Labour’s election campaign will be a “success” if the party holds 200 seats, the general secretary of Unite has said, a result that would be the party’s worst since 1935.

Len McCluskey, one of Jeremy Corbyn’s staunchest backers, whose union has spent millions on Labour’s campaign, said he could not see the party winning the election, but said any result would be good if Theresa May’s Conservative majority did not increase “dramatically”.

“The scale of the task is immense,” McCluskey said in an interview with Politico. “People like me are always optimistic. But I don’t see Labour winning. I think it would be extraordinary.



“I believe that if Labour can hold on to 200 seats or so it will be a successful campaign. It will mean that Theresa May will have had an election, will have increased her majority but not dramatically.”

If Labour held 200 seats, the result would probably give May a working majority of more than 80 MPs, up from 17. Labour ended the last parliament with 229 seats.

McCluskey said he blamed “the constant attack of the media on Jeremy Corbyn and the image that they’ve pinned on Jeremy” and said it was a “huge task” to revive the Labour leader’s image.

“He’s got now just under four weeks to try to see if you can break through that image, and it’s going to be a very, very difficult task,” he said. “We are sending messages out to our members saying: ‘This is a decent, honest man, who is on your side, what have you got to be afraid of, what have you go to lose?’

“Labour’s policies will make Britain a better and more equal society so we’re trying to pump out that message. Whether that breakthrough can happen, we’ll wait and see. I’m not optimistic, but we’ll wait and see.”

McCluskey said the reception from crowds across the country on the election campaign trail gave him hope the party could get a better result than polls were predicting.

“There are massive, massive crowds that turn out for him. We’re fighting for every seat,” he said. “Let’s wait and see what that turns itself into, in terms of percentage votes and seats.”