retired in December 2010, and Woodley followed shortly after that, leaving McCluskey to take office as the General Secretary on 1 January 2011. In December 2010, McCluskey wrote in The Guardian that "there is no case for cuts at all", the government's "austerity frenzy" being "whipped up for explicitly ideological reasons" to complete "Thatcherism's unfinished business by strangling the welfare state". In 2013, McCluskey announced that he would be running for re-election as General Secretary. He was re-elected in April 2013 with 144,570 votes against Jerry Hicks with 79,819 votes on a turnout of 15.2 per cent. In September 2013, Hicks complained to the trade union watchdog, the certification officer, that the result should be declared void as 156,000 ballot papers had been sent to people no longer paying union subscriptions. However, the union was obliged by law to give them a vote (very few actually voted). Relations with Ed Miliband In an April 2013 interview for the New Statesman, McCluskey urged Miliband to drop three "Blairite" shadow ministers from his frontbench team. A spokesman for Miliband said McCluskey did not speak for the party and the "attempt to divide the Labour Party is reprehensible" and was "disloyal to the party". In July 2013, there were allegations of vote rigging in the Falkirk constituency. A consultation over an all-women shortlist was abandoned over fears that not all members had been invited to participate. This was thought suspicious because Unite's preferred candidate was Karie Murphy. Meanwhile, Unite had paid for scores of people to join the Labour Party in line with the union's political strategy. Miliband called in the police to establish whether there had been criminal behaviour. The police investigation was dropped in July. Murphy dropped out as a potential candidate in September 2013, and the Labour Party investigation and report found that there had been no wrongdoing. Charges against Murphy and the CLP's chairman Stevie Deans were dismissed. McCluskey threatened to disaffiliate Unite from Labour and launch a new workers' party in March 2014 if Labour lost the 2015 general election, which could cause Labour to cease to exist in its current form, according to Jim Pickard of the Financial Times. Following Labour's electoral defeat, he found fault with the party's policy proposals, which he thought were "not particularly radical" and believed the party had fallen "for the Tories' austerity trap". 2015 and 2016 Labour leadership elections During the