The Labour civil war appears to have begun. Keir Starmer deciding to make settlement payments to seven former party employees turned whistle blowers was the catalyst – but the Labour left were itching for a fight, so almost anything could have started it. Jeremy Corbyn retaliated with a statement that appears designed to ratchet tensions up even further. In the wake of the Corbyn statement, rumours began to swirl that Corbyn was going to have the Labour whip removed; this was squashed by the leader’s office. Given what I’ve seen over the last few days, it appears obvious to me that at some stage, almost certainly in the near figure, Starmer is going to have to remove the whip from Corbyn. It is clear that Jeremy is going to keep pushing the envelope until Starmer’s hand is forced. It is for this reason that I would argue he should do it right now – kick Jeremy Corbyn out of the Parliamentary Labour Party.
I realise taking the whip away from a Labour MP who was the leader only a few months back is a huge step and not without large risks. It is almost certain that some of the fiercest Corbynistas in the PLP would do things that would cause Starmer to make them suffer the same fate, reducing the already small size of the parliamentary party even further. Corbyn could launch his own party, getting the young left-wingers to flock across, possibly greatly depleting Labour’s membership, not to mention taking votes away from Labour. This would make an already difficult task, ie getting a parliamentary majority, even trickier.
Now let’s look at the arguments for removing the whip from Corbyn as soon as possible. As I said, Corbyn looks set to force Starmer’s hand. He seems to want to provoke and isn’t going to go into some sort of semi-retirement, that much is abundantly clear now. Starmer probably wants to wait for JC to do something so egregious everyone agrees Corbyn has to go – yet nothing like this is ever going to happen. The cult around Corbyn is just that, so there will never be something the former leader does that will be bad enough for those who have really drank the Kool Aid to agree with Starmer kicking Corbyn out into the Socialist Worker Party cold. In other words, there never will be a better time, so just go for it now.
If there is another left party created, it will fail, very, very badly. As I’ve said elsewhere before, it will probably help Starmer – what could put more clear water between the new Labour leader and the unfortunate recent past than the fact that the old guard has literally left the party? The next general election is going to be more binary than any held in the past thirty years. The question will be stark: do you want Boris Johnson, or whomever is Tory leader by then, to continue being prime minister, or do you want a change of guard? The fact that the Lib Dems are currently doing all they can to obliterate their own personality as a party will only aid this along. Starmer shouldn’t worry about the Corbynistas leaving. In fact, he should help it on its way – starting with Corbyn himself.
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I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. There is also a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters thrown into the mix while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.
Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!
It’s here:
Corbyn wouldn’t be as successful at “getting the young left-wingers to flock across” to him as you seem to suppose. The “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” bubble burst some time ago, with Labour support holding up among young metropolitan small-L liberals at the last election principally because Labour stood the best chance of defeating the Tories in most places, and because of residual distrust of the Lib Dems over the Coalition. Only the ideologues would be inclined to support to a new Corbynista party, and there are very few of those among ordinary voters. Besides, to build long-lasting support they would need a party machine, and even if Corbyn takes the bulk of Momentum members with him, the Labour machine that they tried to take over would be under Keir Starmer’s control. So they only way they could succeed is if they took over another party. And no, that party would not be the Lib Dems, even if Layla wins. The radical liberal left of Layla Moran (and of Charles Kennedy before her) is a fundamentally different political creed from the reactionary illiberal Hard Left of Jeremy Corbyn. We Lib Dems would spit them out.
Keir Hardie founded the Labour Party. ‘Sir’ Starmer is here to bury it. People will be leaving in droves.
Starmer’s shameful record as DPP (Assange, Tomlinson, de Menezes) and his self-confessed zionism are enough to want him out. His behaviour towards Long-Bailey was disgraceful. He is a member of the appalling Trilateral Commission. He has forked out Labour Party members’ money to pay a bunch of traitors. He has also been woefully inadequate in facing up to the Tories’ criminal incompetence in handling the pandemic. Do Labour members (their many, strands, currents, etc.) really want a CIA asset to be head of their party? I have doubts.
Wouldn’t this make Starmer super-susceptible to a leadership challenge though?
The Left surely have the numbers to force one now that they lowered the threshold and the membership may have backed Starmer but he won the leadership contest by saying you’d get the 2017 manifesto but without the toxic frontman or the antisemitism but went out of his way to avoid saying anything critical of Corbyn.
Ian Warren’s point about Labour members valuing “fairness” above everything else I think holds true. Every elected Labour leaders gets to do a GE. Corbyn got re-elected in 2016 not because he was brilliant but because Labour members felt it was unfair to bring him down so soon without him having been properly tested.
The same thing might undermine a challenge against Starmer but him removing the whip from Corbyn (a leader the members liked even if they accept he failed) would be exceptionally provocative.
The part of the far Left which has elevated Corbyn as its figurehead (not that he complained much when it happened) is nowhere near as powerful as it thinks it is. Nowhere near as popular and nowhere near as powerful. A confrontation with them has always been a foregone conclusion for the current incumbent (no matter who that person might have been) so an early coup against them is sensible.
December 2016 demonstrated the incompetent left as being nothing but a cult of militant impotence. Let that be the final words on their Edstone.
NICK
TIMING is everything
Starmer needs to hold fire
He needs soft tories to come over to get a majority as well as return of the red wall of working class
Fire the Marxist just before the election in four years to have maximum effect on the electorate
I think Sir Keir Starmer has proceeded rather well against the far left of the party; starting by clearing out the deadbeats in the back office, in a way that went under the radar to all but the far left. His sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey was much more prominent but the sacking was both inevitable and right to most voters. The payouts now are, again, annoying the far left, but, again, are reasonable to most voters.
But I don’t see any upside at all in removing the whip from JC now. It would look like a purge of the left wing of the party not just to the far left but to many on the soft left or mid-left as it were. He should leave him alone unless he says or does something really bad – to a similar standard applied to RLB; that is, while the die-hard Corbynites won’t like it (and never would) most reasonable people would.
Keir Hardie founded the Labour Party. ‘Sir’ Starmer is here to bury it. People will be leaving in droves.
The man’s shameful record as DPP (Assange, Tomlinson, de Menezes) and his self-confessed zionism are enough to want him out. His behaviour towards Long-Bailey was disgraceful. He is a member of the appalling Trilateral Commission. He has forked out Labour Party members’ money to pay a bunch of traitors. Does the left (in its many components, strands, etc.) really want a CIA asset to be head of the party?