Coll McCail argues Labour are using their dominant position in the polls to settle scores with the party left, and bind themselves to British capitalisms leading personnel. But in doing so they are not appealing to a broad social base, and ignoring the chronic problems of the British system.
When Rishi Sunak announced the General Election, Labour were prepared. Keir Starmer had a “fully organised and operational campaign ready to go,” said a Party spokesperson. Two weeks in, this oven-ready short campaign has been dominated by the leadership’s war on the left. Some have argued that Starmer’s latest cull has distracted from policy announcements and impeded the communication of Labour’s central, if vacuous, message of ‘change’. Such thinking fundamentally misunderstands the purpose of the Labour leadership’s operation.
In January, the Fabian Society suggested that Chingford & Woodford Green should be number ten on Labour’s list of target seats. The National Executive Committee’s (NEC) decision to deselect Faizea Shaheen as Labour’s candidate in such an important seat just over a month before polling day was no freak accident. Risking Iain Duncan Smith’s return to Parliament to remove Labour’s only new candidate with discernibly left-wing credentials was about securing the confidence of the British ruling class once and for all. However, one act of nakedly authoritarian factionalism was not enough. Having toyed with deselecting Britain’s first black female MP, Starmer’s advisors backed off Diane Abbott and removed Lloyd-Russel Moyle in Brighton instead. Chris Ward, a former senior official in Keir Starmer’s team, took his place.
The leadership made little effort to hide their hatchet job, parachuting six Starmer-aligned members of the NEC into safe seats in a matter of days. There were no big-ticket policy announcements to bury the stitch-ups and Labour sources did little to quell the stories which rumbled on for days. The crucial point is this: Far from derailing Labour’s campaign, the leadership’s war on the left is their campaign.
If, as Rachel Reeves insists, ‘stability is change’ and ‘change’ is all Labour offers, then her Party’s election campaign has serious constraints. Shackled to Sunak’s spending commitments, there can be no promise to fund collapsing services. Committed to Trident’s renewal and eye watering defence spending, Keir Starmer proudly proclaims that he would push the red button. During their first head-to-head TV debate, Keir Starmer accused Rishi Sunak of being “the most liberal Prime Minister we’ve ever had on immigration” and admitted he would consider third country detention of migrants.
Since he was elected in 2020, the Labour leader has promised to manage the state more efficiently than his opponents. Lacking a driving vision of his own, he targets Conservative incompetence and ignores ideology. Starmer himself is a power-hungry bureaucrat, happy to be buffeted by the prevailing political winds and never to set his own agenda. The late Tony Benn would have described him as the archetypal Weathercock.
This goes some way to explaining Labour’s election campaign: it is for these precise reasons that sections of the ruling class have offered Starmer such an easy ride. Having accepted, rather than challenged, the balance of economic forces he stands to inherit as Prime Minister, Starmer’s problem is less with an exhausted and deeply unpopular Conservative Party than with those who refute the prevailing orthodoxy. My point is not to overstate the strength of his Party’s left, which has failed to resist Starmer’s onslaught, but more to convey why it is that Labour’s leadership would prefer Ian Duncan Smith to Faiza Shaheen in Westminster.
Labour may well win a landslide in July as people turn out to vote against the Tories. However, the longer-term electoral coalition Starmer seeks to assemble is vague. The leadership’s clientelism has accelerated class dealignment by junking what remained of social democracy. The traditional mass-party model is antithetical to the Starmer project, which depends on a narrow political sphere packed with technocrats. There is no room for democratic dissent or mass participation in a project aimed almost exclusively at stabilising, and thus preserving, Britain’s inherently unequal economic model. Consequently, Labour shows little interest in mobilising the Party’s traditional working-class vote. Instead, they readily dispose of Party activists and members as if they will never have to fight another election.
That’s because the leadership has an alternative campaigning model. Of all political donations made to non-party organisations so far this year, almost 60% have been made to one think tank: Labour Together. Established by Morgan McSweeney (without whom Keir Starmer would not have won the Labour leadership) to seal the Labour left’s tomb once more, Labour Together has taken millions from Britain’s richest men. In return for his efforts, the organisation’s director Josh Simons was rewarded with a safe seat in Northwest England.
Importantly, however, the cracks in Labour’s coalition that led to the collapse of the so-called ‘red wall’ have not been mended, merely papered over with the able assistance of a Tory Party resigned to defeat. May’s local elections and the insurgent return of Reform are reminders of this. Starmer seeks the approval of The Sun, the state and the City to compensate for this absence of a reliable electoral base. Reaffirming that he is not, in fact, Jeremy Corbyn to shore up this support is a fundamental part of Labour’s short campaign.
This also explains the arrival of scandal-ridden right-winger Natalie Elphicke on Labour’s benches in May. However, as with Diane Abbot’s attempted deselection, this story revealed the Starmer project’s fragility. While disguised for the moment by residual anti-Tory sentiment, the centralization of power among Starmer’s allies to approve and remove MPs highlights a deeply authoritarian disposition. Add to this their missing base within wider society and one can be left in little doubt as to how – and in whose interests – an incoming Labour administration intends to govern.
Never missing an opportunity to cement their control, Keir Starmer’s advisors used the latest purge of left-wingers to install an array of loyalists in safe Labour seats. Needless to say, their parachutes landed before Party members could be consulted on the matter. If this had been the case in another country, Britain’s supposed 4th estate would have protested a dark day for democracy. But it wasn’t and they didn’t (with the notable exception of Michael Crick). Starmer’s newfound friends let him off the hook.
It will not always be so easy. Labour may be running their general election campaign against the Party’s left, but this plan ignores presently dormant contradictions in order to pursue ruling class support. Such a strategy can only work for so long.
