When Keir Starmer became Prime Minister, a year ago this Friday, my first thought was that he’d never make it to the next election. The welfare reform fiasco, only the latest in a string of bungles that would make Alan Partridge blush, has only confirmed that suspicion.
If he passes his hated welfare reform bill today, albeit at the price of a £3 billion concession to backbench rebels and most of his credibility, Starmer will doubtless breathe a sigh of relief. He would be foolish, though, to think he is in the clear. More than 120 furious Labour MPs spurned his authority last week. And even if, after a bit of flattery and soft-bullying, most of them end up holding their noses and voting for the bastardised bill, their resentment will continue to simmer. (Trust me, I know the feeling.)
Obviously, I’m voting against — as are many of my sidelined former colleagues in the Labour Party: “veteran” MPs who survived the brutal 2019 election and who know, having spent time in their constituencies, that Labour voters don’t want to axe disability benefits. I’m talking about Rachael Maskell, Richard Burgon, Emma Lewell — all really astute politicians, with strong majorities, who nevertheless are consistently ignored. (None of them stood a chance of making it into this Cabinet, packed with politicians in Starmer’s own image: centrists and loyalists — not a Left-winger in sight.) Let’s not forget that even in its diluted form, the bill will still drag an additional 150,000 Britons into poverty. Any party that stands for that is surely not a Labour Party.
“Of course, it’s one thing to denounce government policy, quite another to vote against it.”
I am curious, however, as to how the newest intake of MPs will vote. In the past, these well-meaning Starmer loyalists — the Starmtroopers — have, understandably, been too timid to rebel, even against policies that could have been plucked straight from a Conservative manifesto: such as the two-child limit and the winter fuel allowance. Yet on the issue of welfare reform, a fair few of them have broken ranks.
Of course, it’s one thing to denounce Government policy, quite another to vote against it. Many of these MPs, selected purely for their promise of obedience, will surely get cold feet. But the spirit of mutiny doesn’t just vanish, nor do the feelings of shame when you’re forced to vote for a policy you despise. From now on, Starmer should be on rebellion watch. For even his army of loyalists now know they have nothing to lose given the dire polls reflecting their constituents’ verdict on this first year of a Labour Government.
It is ironic that, despite its enormous majority, the Labour Party has never been more paranoid and controlling — today it’s even worse than when I resigned last September. Already back then the regime had become so stifling that any political points or objections raised that were even slightly at odds with the often vacuous “party lines” were met with the sharp lash of discipline, investigation, briefing campaigns, and silence. Given this rule of fear, the rebellion over disability benefit is even more extraordinary.
Yet knowing Starmer, he will be oblivious to all this. Just look at his catastrophic admission that he hadn’t even read his “Island of Strangers” speech. But, then, he’s never been one for reading the room, let alone speeches. When I was in the Labour Party, he was always aloof and awkward around backbench MPs; rarely deigning to speak to them. I worked with him for eight years, in a considerably smaller group of Labour MPs, and most of us never caught even a glimpse of this much-vaunted “soft side”.
Consider his behaviour during the election campaign. When the general election was announced by the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, we were all summoned to a campaign launch on Zoom. The existing Labour MPs were put on mute, and forced to listen to motivational wisdom from Starmer, Pat McFadden and Morgan McSweeney. Starmer began his talk by saying how excited he was to work with the greatest bunch of candidates he’d ever seen — that is, not us, but the several hundred strangers whose bobbing heads had joined the call. Cue: anger among the veterans. To have survived the 2019 electoral wipeout was an extreme political test, and one that we had endured and Starmer consistently ignored. It was a huge kick in the teeth.
His remarkable lack of tact became even clearer during the campaign. Those of us in “defensive seats” were not only charged vast amounts of money for campaign materials, but we received little to no support from the Party. It’s no mean feat to fundraise to pay for leaflets while touring your constituency, answering urgent casework, preparing for hustings, and doing endless media. On top of that, we “veterans” were threatened, bullied, and reprimanded if we didn’t also drop our own campaigns to go and help out the new candidates, miles away and entirely at our own expense. Several of us were also encouraged — deeply unsubtly — to abandon our seats: to “go to the Lords” and make way for a favoured loyalist. Loyal to the Party, if not the man, most of us deemed problematic enough for such an approach all refused to budge.
Since then, the old guard has taken great career risks to push back on bad politics, and even worse behaviour. They fought off the Winter Fuel Allowance, forced U-turns, and have now orchestrated an uprising against the welfare reform bill. Although I am no longer in the Party, I continue to fight alongside my former friends and colleagues for the political good. And from the outside, I can see the Labour Party’s flaws even more clearly.
Some on the inside can too. Rumours abound that a few pusillanimous MPs, doomed to be one-termers, are considering doing the unthinkable to save their seats — defecting to Reform. Some are apparently even eyeing up the dubious charms of the Green Party. There’s Starmerite loyalty for you. Splinters on the Left are becoming dangerous cracks as the Prime Minister drags the Labour Party Rightwards in the hope of vanquishing Farage. But as Morgan McSweeney and Peter Mandelson continue to whisper sweet populisms in his ear, there’s a chance the more Left-wing MPs will rise up. Of course Reform poses a grave threat to Labour, and one that should be confronted. But you do that by remembering that you are the party of the Left. And some still do.
So as he wakes this morning, last year’s triumph a distant memory, the Prime Minister may think that he has offered enough of a sop to keep the Starmtroopers on side. The uprising has been put down. But for how long? The welfare reform bill has shown this new cohort is not entirely naïve. In time, more of the Left-wingers among them might even gain the courage of their convictions and start to speak up. If I were Keir Starmer, I wouldn’t be celebrating this Friday.
