KEIR STARMER’S suspension of Jeremy Corbyn for daring to tell the truth that Labour’s anti-Semitism problem was exaggerated for partisan political purposes reveals that his reputation for a forensically sharp legal mind is a confection. Either that or he is an unprincipled schemer.

The issue here is not the present LOTO’s maladroitly managed disciplining of Corbyn: Starmer and official Labour’s crude disregard for due process — and the brazen indifference to the EHRC’s own prescription for how such matters should be dealt with — were all priced into the political costs that this exemplary action entails.

Rather than a mild-mannered, non-confrontational leader who goes along with his nominal opposite number in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, Starmer is suddenly transformed into an avenging angel — a resolute crusader consumed with righteous fury not at a government that has hastened the deaths of as yet uncounted thousands — but at his predecessor who is to be cast into the darkness.

Corbyn said of the highly charged narrative around anti-Semitism and Labour: “One anti-Semite is one too many, but the scale of the problem was also dramatically overstated for political reasons by our opponents inside and outside the party, as well as by much of the media. That combination hurt Jewish people and must never be repeated.”

On Facebook 29,000 gave this the thumbs up, 10,000 loved it and a couple of thousand expressed various forms of dissent. That stands in the same relationship to the actual level of anti-Semitism in Labour as does the media-induced perception of the same.

Media hostility to Corbyn was so comprehensive and virulent that Newsnight was compelled to flag up the Morning Star as the only alternative voice and the BBC morning news ran our paper’s comment for hours.

Starmer’s declaration of war is grounded in a transparently nonsensical claim that Labour’s anti-Semitism issue was not exaggerated.

If Labour’s real-enough problem was in fact systemic and institutional rather than marginal it is remarkable that it only became apparent when the party elected a man committed to Palestinian national rights, and even more remarkable that it was so quickly diminished when he left office. Indeed, we might enquire why the party’s earlier general secretary and the leaders before Corbyn hadn’t tried to tackle such a deeply embedded problem.

In this new situation it is possible, indeed desirable, that the combined opposition of trade-union leaders and the Labour left — combined with the outrage felt by many party members — might compel some kind of negotiated truce, some face-saving device that takes the heat out of the immediate issue.

If this is the case then it will be nothing but a brief interregnum in a political and ideological conflict in which the Labour Party bureaucracy, the bulk of the parliamentary party and the present party leadership will be brought to bear on anyone who challenges the direction the party leadership has taken.

The first casualty in this conflict is already the dignity of the Labour deputy leader who now combines the roles of lightning conductor and fall guy. Under pressure poor Angela Rayner admitted the truth in Jeremy Corbyn’s statement but ventured that it was “unacceptable” to say it.

In this she is at least more innocently honest than those whose silence signifies that their fear of the consequences that flow from challenging the new dispensation is greater than their political principle. The re-animated right wing who exult in Corbyn’s suspension are thus less dishonest even if, by comparison to the increasingly disorientated Rayner, irremediably malign.

Crises of this intensity put political consistency and courage to the test. There will be some who think a lasting compromise can be reached, that this will pass. They are wrong and should consider Starmer’s track record.

In spite of his leadership election “unity” pitch in which he promised continuity with Labour’s progressive policy agenda, Starmer sacked Rebecca Long Bailey on a contrived anti-Semitism pretext after she backed the teachers’ unions over coronavirus school closures; he appointed a factional Blairite hangover as party general secretary and, most recently, refused opposition to laws that give immunity to state agents who commit crimes, even at the price of a cluster of front-bench resignations.

To his less-than-subtle positioning that throws Labour’s commitment to public ownership into question he has lined up Labour with laws that grant immunity to the criminal exercise of imperialist state power at home and abroad.

Civil wars in Labour are not a new thing. There is a necessary tension between socialists, or anyone who desires a change of the social system, and those in Labour who have made their peace with capitalism or who seek merely to reform this or that aspect of it.

On top of this traditional divide in Labour, one which can allow for a measure of party unity when in opposition — or even in government when the ruling class finds it necessary or expedient to make some concessions — is laid a new antagonism.

The supremacy of New Labour — which fully embraced capitalist orthodoxy, privatisation and imperial war — was challenged with Ed Miliband’s election as Labour leader. Remarkably, he was the first Labour leader ever to lead his party in opposition to a war, while being Jewish was no protection when he came out for Palestinian rights.

