THE deselection of Ilford South MP Sam Tarry brings the issue of Labour’s anti-left purges to the fore.
Outside the activist left, Labour’s internal selection processes are largely a matter of indifference. People have bigger problems and the mass media aren’t interested.
The contrast with the Jeremy Corbyn years, when any hint of a challenge to a sitting MP received top billing as evidence of bullying Corbynistas trying to persecute long-suffering public servants, is clear: though even then it is unlikely the media attention did any more than embed the idea of a bitterly divided party in the public mind.
The Labour purges matter, though, and the so far successful bid to remove a sitting MP previously demoted for supporting workers on a picket line is an ominous escalation.
Keir Starmer says the party is on an election footing: and his reasoning, that the Conservative government is so dysfunctional that it could fall at any time, is accurate enough.
The culture in a party which could soon form a government is of concern to everyone.
And Labour’s culture is rotten: this is a party that suspends and expels activists for rule breaches invented retrospectively (which can be as minor as having shared an article on Facebook, or granted an interview to a subsequently banned organisation).
A party that suspends a conference delegate for arguing against one of the motions on the agenda.
A party which treats its own members with such contempt cannot be trusted with our rights as citizens: especially given its obvious inclination to outlaw rather than argue with dissent.
Mischievous critics, supposedly on the left, like to portray warnings of the risks in a Starmer government as evidence the Morning Star is opposed to electing Labour rather than the Conservatives.
That isn’t true: the Conservative administration poses a very real and immediate threat to most people in this country. It is impoverishing millions and planning to take a wrecking ball to public services. It is waging a ferocious war on our democratic rights, including the right to strike, the right to protest and even the right to vote. It must be brought down, and the only plausible electoral vehicle for doing that Britain-wide is the Labour Party.
But we are facing a general assault on working-class living standards and civil rights by the capitalist class — motivated in part by the crisis of confidence in the political system expressed in recent years through Brexit and the Corbyn surge, and the elite’s determination to suppress agitation for systemic change.
Starmer’s Labour is playing a key role in that process and its successes accelerate the drive towards a more authoritarian and repressive British state.
Tarry will challenge his deselection, and all power to his elbow, but the willingness to take down social democratic MPs seen as too close to the trade unions shows Starmer is keen to extend his purge from rank-and-file Labour to the parliamentary party — beyond the ritualistic exclusion of the former leader himself.
Some MPs fear the Labour leader is prepared to suspend sitting MPs just before an election on jumped-up accusations, making them ineligible to stand for re-election even after representing their seats for years.
It isn’t yet clear how far Starmer can go: such a precedent would undermine the standing and independence of all Labour MPs, and many who aren’t on the left would have reason to oppose it.
But he has shown a readiness to fight dirty to expunge the traces of Corbynism from the party as a whole and those MPs who have faced deselection challenges are of the left — showing the leader remains paranoid about allowing any socialist figurehead to emerge even in the overwhelmingly right-wing parliamentary party.
There is no future for the Labour left in pretending this isn’t happening. The Starmer purges need to be publicised and challenged.
