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:
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
