Will Starmer’s ruthless purge start a Labour civil war?

Sir Keir Starmer’s purge of Corbynite candidates on the left of the Labour party looks like it could backfire massively as fissures in the party widen.

Labour wanted to spend today talking about its grand plans to make Britain’s streets safe from crime and anti-social behaviour, promising to bring back Tony Blair’s Asbos for repeat offenders. The announcement was undermined by the news that, in Labour-run London, four people were shot leaving a nine-year-old girl in critical condition. 

The fiasco over Diane Abbott being allowed to stand in the election continued into today with Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner saying that she sees no reason why Abbott can’t stand. Now, both Starmer and Rayner have denied Abbott’s claim that she was blocked. Rayner went further, describing the briefing to the press on Abbott’s being barred as “disgraceful”. 

Abbott isn’t the only Corbyn ally that the Labour leadership stands accused of trying to force out over the past 24 hours. A shocked Lloyd Russell-Moyle received a message yesterday when he was out campaigning in Brighton that he had been disqualified from standing due to an anonymous complaint against him. 

An equally shocked Faiza Shaheen told Newsnight yesterday evening that the same thing had happened to her on account of several purportedly antisemitic tweets she had liked some time ago. She has today said she will be challenging Labour’s decision. 

On the Today programme this morning, Jeremy Hunt quipped: “If Keir Starmer can’t deal with Diane Abbott, how on earth is he going to deal with Vladimir Putin?”

Rather flippant of the Chancellor, but it raises the question: does Starmer have enough momentum and power to get those he disagrees with out of the Labour party without causing a destructive backlash?

Christopher Hitchens once wrote: “Ruthless and arrogant though power can appear, it is only ever held by mere mammals who excrete and yearn, and who suffer from insomnia and insecurity.” It is difficult to imagine Starmer is feeling insecure given the polls and how the country seems to have mentally moved on from the Tories already. But insomnia isn’t off the cards. 

In Monmouthshire in South Wales, Keir Starmer was campaigning with Welsh first minister Vaughan Gething who faces a vote of no confidence in the Senedd next week. Starmer told the BBC that he is not picking fights with anyone and just wants the highest possible candidates to put before the electorate. 

One of those candidates is Luke Akehurst who will stand in the Labour safe seat of Durham North despite living in Oxford. Many in the Labour party have condemned his work as a lobbyist for Israel and a photo has been doing the rounds with him wearing a t-shirt that reads: “I’m literally a Zionist sh*tlord”.  Another candidate causing a stir is Josh Simons, director of the Labour Together think tank, who will stand in Makerfield, Wigan. Simons today condemned the Tory failure to fix the small boats crisis, suggesting that smuggler gangs should be put on a barge and “shipped to Scotland”. 

The second part of the aforementioned Hitchens quote reads: “These mammals [who hold power] are also necessarily vain in the extreme, and often wish to be liked almost as much as they desire to be feared.”

Now, we are getting a glimpse of who Keir Starmer wishes to be liked by. 

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