Ed Miliband faces criticism after Unite-backed Karie Murphy is reinstated by party but withdraws from selection process

This article is more than 7 years old

This article is more than 7 years old

The Labour party will not apologise to an election candidate it reported to the police over allegations of selection rigging involving the union Unite, an official has said.

Karie Murphy, who hoped to stand in the Falkirk byelection, was reinstated by the party after being cleared of any wrongdoing in the selection process but said she was withdrawing from the race for the seat for the sake of "reconciliation and unity".

Ed Miliband has faced mounting criticism of his handling of the allegations and the Conservatives have challenged the Labour leader to publish the internal report that cleared Murphy and the local party chairman, Stevie Deans, of any wrongdoing.

The Labour MP Tom Watson has called on Miliband to apologise to Murphy and Deans.

But a senior Labour source said: "There is no prospect of an apology."

Murphy and Deans were suspended and the Falkirk constituency party put into "special measures" after an internal report – not yet published but leaked to a newspaper – found concerns over the process of selecting a candidate for the 2015 general election.

The report claimed that recently recruited party members had been signed up without their knowledge in order to support Murphy, an allegation that has always been vigorously denied by her and her supporters.

The party referred the matter to the police and handed over documents but Police Scotland ruled in July that there were insufficient grounds for a criminal investigation.

Watson – for whom Murphy worked – quit as Labour's general election co-ordinator at the height of the dispute.

It was the ensuing bitter public dispute between Miliband and the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, that pushed the opposition leader to propose reforms to Labour's historic links with the trade unions.

Party officials are keen to draw a line under the Falkirk affair but there remain deep divisions within the Labour movement over how the row was handled.

Watson said it would be "very gracious" if Miliband personally apologised to Murphy and Deans.

"It's not our finest hour," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"I've looked at the detail of this since standing down and the problem they had at the start was that the report was flawed, it was inaccurate factually."

Watson also questioned the decision of the party to continue with the centrally led selection process – which means members will choose a candidate from a shortlist drawn up by Labour party HQ.

"It's unusual, isn't it, that as there was no wrongdoing in Falkirk that the members are not in full control of their own process," the West Bromwich East MP added.

But the Falkirk MP, Eric Joyce, who created the vacancy when he quit Labour after a Commons bar brawl last year, said he still believed there had been wrongdoing.

"It does represent a tactical victory by Unite but I think from a moral point of view it is a very Pyrrhic victory and it creates a very bad precedent," he said.

People had been "prevailed upon to take their evidence out", he said. "In my view they [Unite) stepped outside the rules and the evidence for that now seems to have been withdrawn by the key people but I don't think that really leaves a credible result as far as anyone's concerned."

Brian Capaloff, a Unite member who is on the Labour party executive in Falkirk, called for the original internal report to be published and said Miliband had caused himself "a complete embarrassment".

He told the Today programme: "Ed Miliband was pushed into making a decision in order to demonstrate that the unions weren't in control and he made completely the wrong call. It's a complete embarrassment, completely of his own making.

"I am of the belief that those allegations were withdrawn because they were unfounded in the first place or because there were suspicions about their submission.

"But unless we actually see the contents of the report then we can't actually see how this has actually been reached and what those allegations were, who submitted the allegations, how they were submitted."

The Conservative party chairman, Grant Shapps, also called for the internal report to be published, claiming its findings showed that McCluskey was "calling the shots" in the affair.

He added that the result was a "stitch-up" designed to end a bitter row with the union, Labour's biggest single financial donor.

Miliband remains embroiled in difficult relations with the trade union movement, which he will address at the annual TUC conference on Tuesday.

GMB is cutting £1m from its affiliation funds to Labour in response to changes to union links pledged by Miliband at the height of the Falkirk dispute.