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Editorial: Can Labour’s damaging divisions be overcome?

KEIR STARMER stands in Parliament with a mandate from more than a third of the British electorate and an even more substantial mandate from the working class. 

It is a big responsibility and it is in all our interests to support him in representing our class interests in a Parliament that routinely harms them.

This is not to diminish the damaging divisions which brought him to office and which, on his own account, he aims to overcome. 

That he did so by emphasising his adherence to the values and policies with which his predecessor is most identified can be the only basis on which that desirable aim can be accomplished and is the solid basis on which he is owed loyalty.

Today Starmer held his first meeting of Labour’s national executive committee as leader of the party.

It is as well to be frank about the way the political composition of this body has changed. 

Practically his first act was to replace Diane Abbott, Jon Trickett and Rebecca Long Bailey as shadow cabinet representatives with his close supporters Jim McMahon, Jo Stevens and Jonathan Reynolds. 

In the NEC seats elected by the party’s membership the various left-wing tendencies were divided and the two right-wing factions were united resulting in the election of Johanna Baxter, Gurinder Singh Josan and Carol Sewell. 

The political balance among representatives elected from the trade union categories of membership is not much changed, but the centre of gravity has shifted markedly to the right.

The effect of this transformation is to gift Starmer the power to shape the way his present crisis — occasioned by the leaked report to the Equality and Human Rights Commission — is handled but it also means he will bear the political costs if it is dealt with to the dissatisfaction of Labour’s supporters.

Let us be clear. A factionally organised conspiracy among Labour’s senior and middle-ranking staff, one with clear personal, family and political ties to a substantial body of Labour MPs, through and by a large measure of incompetence and malice, sabotaged Labour’s election prospects and disabled efforts to deal with a measurable if exaggerated problem of anti-semitism.

It did this in order to undermine the leader of the party twice elected by a very substantial majority in a manner not just careless of the electoral consequence but in some cases clearly conscious that this was a risk worth taking in the achievement of their factional goals.

People will argue about whether this amounted to institutional racism but for a party standing for the working-class movement — which is distinguished in history and ideology by a long struggle against anti-semitism and all forms of racism — action must be both proportionate and resolute.

Individuals who consciously compromised the Labour Party’s anti-racist principles deserve to be excluded from its ranks no less than those who sabotaged its election chances. 

In scrutinising these issues, the NEC will have borne in its collective mind the great anger that is widely felt that, in carrying out their factional actions, these conspirators felt relaxed in deploying misogyny, racist tropes and prejudicial language about colleagues, party members and MPs.

Starmer’s election rested substantially on the expectation that he would bring a forensic mind to bear on the actions and policies of the government.

In expressing solidarity with Jewish people at a time when anti-semitism is perceived very widely as undergoing a revival, he will be conscious of the need to make a clear analytical distinction between anti-semitism, criticism of Israeli government actions and zionism as a complex and contradictory political movement.

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