05 November 2020
Starmer’s War
The purging of Labour.
By John Watson
American politics has given tweets a bad reputation as vectors for false news, but for evidence that they often contain complete nonsense you could do worse than look at John McDonnell’s reaction to the suspension of Jeremy Corbyn from the Labour Party:
“Keir Starmer this morning has rightfully said he doesn’t want a civil war in the Labour Party. Let’s be clear. Nobody does, but it seems we are drifting towards a hell of a row over use of language, misinterpretation, followed by overreaction.”
I am sure that the sentiments behind this tweet are perfectly genuine and that Mr McDonnell finds the idea of internecine strife unappealing. In attributing similar feelings to Sir Keir, however, he makes the mistake of putting brotherly love before cold political interest. Sir Keir needs a war within the Labour Party if he wishes to become prime minister in four years’ time and, savvy politician that he is, he must be well aware of that. The provision of a casus belli in the shape of Mr Corbyn’s reaction to the highly critical report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on the handling of complaints of anti-Semitism in the Labour party must have been very welcome indeed.
Sir Keir Starmer is the leader of the Labour Party and it is worth reflecting on the electoral assets which that position confers upon him. First, there is brand. Many people in the UK regard themselves as Labour voters and will vote or campaign for it more or less as a matter of course. Then, there is the machinery. Labour is a substantial campaigning organisation replete with officers and agents and the ability to squeeze out votes in support of its candidates. The membership of the party is also important. Although few voters support Labour because of the quality of its members, the membership raises the money which fuels a campaign. More importantly, however, the support of the members enables the leadership to ensure that the officers of the party adopt and work for the political line which it is seeking to sell to the electorate. Finally, there are the candidates who need to be attractive to the public if a majority is to be secured.
For Starmer to stand the best chance of success at the next election he needs to have on his side party officers and MPs who are content to back a manifesto which takes the political middle ground. That means that he needs to reverse much of the movement to the left which took place under Mr Corbyn, and his appointments to the shadow cabinet began that process. The defenestration of Rebecca Long-Bailey was another step in the same direction and vacancies for the leadership of key unions in the next month or so gives Sir Keir the opportunity to tighten things further. But he needs to act quickly. The ease with which he won the leadership election coupled with his current popularity with the public mean that he has a lot of leverage at the moment. His best chance is to reshape the party while the tide is running in his favour.
The campaign by the Corbynistas to deselect those MPs who wanted the party to take a more moderate line was a highly aggressive one, involving as it did the dumping of long-serving members for newcomers. There is no reason to think that the reverse movement under which left wingers are forced from their positions in the party or as candidates will be any pleasanter. There will certainly be blood on the carpet and, quite apart from the fact that he is now probably in as strong a position as he will ever be, Keir Starmer must be keen that the blood be shed now so that he has time to rebuild his team once the fighting is over.
If an early struggle is what is needed, Sir Keir’s challenge is to initiate it without losing the support of those voters and party moderates who have little stomach for this kind of thing. What is needed is an excuse to provoke the Corbynistas in a way which will allow him to break their grip on the party and yet preserve his image as a moderate, sensible and decent man. From that point of view the anti-Semitism issue is the perfect weapon and it will be interesting to see how the left react to it.
What they ought to do, of course, is to stifle it, weeping with crocodile tears over the way in which they interfered with the disciplinary process in order to protect their kind, acknowledging the faults which the EHRC identified and never, never, never giving Sir Keir or his friends an excuse to characterise them as racists or to take disciplinary action against them. Then they could hunker down like rats in their burrows and await better times.
The trouble is that such a course requires very careful footwork and that is not the sort of thing which those on the more extreme edges of political parties are good at. Although there are exceptions, of course, the left wing of Labour, like the right wing of the Tories, tends to be populated by people who are not particularly bright. That is why they are content to apply a simplistic ideology instead of making more difficult judgement calls. Will many of the left survive a struggle with the new regime? Probably not. By the next election the electorate will probably be faced by a Labour Party very different from that we have seen over recent years.
Yet, despite all this, McDonnell tweets that no one is in favour of civil war. It is odd really because the idea of revolution and struggle are so sewn into left-wing culture that you would think that they would be quick to spot it if something of the sort was coming their way. Perhaps they only believe in discord which they create themselves. But beware comrades, it can travel two ways:
‘You are not on the Road to Hell,’
You tell me with fanatic glee:
Vain boaster, what shall that avail
If Hell is on the road to thee?
(Saki: For the Duration of the War)
Substitute “conflict” for “Hell”, Mr McDonnell, and see where that leaves you.
