Skip to main content
Despite Starmer’s efforts, Labour will always have a left
The pressures capital itself creates in society leads to the pressure for radical change, says KEITH FLETT
Keir Hardie

THE efforts of Labour Party HQ to remove the left from the party are perpetual. 

Arguably the first occasion was the formal refusal to recognise the young Communist Party as an affiliate in the late 1920s. 

The most recent purges have included Socialist Appeal and various groups opposed to the expulsion of critics of the current leadership.

Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Features / 18 April 2025
18 April 2025
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
Karl Marx 1
Features / 14 April 2025
14 April 2025
From bemoaning London’s ‘cockneys’ invading seaside towns to negotiating holiday rents, the founders of scientific socialism maintained a wry detachment from Victorian Easter customs while using the break for health and politics, writes KEITH FLETT
TURNING POINT: The anti-cuts plan put forward by Tony Benn (
Features / 31 March 2025
31 March 2025
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and Chancellor of the Excheq
Features / 17 March 2025
17 March 2025
Starmer’s slash-and-burn approach to disability benefits represents a fundamental break with Labour’s founding mission to challenge the idle rich rather than punish the vulnerable poor, argues KEITH FLETT
Similar stories
Leaders of the Labour Representation Committee in 1906. From
Features / 4 March 2025
4 March 2025
The formation of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 marked the beginning of interconnected and contested strategies — parliamentary and industrial — seeking ways to advance working-class interests, writes KEITH FLETT
9 - Corbyn mass support
Features / 6 January 2025
6 January 2025
Every few years, it seems like the ‘right time’ to build a new left party — but what are the right conditions, asks socialist historian KEITH FLETT, looking back at the last two centuries and the insights of Ralph Miliband and EP Thompson
Sidney Webb
History / 30 September 2024
30 September 2024
The words composed by Sidney Webb: ‘To organise and maintain in Parliament and in the country a Political Labour Party’ were a crucial landmark in Labour’s journey to becoming a membership-based electoral presence, writes KEITH FLETT
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer with former Conservative MP N
Features / 14 May 2024
14 May 2024
Normally in British politics, leftwingers defect right. Under Blair and now Starmer however, this trend seems to reverse, calling into question the ‘broad church’ that welcomes Tories and excludes socialists, writes KEITH FLETT