UNITE general secretary Len McCluskey pledged yesterday to rally behind Labour to evict the Con-Dems from Downing Street. 

The combative general secretary has talked openly about the prospect of Unite quitting Labour should it lose the election by offering a “pale shade of austerity.”

But Mr McCluskey called on members to postpone the fight over Labour’s future, offering union cash to aid the party’s campaign as he insisted that “there is no third option.

“We have a clear and vital choice before us,” he told over a thousand delegates gathered in his home town of Liverpool. 

“It’s whether we can evict the present ruinous Conservative coalition from office and get a Labour prime minister into Downing Street.”

That choice is between Labour leader Ed Miliband’s “increasingly radical agenda” or draconian anti-union laws that will follow a Tory majority victory next May, Mr McCluskey told members. 

He also issued a direct message to Mr Miliband, urging him to ignore personal attacks on him by the right-wing press.

“Our members are not interested in how you eat a bacon butty,” he quipped. “Only that you bring home the bacon to put on their table.”

Unite slashed its donations to Labour by £1.5 million as a result of changes to the union-link proposed by Lord Collins and backed by a special conference in March. 

Mr McCluskey confirmed however that Unite will make an unspecified donation to ensure Labour is not fighting the bankers’ party “with one hand tied behind its back.”

Speaking later, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham said Labour was grateful for the support and “does not take it for granted.”

He contrasted it with £1.5 million donations made to the Tories by shareholders of Britain’s two biggest health privateers — which have been rewarded with £1.5 billion in NHS contracts. 

And Mr Burnham promised to end NHS privatisation if Labour wins the general election in a bid to mobilise Unite members for the campaign. 

“I’m not neutral about who provides NHS services,” he said. “I believe in the public NHS and what it represents.”

Mr Burnham painted the election as a referendum on the NHS. He said Labour stood for “collaboration over competition, integration above fragmentation, people before profit.”