He’s an instinctive loyalist.”Attention has focused on the grassroots candidates in the NEC elections, which have been dogged by allegations of ballot-rigging.The Blairites now acknowledge that three or four of the Grassroots Alliance, the left-wing slate which includes Tribune editor Mark Seddon and ousted parliamentary candidate Liz Davies, are likely to get on to the ruling body. During the Wirral by-election he was deployed telephoning wavering Labour voters who were concerned about the direction in which Mr Blair was taking the party. He would ring up and remind them that Labour was the only party that could beat the Tories.Frank Dobson, the Health Secretary, also chose to announce that NHS waiting lists were falling in response to an oral question in the House of Commons from Mr Skinner – who was so surprised to get a positive answer he pretended to look for a pager and insisted he had not asked one of “them planted questions”.”He may criticise policies but he doesn’t attack the Prime Minister personally,” a Labour source said. He’s become a lot more constructive in his outlook and approach.”New Labour apparatchiks say that Mr Skinner is less damaging to the party than some of his left-wing compatriots. The Dennis Skinner of 1998 is not the Dennis Skinner of 1988 or 1978. “The Prime Minister has a very high opinion of Dennis – he’s got a soft spot for him like we all do. TONY BLAIR has found a new best friend.

Dennis Skinner, the left- winger nicknamed the Beast of Bolsover, has become a surprising confidant of the Prime Minister. Downing Street has let it be known that Mr Blair would be delighted if Mr Skinner is, as expected, re-elected to Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee this week.
The MP for Bolsover, Derbyshire, a former miner, has become the unofficial link man between the Prime Minister and the so-called “awkward squad” of left-wingers in the Commons. Mr Blair regularly telephones him for advice and invites him for tea in his Parliamentary office.”They get on very well,” a Downing Street source said. That compares with 34 per cent for the craft workers represented by the AEEU and 26 per cent for the less skilled occupations, the constituency of the TGWU.A senior engineering union official said MSF should remember that it represented a wide range of people, not just those regarded as middle class: “I’m sure MSF members who have not had the benefit of an extended education will feel they have as much of a contribution to make as those with degrees.”A TGWU spokesman insisted its approach was an “inclusive” one: “MPs should be representative of society as a whole and proportionately should include people from different backgrounds and ethnicity, the disabled and both men and women.”.

The proportion of union membership varies between 73 per cent for teachers to 17 per cent for “business and finance professionals”.The TUC points out that the average density figure for employees in the associate professional category – which includes nurses, social workers and technicians – stands at 46 per cent. Mr Lyons, who wants more MSF members to put themselves forward as MPs, argues that the Parliamentary Labour Party not only reflects the world of work, but an increasingly middle-class union movement. “The future of employment is increasingly professional and skilled and that is why MSF as the union for skilled and professional people is ideally placed to represent that future, both in the workplace and in Parliament,” he said.Dr Phyllis Starkey, Labour MP for Milton Keynes South West, a member of MSF and a biochemist, went further: “The AEEU’s dichotomy between the working class and people who don’t work is far too simple.”And she suspects that when the AEEU is talking about “working people” it means “working men” – only 6.5 per cent of engineering union mem-bers are women, compared with more than 30 per cent at MSF.Some 80 MPs are members of MSF – by far the biggest union presence on the green benches – and all of them are professionally qualified. It shows that the most highly unionised jobs are in professional and “associate professional” fields. The bulk of the 30,000 new members MSF claims to have recruited this year are said to be graduate engineers in electronics, scientists, health care professionals and call centre staff.The union believes that the unskilled are being priced out of the market by cheap foreign competition so that the typical trade unionist is no longer a working-class man.The Government’s Labour Force Survey is adduced as evidence. On the eve of the Labour Party conference in Blackpool, leaders of middle- class trade unionists have reacted angrily to suggestions that they are not really “working people” and that what Parliament needs is a much larger quota of representatives with dirt under their finger nails.
The first shots were fired by the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union which set up a pounds 1m fund to get more of its craft workers into the Commons at the expense of the New Labour candidates.Irritated by the high-profile initiative from the working-class elite at the AEEU, the Transport and General Workers’ Union embarked on a campaign to win prominent positions in public life for its unskilled manual workers.It has all proved too much for Roger Lyons, general secretary of the Manufacturing, Science and Finance Union, (MSF), who yesterday decided to fight back.