Keir Starmer’s candidature for Labour leadership was based on the promise of ‘unifying’ the party. But rather than unifying, the Evans/Starmer axis has done more to divide and damage the party than any leadership in recent history. Moreover, Starmer’s policies and his general secretary are leading the Party to big losses in the May elections, and that against the most inept and corrupt government of modern times.
David Evan’s dictatorial methods of running the party, combined with Starmer’s Tory-lite policies, threaten to do the Labour Party enormous damage in May. Far from replacing leader Jeremy Corbyn and general secretary Jennie Formby with a ‘winning team’ as they claim, Labour’s right wing have opted for what can only be described ‘team-catastrophe’. Just as the right wing have reduced the Labour Party to an electoral rump in Scotland – something that will also be reinforced in May – they threaten to do the same in large parts of England and Wales.
Up and down the country, Constituency Labour Parties have been suspended, as have Party officers and hundreds of individual members, all for the most spurious reasons. Labour Party meetings are no longer allowed to discuss votes on no-confidence in the general secretary or resolutions to protest Corbyn’s unconstitutional suspension from the Parliamentary Labour Party, done at Starmer’s behest.
Ruled out for supporting ‘indyref2’
In Glasgow Kelvin, a legitimate Scottish Assembly candidate was ruled out by a right wing panel of Labour’s Scottish Executive Committee, on the grounds of having expressed support for indyref2, something that is official Labour Party policy, the differences only a matter of timing.
Then there is the case of Hartlepool, where there is a parliamentary by-election on the same day as the municipal elections. Local Party members here are angry at the imposition of a candidate by Labour’s officialdom, without any consultation among the Party membership as a whole.
But perhaps the most significant of all the dictatorial measures emanating from Evan’s office, has been the disgraceful manipulation of the process to determine Labour’s choice of mayoral candidate in Liverpool. After first accepting and then ruling out the initial short-list of three, a regional Labour sub-committee has imposed a new short-list of two.
Two of the candidates rejected are members of the Walton constituency, Labour’s safest UK seat, where Labour won 84.7% of the vote. The third is a member of the Wavertree party, where Labour won 72.2% of the votes. Keir Starmer’s promise, in the ‘ten pledges’ he put forward in his leadership campaign, to “never lose sight of the votes”, now looks like a sick joke.
Two very inexperienced candidates for mayor
One member of the banned shortlist, Anna Rothery, recently went to court to have her candidacy restored. But although she was not successful, the action did reveal that the Party decision to rule her out was based on an allegation that the Labour Party knew to be false.
So now, Labour Party members – in England’s fifth biggest city outside of London – are supposed to choose a mayoral candidate from two councillors who barely have six years of council experience between them. Having years on a council may not be the most essential qualification for being the mayor of a major city, but many voters will not see it that way. They will understandably see the official ‘Labour’ candidate as the creature of a small, unrepresentative but powerful faction of the Labour Party. The right-wing candidate will be seen as having been foisted onto Liverpool, and it will come as no surprise if this view is reflected in the votes in May.
Labour members in Liverpool will not be turning out in droves to support the official candidate – and who can blame them, when their own opinions are trodden in the mud? It will not be Covid restrictions, but the unconstitutional machinations of Labour’s right-wing bureaucracy that will ensure a minimal election campaign by Labour. We should not be surprised if Labour loses to the Liberals, although, looking at the likely Labour candidate, many workers will be asking, ‘what’s the difference?’.
Threat of commissioners taking over the City
What may complicate the entire process is the threat that the government may send in commissioners to run Liverpool City council, perhaps for a few years. According to some national newspapers and the Liverpool Echo, this is being seriously considered, the pretext being the arrest of the previous mayor Joe Anderson. If he did this, Tory local government Minister, Robert Jenrick, would be behaving as if the entire council was corrupt, and there is not the slightest indication of this. But this scenario, if it happened, would leave the newly elected mayor and City councillors completely without power.
Whether or not commissioners are sent into the City – but more particularly if they are – there will be little enthusiasm for a council election campaign among Labour Party members and none for the mayoralty. The responsibility for that lies with the right-wing Labour bureaucracy and a Starmer/Evans partnership that is trampling on the rights of local Party members.
If Labour members boycott their party’s election campaign in Liverpool, it will not be unique. Members all over the country are effectively ‘striking’ against imposed and unpopular candidates dictated from outside. Party members might be working in the May elections, but they will be ‘picky’ about who exactly they work for. Few will be rushing to support local candidates from the right of the party, who rub their hands glee at every suspension and witch-hunt against the left, and who worked diligently for years to undermine the Jeremy Corbyn leadership.
We will support left candidates in the election
Left Horizons has argued consistently that there is only one justification for being in the Starmer/Evans Labour Party, and that is to organise to fight back: to fight for democratic changes and for socialist policies in the interests of working-class people. In so far as that relates to working for the Labour Party in elections, the same argument applies.
Left members of the Party should find a good left candidate to support, even if it means going further afield and outside one’s own area. We are doing our own class and our own party no favours doing election work for those whose only concerns are their own personal careers, their councillor’s expenses and the status quo. We work for socialist change, not for Tory-lite.
If Labour’s support tanks in the May elections – and the opinion polls suggest that this is likely – we should point the finger of blame exactly where it ought to point, at the right-wing faction that overwhelmingly control the apparatus of the party and its local government wing.
