British Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is doing all he can to distance his leadership from the enduring memory of former party chief Jeremy Corbyn—the man he not so long ago tried to make prime minister. His latest effort has seen Starmer block Diane Abbott, who served as Labour MP for almost four decades and is most well-known as a key Corbyn ally, from standing for the party in the July 4th election.
The move has outraged the Labour Left, which feels as though its influence in the party is being purged by Starmer. But it is really only reflective of Starmer’s mission to make Labour appear more ‘moderate’ (and less Corbynite) so as to please the electorate, rather than to actually change his policy agenda, which remains as radical as ever.
Officially, the reason is (later retracted) comments Abbott made more than a year ago—that Jewish people, like redheads, “are not all their lives subject to racism”—which led to her being suspended from the party pending investigation. But newspapers are today, on May 29th, reporting that this investigation actually ended six months ago but was dragged out—as one party source told The Times—“in order to block her from being a candidate at the election.”
Indeed, it is telling that Abbott’s position in the Parliamentary Labour Party has actually been restored, but that Starmer’s team won’t let her stand for Labour in the election anyway.
Citing sources close to the Labour leadership, the BBC’s Nicholas Watt said that “Abbott cannot stay because she is … a reminder of the Jeremy Corbyn era which … was an era of failure.” Corbyn was himself automatically expelled from the Labour Party last week after announcing that he was going to stand in the election as an independent candidate.
The decision to block Abbott from standing has expectedly enraged the Labour Left. Much has been made of the fact she was Britain’s first black female MP, and that her snubbing is a sign Labour is—as the young Left Labour icon Owen Jones put it—“a clearly racist political party.” Former Labour MP George Galloway, who earlier this year won a seat off Labour for his ‘Workers Party of Britain’ by focussing on the Israel-Hamas war which was (and is) dividing Starmer’s leadership, even gloated that “the anti-Starmer revolt has now spread to British black communities. New Labour are in serious trouble.”
Following this backlash, Starmer suggested that Abbott had not actually been banned from standing as a Labour candidate, saying that “no decision has been taken.” If this is true, it means Labour also hasn’t decided not to ban her, adding to the view—put forward by a Labour source—that the leadership is simply stalling to block her from standing in the election.
Either way, the reality is that the Labour Left really has very little to worry about, beyond optics. Starmer wants to make it look like he is moving away from the leftist Corbyn era to please voters, but the aspects of his agenda we already know about—handing votes to children; making it easier to change gender; spending billions of pounds on green projects—don’t offer any hope of moderation. Not to mention the policies he has yet to announce.
