LABOUR’S failure to take a tougher line on austerity is partly to blame for the increasing likelihood of a Scottish breakaway, party democracy campaigners warned yesterday.

During the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy fringe meeting at TUC Congress, Left Futures editor Jon Lansman said it was “regrettable” that trade union delegates had not supported an “emergency budget to end austerity” at the party’s national policy forum in July.

Mr Lansman said: “Unless we have an emergency budget after the election, we will be faced with a Labour government — a Labour government — delivering austerity.

“What’s going on in Scotland is partly because we don’t have a Labour Party that speaks for labour.”

Communication Workers’ Union (CWU) general secretary Billy Hayes said: “There are people in the trade unions who think we shouldn’t get involved in the Labour Party, and I call them the Jim Reeves faction.

“Jim had a song called Make the World Go Away. Unfortunately, the world’s not going to go away.”

Unite political director Jenny Formby said activists must take a “leap of faith” and pull out all the stops for a Labour victory and said her union had got significant concessions from the policy forum.

Campaign secretary Peter Willsman hailed the “historic” NEC support for a CLPD-sponsored constitutional amendment at the upcoming Labour conference, moving to an individual ballot for elections to the conference arrangements committee.

At last year’s Labour conference, delegates said staffers had illegitimately influenced the result.

Mr Willsman said: “In their enthusiasm for democracy they’re supporting our proposals for everyone to vote from the armchairs.”