Unite.

The probe follows allegations, hotly contested and later withdrawn, that Unite tried to rig the selection of the Labour candidate in Falkirk.

If Conservative suspicions are proved correct the issue could become a significant sore for Labour leader Ed Miliband, with multiple criminal investigations triggered in target seats. However, if the Tories are wrong they’ll have wasted valuable election resources.

One Tory source said: “We’re going to launch an active investigation. If necessary we’ll report our findings to the police.”

Meanwhile, Labour leader Ed Miliband has admitted his party bungled its handling of the candidate selection row in Falkirk.

Miliband told The Sunday Post “nobody can be proud” of what happened in Falkirk. Last week Stevie Deans, the local Labour and Unite boss at the centre of rigging allegations, lost his job at the Grangemouth plant for using work time to conduct party business.

Miliband said: “Nobody can be proud of what happened in Falkirk. The candidate around whom there was controversy is not going to be the candidate, the local party is suspended and we’ve embarked on major reform of our party.

“Anyone looking at this in a fair-minded and objective way would say the Labour Party has taken an incredibly serious action to deal with what we saw in Falkirk.”

However, the Tories claim Miliband is “deluded” if he believes people think he has dealt with the problems in Falkirk.

The Tory strategy raises the prospect of police forces across the country having to look into the political processes used to pick prospective MPs.