UNITE leader Len McCluskey is right that there is no “third option” for next year’s general election — Britain needs a Labour victory to prevent the Tory Party from tearing our society apart.

His pledge of support for the party the trade unions founded — plus a promise of a donation to counter the greater funds available to the banker-bankrolled Conservatives — gives Labour a much-needed shot in the arm.

We may not be inspired by the idea of Ed Miliband in No 10, but the alternative is too grim to contemplate. 

The “unequal, sick country” Mr McCluskey described so eloquently in yesterday’s speech is getting sicklier by the day.

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition has waged a war of unprecedented savagery on Britain’s public services — decimating social security and going further than Thatcher ever dared in inviting privateer parasites into the National Health Service and flogging off Royal Mail for a song.

It has cast hundreds of thousands of public servants onto the dole, while forcing down the living standards of the rest through pay freezes and attacks on people’s pensions.

Britain has become a country where fat-cat corporations can offend with total impunity — seemingly no amount of wrongdoing or incompetence can disqualify the likes of Serco or G4S from security contracts, or Virgin or FirstGroup from our railways.

Vile rhetoric from ministers has frayed the bonds that tie our society together, leading to a worrying surge in racism and prejudice.

We have to turf the Tories out and Labour is the only party capable of doing so.

Still, the party would do well to heed the words of its shadow health secretary Andy Burnham yesterday. It cannot take the support of Unite or other affiliated unions for granted.

Confirming the pledge to end NHS privatisation was an important start, and Mr McCluskey listed other welcome Labour policies — such as repealing the bedroom tax, freezing energy prices and building more homes.

But if Mr Miliband really wants the votes of Britain’s seven million trade unionists he must go much further.

Too many Labour policies are confusing half-measures. 

Mr Miliband does not understand that the best way to ensure people pay a fair price for their energy is to bring the utilities back into public ownership.

He has failed to stem the flow of neoliberal twaddle from Ed Balls about sticking to Tory spending plans and refusing to renationalise the railways.

He prattles about “responsible capitalism,” but Mr McCluskey said no more than the truth yesterday: “Capitalism leads not just to inequality, which we didn’t need to be told, but it inevitably leads to an ever-widening gap between rich and poor.”

Labour needs to take inspiration from the millions of trade unionists thirsting and fighting for an alternative to austerity on a daily basis.

It needs to cast off the crippling legacy of Blair and Brown and reclaim its raison d’etre — representing the working class.

Mr Miliband can start by backing co-ordinated strike action on July 10. Unite’s overwhelming mandate for strike action announced yesterday, combined with the knowledge that Unison, GMB and the NUT will all be out that day, means that millions will be taking a stand against the government’s bid to push them into poverty.

Labour can take a stand with them. Or it can tie itself in knots trying to appease a capitalist elite whose loyalty to the Conservatives is never going to waver and bid goodbye to the support of working people.