Blair built on well-established foundations. Alongside Bevan in the first post-war Cabinet there sat the viciously anti-Semitic imperialist Ernest Bevin as foreign secretary and the intransigently anti-communist Herbert Morrison as Home Secretary.

This was a government that banned a May Day march and mobilised the Metropolitan Police to disperse it. To pay for the Korean War, future Labour leader Hugh Gaitskill proposed cuts in NHS spending. As the British Dental Association says today: “Both NHS architect Nye Bevan and future PM Harold Wilson resigned from Cabinet in protest at the reforms. And prescription charges duly followed in 1952.”

Ever optimistic, Tony Benn once remarked that the founder of the NHS was himself expelled from the party just a few parliamentary terms before he was a key figure in the post-war Labour government.

What is distinctive about the new situation is that the affiliated trade unions — which traditionally acted as a sheet anchor for the right wing — are now a stronger base for progressive policies and leadership. The constituency membership of Labour was always regarded as basically left wing, now it is reinforced by hundreds of thousands of new members.

Of course, the right-wing offensive will fragment some of this. Labour’s individual membership, although substantially progressive in its general outlook, is less informed by mature socialist ideas, less proletarian, more influenced by middle-class liberalism than earlier generations.

Although reinforced by some strong left-wing MPs, the PLP is as overwhelmingly supportive of Starmer’s leadership as it was opposed to Corbyn.

For the left, not just within Labour but in the broader milieu of the trade unions, the anti-austerity movement and the anti-war movement, this new turn presents some new challenges.

Some people are so outraged or demoralised that they have bailed out. They should reflect that this is not only part of the right-wing game plan but that rumours circulate that the party machine has already moved to disqualify any votes cast in the NEC elections by people who have signified their intention to leave.

Covid-19 restrictions and the lockdown have left party democracy, political activity and even on-the-ground electoral organisation in a poor condition. The ebb and flow of Labour politics produces widely exaggerated expectations when the left advances — and a descent into depths of despondency when this goes awry — but Labour still contains many thousands of people who joined or rejoined animated by radical politics and the prospect of real change.

There is already a tendency by some of the groups drawn into Labour by the Corbyn period to suggest that all is lost, that the only alternative is to build some new formation outside of Labour — preferably around whatever distinctive aspect of socialist ideology they lay claim to.

There are unbounded opportunities for useful political work in the unions, campaigns and communities but the test to be applied is whether the social forces exist for a new organised schism in the working-class movement and whether this would bring anything new and productive to the mix.

The only relatively successful and enduring redivision of working-class forces took place under the direct influence of the Great War and the Russian Revolution, was established with great difficulty in conditions of deep capitalist crisis that contrasted with the runaway success of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. This is not the situation at present.

One conclusion from the 100-year history of the Communist Party — which we celebrate this year — is that a solid working-class base and political, ideological and organisational unity are the essential prerequisites for effective working-class politics either inside or outside of the federal framework of the Labour Party. But that itself is not enough if the objective conditions do not exist for a breach in capitalist state power.

The Labour Party is the principal yet imperfect structure that gives practical form to the interdependence of the trade-union and political sides of the Labour movement — but the trade-union movement is substantially weakened and some aspects of class consciousness diminished.

Not all unions beyond those in basic industry, manufacturing and services are affiliated. Not enough constituency parties are substantially working class in composition and leadership.

There are big disjunctures in working-class political life where the sectional trade-union consciousness of many workers and professional groups is relatively well expressed in organisational form, but the collective consciousness of working people as a whole is fragmented by both de-industrialisation and outsourcing, subcontracting and forced self-employment.

Where we can see a broad cross-class consensus built around a shared working-class value system — on the NHS, for public-transport nationalisation, taxing the rich, against austerity — it is increasingly challenged by the present leadership.

But on key questions — around Brexit and the EU, on migration policy or defence policy — an anarchic disunity prevails, while within the Labour left there is a distinct lack of cohesion, strategic vision and tactical agreement.

Lifting the suspension of Corbyn would — for the moment — blunt the right-wing offensive, but the prospects for a renewed socialist advance lie in a revival of the mass movement, heightened class consciousness and greater political unity across the left within and without Labour.

Nick Wright blogs at 21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com.