AS THE wheels come off the Starmer operation we need pressure from the left for policy change as sweeping as the personnel clear-out at No 10.

The PM may not last long, but the culture of cynicism, greed and contempt for democracy personified by Peter Mandelson dominates the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP). The authoritarianism and hostility to grassroots activism that defined the Starmer project from the beginning have spread from Labour to the country at large.

Distrust of democracy was foundational to the Labour Together faction built by Morgan McSweeney, as detailed in accounts such as Paul Holden’s The Fraud.

Labour MPs had already thrown their toys out of the pram over the mass membership’s choice of Jeremy Corbyn as leader, with most of the PLP voting no confidence in him in the “chicken coup” of 2016, only for Corbyn to win by a bigger margin in the ensuing contest.

2017’s general election saw Corbyn’s Labour increase its vote by three-and-a-half million on 2015 — it was by a huge margin the largest vote Labour has won this century — after which the schemers had to add the general public to the party membership on their list of politically unreliable actors.

Labour Together’s origins lie in those years when, from perspective of Labour machine politicians, politics as usual had been rudely interrupted by the perverse choices of the woman or man in the street.

The indignation of professional politicians at being held accountable by little people was a staple feature of the Corbyn years, expressed in the constant media briefings about MPs being “bullied” by party members whenever they were asked to explain their conduct or voting records.

That assumption, that you can’t trust ordinary people to make decisions, informed the key features of Starmerism.

Dishonesty — since as McSweeney had discovered when running Liz Kendall’s 2015 leadership campaign, openly pro-corporate platforms lose. He would not make the same mistake again, and ran a Starmer campaign that lied to members in claiming commitments to public ownership, an empowered party membership, peace and human rights.

Authoritarianism — since jettisoning this whole agenda and doing the opposite might meet resistance unless opposition was crushed. Hence the mass expulsions, the suspensions of whole constituency parties, the decrees that subjects ranging from Gaza to Corbyn’s own suspension were off limits for discussion.

And fixing. Fair contests risk the wrong people winning, due process gives the wrong people rights. So we had the travesties of natural justice like expulsions for retrospective rule breaches (such as for having associated with an organisation that was later banned) and the rigged selection processes to weed out unsuitable candidates for Parliament, alongside rule changes to limit the choices available to members in future contests.

A clique that was happy to suppress free speech and stitch up disciplinary processes within the party has unsurprisingly proved an enemy of free speech and civic rights in the country at large since coming to power.

It has shown this most obviously in its renewed push to repress the Palestine solidarity movement, beginning with mass arrests at a demonstration in January last year. Two of the leaders of that protest, Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s Ben Jamal and Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham, go on trial later this month in a bellwether case for civil liberties.

The absurd ban on Palestine Action under anti-terrorism laws and the mass arrests at peaceful sit-ins which have followed are further signs of the dystopian Britain the Starmer gang are creating — as is the attack on the right to trial by jury.

It’s motivated by the same suspicion of ordinary people and determination to place all power in “professional” hands that Starmer has always channelled.

If Labour wants to show it has changed, dropping the attack on juries and lifting the Palestine Action ban are the right places to start.