A time to stand up

Yes, they said. McDonnell's policies are closer to ours, but he can't win, so there's only one game in town. We have to be able to influence Brown and we can't do that if we're seen to have backed his opponent.

It is, by now, idle to speculate whether a determined effort by the unions to persuade associated MPs to nominate Mr McDonnell might have produced a different outcome.

But it is precisely the time for the unions to work out a means of influencing the new Prime Minister.

Mr Brown himself has wasted no time in letting it be known that, as far as he is concerned, he is in charge and he will brook no opposition to the pro-business policies to which new Labour is committed.

He has thrown down the gauntlet to the labour movement by unveiling an agenda that would strip the trade unions of their power to influence Labour Party policy.

Leave aside the reality that both Mr Brown and his predecessor have consistently ignored the decisions of the Labour conference.

The fact is that defeats at conference for new Labour's neoliberal policies are important.

They provide a point of reference for the labour movement and they illustrate the reality that the Labour leadership is out of step with its own base.

That is why Mr Brown is determined to deny party delegates, including the trade union affiliates, the right to put forward contemporary motions, which have often left the top table with egg on its face.

These motions have included support for the "fourth option" of allowing local authorities to upgrade council properties without having to privatise them, justice for state pensioners, trade union rights and public provision for public services such as the NHS.

They go to the heart of the policy divisions between new Labour on the one hand and the labour movement, Labour supporters and the millions of lost Labour voters on the other.

Mr Brown is engaged in a political variant of the emperor's new clothes.

He wants to win this argument and impress his right-wing tabloid audience by taking on the unions and telling them that they have nowhere else to go. It's him or David Cameron.

Far from the labour movement being dependent on new Labour, the opposite is true. The unions should refuse to give in to blackmail.

If the unions buy this bluff, they will disarm themselves totally, handing over their historically acknowledged right to involvement in the internal democracy of the party they set up.

They will be reduced to fundraisers, cheerleaders and foot soldiers, trying to get Labour's core vote out, on the grounds that they're not quite as bad as David Cameron's Tories.

On the other hand, they could call the Brown bluff, as the POA has done, and tell new Labour that it is prepared to fight without quarter for justice, prioritising our people over the City sharks.

Ducking out of a battle now with the new Labour leader would demoralise people even further and set down a course of subservience for the foreseeable future.