The Labour Party is seeing yet another exodus of left-wing members
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party is once again in chaos at the local level. As independent outlet SKWAWKBOX has been reporting, grassroots members of Constituency Labour Parties (CLPs) have been quitting – in some areas en masse.
Starmer: “disgusting”
Since Starmer took charge of Labour in 2020, there’s been an ongoing purge of left-wing members and groups. For example, back in July 2021, the party banned four left-wing organisations – later going so far as to expel filmmaker Ken Loach for supporting one of them. At the CLP level, the party has either been deselecting people, like veteran councillor John Edwards, or clamping down on whole CLP committees, like it did in Bristol. Often it did this because of motions in support of the exiled Jeremy Corbyn. As Loach told The Canary in an interview in 2021:
The behaviour of officials – paid officials – has been disgusting: suspending parties for no reason; ruling motions out of order that were perfectly proper motions to discuss, like the role of the leadership. To say that a party member cannot discuss what the leadership is doing is so stupid, bizarre, destructive – that these are not rules you can abide by.
Thanks to independent news site SKWAWKBOX, we know that more trouble is brewing for Starmer at the local level.
Newham: an exodus of members
Firstly, in Newham, there’s been an exodus of CLP members. It’s over the direction Starmer is taking the party, Labour’s Islamophobia problem, and the party’s targeting of Jewish socialists. As SKWAWKBOX wrote:
a wave of resignations by senior elected officers has hit Newham Labour party as chair after chair of constituency and branch parties have resigned not just their position but their whole membership in disgust at the conduct of of the Keir Starmer-David Evans regime.
On 16 March, Newham branch disability officer Linda Laurie also quit both her role and the party. SKWAWKBOX noted it was over:
Read on...
the party’s bigotry toward disabled people and its failure to protect women, as well as the more general war on local parties and members
But Newham is not the only area seeing members quitting en masse.
‘Betrayals, muzzlings, and expulsions’
On Friday 11 March, 11 out of 13 members of Berwick-upon-Tweed CLP’s executive committee stood down from their roles. Some quit the party too. As SKWAWKBOX noted, their reasons were many, including that Starmer has:
- betrayed leadership campaign pledges including the one to unite Labour;
- suppressed the Forde Report investigating racist, misogynist and Islamophobic behaviour in the Labour Party as described in the “leaked report” from April 2020;
- removed the whip from Jeremy Corbyn, despite him being a member of the Labour Party…
- expelled friends to the Party, like Ken Loach, and fantastic member activists across the country, on ludicrous and often retrospective, grounds;
- muzzled socialist councillors and MPs such that they may not utter a single word of disagreement with the current Leader without being threatened with losing the Labour whip and/or being deselected.
Far from being a broad church, Labour under Starmer is turning into a right-wing cabal of him and his cronies. The very vocal disquiet at local level shows this, and it’s probably only set to continue.
Featured image via the Telegraph – YouTube
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Good riddance to them as they sink into the shit pile of history.
I’m talking about the blue rinse Blairmerites. Not the true (ex) Labour members.
We desperately need a true Labour party. This sham that Starmer rules over is farcical, but dangerous.
Hopefully, members and ex polticians will get together and organise. What happened to Chris Williamson and his efforts?
A report on this would be helpful.
The Keithikaze act continues as decent ppl just walk away.
If Starmer and Evans will not quit the labour Party the party must quit them.
This mass exodus of the left is exactly what the Starmer leadership has been striving for, by hook or by crook. It was even predicted by Angela Rayner in a speech as something devoutly to be wished. Unfortunately, these principled resigners are playing into Labour’s hands.
Do any of these propose a single alternative to Starmer’s Labour?
Under First Past The Post (FPTP) no new party, should one even put up enough candidates, could come close to winning a General Election against the major parties, so the electoral threat to Labour is absent and Labour can go ahead and offer minimal policy change from the Tories. The public are then constrained to vote for it as the least bad option.
The Left must avoid the unity of the political cemetery. Resigning may be principled, but it offers no solutions to the problem of achieving fundamental democratic change.
The Left need to become a unified, democratic socialist movement doing more than just inevitably losing elections every few years as a number of minority parties or even success as ‘principled’ but independent candidates.
New Labour is becoming rapidly the US Demorats: a conservative, nationalist, warmongering, corporate lobby.
The Big Idea is that the corporate media will assail every non-Tory ‘alternative’, and Big Up Starmertrooper’s thatcherite-lite, come election time. Make out that ‘Labour’ is still crusading, still worthwhile, a ‘thorn in the establishments side’.
Little could possibly be further from the truth.
Well, the Greens are going to do very well. If your local greens are strong, get in touch with them and lend a hand.
When ‘Labour’ drops below 20%, THAT will ‘send a message’.
The response will be the British State doing everything it can to ‘repair’ the PLP in public PR terms. That in itself will also demonstrate the uselessness of the PLP as a vehicle for anti-Establishment change.
Go out, Vote Green. Join your local Green group, or party. Many are annoying, but at least their heart is in the right place. Unlike the Blairite/Starmertroopers, they HAVE a heart.
The only change that Labour will bring is a further drift to far-right.
I’m sorry, longterm Labourfolk, but the time has come, to Labour, to “Just Say NO!”.
We DO NOT need a US Demorats Party in the UK. We already have the Tories filling that role.
The Greens seem to have been quiet over the Ukraine crisis. If they are anything like their older sibling in Germany, they have nothing to interest socialists, being a party of capital, imperialism and military force. You will need to explain, Gnu.
Would you compare a conservative Party in Germany with a UK conservative party? No, because they are two entirely different parties.
The German Greens are about to DROP precipitously in the polls, because a lot of members and German voters are horrified by the leadership’s neoconservative insanity.
I for one am quite glad the GPEW hasn’t joined with the stream of warmongering lunacy and one-sided propaganda that every other main party has; although I have no doubt there is a lot of support for the warmongering faction in GPEW as well.
The 1440/7 Mins of Hate by the corporate media liars will have had an effect.
Maybe the puritanical no fun left should form a new party?