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  Courtesy of the Times - McCluskey seems to have an over inflated sense of his own importance.
  
  
  
  
  Labour’s deputy leader has hit back against the Unite boss Len McCluskey after he suggested that disloyal MPs were “stale” and could be ousted. Tom Watson dismissed the trade unionist as a “controversial figure” and warned that it would be a mistake to deselect hardworking Labour MPs and distract from Labour’s policies. His intervention came after Mr McCluskey renewed an attack on centrist MPs that he began last month when he said that “Corbyn-hater” parliamentarians should expect to be “held to account”. Last night he told the BBC that MPs should not behave as though they have a “job for life, and they don’t need to respond to anyone”.
  
  He added: “In Corbyn’s Labour people have to respond to their local party members . . . Now, if the local members decide they don’t represent them anywhere and use the appropriate procedures, they should leave and I won’t cry over it.” Last month Mr McCluskey singled out the MPs Chris Leslie, Neil Coyle, John Woodcock, Wes Streeting and Ian Austin among the “promiscuous critics” of Jeremy Corbyn. He claimed that they were trying to present Labour as a “morass of misogyny, antisemitism and bullying”.
  Mr Watson slapped him down, saying: “Len McCluskey is a very controversial figure and he’s very critical of people who are supposed to be on his side a lot of the time. Every Labour MP is selected by their local party to stand at every general election.”
  
  The deputy Labour leader told Sky News: “If he’s saying that we should start removing hardworking Labour MPs from office then I think that would be a mistake and would be a diversion from our ability to campaign against Tory austerity, which I assume Mr McCluskey wants Labour MPs to be doing.”
  Mr Watson and Mr McCluskey used to be flatmates but have since fallen out in spectacular fashion. Last year Mr McCluskey accused Mr Watson of behaving like a “low-budget remake of The Godfather”. He added that the Labour MP appeared to be “sharpening his knife looking for a back to stab”. Mr Watson brushed off the remarks, saying that his former friend had fallen back on “personal insults rather than arguing his case”. He alleged that Unite had plans to fund Momentum and that this would “destroy” Labour. Mr McCluskey said that the claims were a “complete fabrication” and that the union had no such plans.

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