Starmer’s Labour has brought the ‘Corbitan’ problem on itself

This past week it was confirmed that Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana were launching a new party after both were expelled or suspended and then resigned from the Labour party. They have decided to solicit a name from a mailing list; their website currently calls it “Your Party”, which has led to widespread ridicule from those who thought they intended to call the actual party that, as well as from people who suspect that putting the name to a vote could lead to a silly name being selected, in the same manner as the vote to select a name for what became the RRS Sir David Attenborough, the research vessel of the British Antarctic Survey, came up with “Boaty McBoatface” (that name was used for one of its remotely-controlled submersibles). A common criticism is that, with Reform UK gaining ground at the expense of the Conservatives and looking increasingly likely to be a united right-wing opponent to the Labour party come the next election, any new left-wing party “splits the Labour vote” making a Reform victory more likely. I wonder why they never level this criticism at Starmer or Labour itself.

There are two reasons the Labour Party, especially under right-wing leadership, recurrently produces splinter groups. One is that the party is run as an elective dictatorship in which members can be expelled for public dissent. This includes refusing to support an official candidate, even when that candidate was not chosen democratically but imposed centrally, or does not reflect what many Labour members would consider to be their values, or has no history of supporting the Labour party (e.g. when they are a recent ‘convert’ from the Conservatives who “needs a home”), or there was an overtone of racism or other discrimination in the selection process. Such expulsions were regularly reported in the Welsh Labour party in the 2000s when local Labour activists hoped to promote their own candidates but were overruled in favour of people who were favoured by the leadership. This tendency has heightened since Starmer became leader: we have seen a number of MPs have their whip withdrawn for the kind of dissent that would normally only result in a minister or shadow minister having to resign, often voting for the very things that Starmer and those around him were promising when in opposition, particularly when Starmer was running for the Labour leadership, and for the things people would join the Labour party for and expect a Labour government to deliver.

Related to this is the sheer, abject cowardice typically displayed by Labour leaderships, whether in power or in opposition. This, too, is heightened under Starmer. Labour leaders have a record of being tough on the powerless while quick to jump to appease the powerful. There was no better example than when the Tory press manufactured the “foreign criminals” scandal in 2007, complaining that foreign nationals convicted of crimes were not automatically deported, as they believed they should have been, resulting in scores of people being rearrested who had served their time years ago for such things as getting in a fight in a pub. When faced with an angry US president after 9/11, Blair sent British troops into two separate wars at great cost to us. The same has been seen under Starmer, albeit less dramatically than under Blair: removing Labour candidates for being too forthrightly pro-Palestinian, for fear of accusations of ‘antisemitism’ from Zionists and the right-wing media, and then summarily expelling Jeremy Corbyn for defending his record and (rightly) calling the ‘crisis’ an exaggeration. As prime minister, Starmer has become the anti-Obama: his motto seems to be “no we can’t”, justifying his cowardice with Tory-style appeals to morality. The mean Tory restrictions on state benefits which many of us thought would be swept away in the first year of a Labour government have not been; Starmer now tells us his party is there for “working people” while expecting disabled people to pay the price for balancing the budget his way, while Labour MPs who challenge him have been thrown out. He also rolls out the red carpet for Donald Trump, a president who has, among other things, enabled gangs of thugs to launch a reign of terror against the country’s Latino population, with numerous legal immigrants and even citizens arrested, imprisoned in camps and deported to countries they have no connections to. 

A couple of years ago, in response to the Uxbridge ULEZ controversy that cost the party a by-election result in Uxbridge (Boris Johnson’s former constituency Labour thought it could win), I saw it observed on Twitter that “one striking thing about Starmer (and his legal/managerial ilk more generally) is that he is constitutionally incapable of conducting a political argument. when criticised from the left, he shuts it down bureaucratically. when criticised from the right, he instantly capitulates”. A graphic I have seen shared on Twitter a number of times puts it more succinctly: Labour are “weak with the strong, strong with the weak”. Labour constitutionally requires a kind of discipline of its members that suggests that it is involved in building a certain kind of society, expecting them to forego freedom of speech (by always publicly supporting the chosen candidate, for example), yet fails to realise that expecting such discipline of people in pursuit of social or political justice in support of a party that perpetually disappoints, or openly regards them as a liability, or treats them with contempt, is not going to work (this is a major reason why I have spent most of my life outside the party: I will not pay to give up my freedom of speech so that men like Luke Akehurst can get jobs that others could do better, representing communities). When a candidate who is deselected for thinly-veiled racist reasons runs independently, Labour members — the same ones who chide us for not having patience with or faith in Starmer’s leadership, as if he was a prophet rather than a politician — accuse her of being selfish, of passing up an opportunity to unseat a long-standing right-wing Tory for personal ambition; they never point the finger of blame at the party machine.

The party should be seriously discussing removing Starmer. He had one job and that has been done. It is not at all certain whether he will be able to repeat that achievement given the changing political climate and is unwilling to do what it takes. He is weak in the face of right-wing pressure. He has no charisma whatever. He thinks like a boss and blames everyone else if his demands are a cause of conflict. He does not listen; like many of his class, he thinks that is what other people are supposed to do when he speaks. Opinion polls are showing that Labour is losing ground to Reform, and was even before the Corbyn/Sultana group emerged. He has neither the wit, nor the imagination, nor the courage to deal with any of the crises affecting the country and the party now: the migrant boats issue, the roving gangs of hooligans exploiting it, the anger around his complicity in the Gaza genocide (and that of several of his team), his failure to address issues around education and welfare other than with further cuts. If there is no change at the top fairly soon, the party faces oblivion and the country faces being dragged into the same abyss as the United States. The party cannot blame Corbyn; they must fix this mess themselves.