A centrist Labour think tank just made a fool of itself on Twitter

Keir-Starmer and the Fabians logo
Steve Topple


Labour Party centrist think tank the Fabian Society caused quite a commotion on Twitter on Sunday 18 April. It might have been best if the group hadn’t bothered.

Keir Starmer: help needed

The Fabians are “crowdsourcing” ideas. The group wants to know what people think “Keir Starmer & the Labour party should do over the next 12 months”:

Related articles

You can take the Fabians’ survey here. But needless to say, the tweet didn’t go down very well.

Quite a few people thought Starmer should go:

Others gave some actual policy ideas:

But many people weren’t impressed. Not least because they thought there was already a document that had plenty of good ideas in it:

Of course, Corbyn repeatedly came up:

But the bigger picture with the Fabians’ plan was this. As The Canary‘s editor-at-large Kerry-Anne Mendoza tweeted:

Yes, of course the Fabians have a history with a distinct whiff of anti-Corbynism.

Anti-Corbyn Fabians

For example, Socialist Appeal wrote about a report the Fabians produced in early 2017. In short, it argued that at the next election, Corbyn’s Labour could have been reduced to 150 MPs. As Daniel Morley wrote at the time:

Another week, another terrible headline for Corbyn in the Guardian, this time courtesy of their friends in the Fabian Society. Announcing the findings of a highly superficial and subjective report from the anti-Corbyn faction as if they weren’t biased, the Guardian website’s main headline shouted “Labour Could Slump to Below 150 MPs, Fabian Society Warns”. Anyone actually reading the article, however, quickly discovers this claim to be so superficial as to be meaningless.

We all know how that ended.

Undermining the leader

Corbyn ended up denying the Tories a majority at the 2017 general election, gaining more MPs, and seeing the biggest vote share increase since 1945. Even the Guardian itself had to admit that Corbyn did this:

amid decidedly mixed opinion polls and an often thunderously hostile media.

Yet the Fabians remained hostile. At times, the think tank pushed a pro-EU narrative (aided by Starmer) in the party which would eventually help annihilate Labour in the 2019 election. And after that, it gleefully shouted that “the Corbyn experiment must end”.

So, as Kay Ballard summed up:

Yet now the Fabians want help from the public? Too little, too late may be many people’s response.

Featured image via the Fabian Society – screengrab and the Telegraph – YouTube

We need your help ...

The coronavirus pandemic is changing our world, fast. And we will do all we can to keep bringing you news and analysis throughout. But we are worried about maintaining enough income to pay our staff and minimal overheads.

Now, more than ever, we need a vibrant, independent media that holds the government to account and calls it out when it puts vested economic interests above human lives. We need a media that shows solidarity with the people most affected by the crisis – and one that can help to build a world based on collaboration and compassion.

We have been fighting against an establishment that is trying to shut us down. And like most independent media, we don’t have the deep pockets of investors to call on to bail us out.

Can you help by chipping in a few pounds each month?

The Canary Support us

Related articles