Where has the party gone that I have been a member of for 50 years and to whose aims I have devoted my life?
The evidence of the treatment of Andy Burnham this weekend has demonstrated that it’s no longer the crusade that it was once famously portrayed as by Harold Wilson, but has degenerated into something more like a bear pit of factional gang warfare.
Its politics are no longer based upon honest, principled, intellectually stimulating debate but upon the brutal, violent exercise of self-serving power by those that have secured position by deception.
This hasn’t been exposed just by the Burnham debacle but by the selection of candidates at every level – from council candidates to Members of Parliament, and even candidates for ministerial office.
Since the faction running Keir Starmer took over in 2020, parliamentary selections have been tightly controlled to block any candidates not showing absolute loyalty to the current regime and, God forbid, displaying what was judged to be any semblance of independence of mind.
Where any new MPs have been elected and exercised their judgement in voting to represent their constituents they have lost the Labour whip. Bizarrely the most frequent removal of the Labour whip has been on policies that are eventually adopted by the Government in the notorious sequence of U-turns.
In the run-up to the May elections a similar exercise of purging existing councillors and new potential candidates has taken place.
In my own patch, Hayes and Harlington in west London, this has resulted in the deselection of councillors, including the leader of Hillingdon’s Labour Group. He said that the decision was made because he did not campaign enough during the general election, even though in the most difficult personal circumstances he had tried so hard and had been given dispensation because of a death and serious illness in his close family.
The Labour Party told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “The Labour Party are in the process of interviewing all prospective candidates for the 2026 local elections in Hillingdon. The same criteria applies for all candidates.”
But I have no doubt there will be similar stories echoed across the country. This brutal exercise of power has caused so many party members who have worked devotedly and selflessly such immense personal distress. In Parliament, reshuffles have also removed a number of ministers from their portfolios no matter how successful they have been in transforming manifesto commitments into legislation.
However, all this pales into insignificance compared with the way the party has been rendered meaningless in the eyes of so many of our supporters, and provided Reform UK with a vacuum to fill. People no longer know what the Labour Party stands for or who we stand for.
When those in existing leadership positions try to explain, they come out with the meaningless dribble of “we’re builders not blockers” or Trump-like babble, “Build baby build”.
When hard policies are promoted often their presentation has been almost indiscernible from the Reform playbook while recognisably Labour ones are watered down to appease the corporate lobby.
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The grotesque faction fighting and political bloodletting have crowded out the stories of effective true Labour policies, and as a result our progressive support is either transferring to the Greens or just staying at home in disillusionment and distrust.
There is a desperate need for those who have remained Labour members, those trade unions that support us and all those who want to see a Labour government succeed, to stand up and say very clearly that enough is enough of the domineering politics of the ruling faction.
We want the Labour Party back that was committed to internal democracy, that respected and tolerated differences of opinion and did not seek to suppress them and also upheld what Starmer promised in his campaign to be leader: that “we should end NEC [National Executive Committee] imposition of candidates. Local party members should select their candidates for every election”.
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