EVERYONE has now noticed that left-wing campaigners are being more or less entirely excluded from nomination for Labour parliamentary candidates in winnable seats.

Local Labour members are not rejecting left candidates — Keir Starmer’s apparatus at party headquarters, seizing on any justification, however absurd, is ruling them out of consideration.

Emma Dent Coad, who actually won Kensington for Labour in 2017 for the first time ever, is only the best-known of those victimised. It is estimated that of 40 decent Labour prospects at the next general election where a candidate has been chosen, only one is from the left. Black men in particular are being blocked.

Parallel to this, sitting left-wing MPs are being deselected — Sam Tarry has been voted out in Ilford, and Ian Byrne is fighting for his parliamentary future in Liverpool.  

Apsana Begum in Poplar and Limehouse is being threatened, particularly disgracefully given the problems this working-class Muslim woman has faced since becoming an MP, all from her own side.  

On top of that, it is becoming apparent that Jeremy Corbyn will not be allowed to stand again as Labour candidate in Islington North, the constituency he has served for nearly 40 years — a scandal which the left does not know how to respond to.

All this blocking and firing has a clear purpose. The Starmer leadership and its acolytes in the party apparatus are trying to pre-empt two menacing possibilities.

The first, and most likely, is that even if Starmer wins the next election, it may not be with a commanding Blair-style majority. The latter could happen but is far from a sure bet.

Under those circumstances he might be vulnerable, even as prime minister, to pressure from a reasonably strong left in the parliamentary party, should the latter get its act together.

It might try to hold him to the pledges made during his leadership campaign and would most likely oppose any continuation of Rishi Sunak-Jeremy Hunt austerity.

This would not be something that Starmer is remotely equipped to deal with. Residence in Downing Street would lend him a bit of lustre and power of patronage, but his innate lack of charisma or leadership skills, allied to his deserved reputation for dishonesty, would deplete his political capital pretty fast.

A Starmer government might thereby find itself dependent on the left’s votes, a position that the crew led by Peter Mandelson running him would find utterly intolerable.

Hence the compelling need for the right wing to shrink the left’s presence in Parliament to the irreducible minimum, dredging up every absurdity and hypocrisy to do so.

A second reason for keeping the left out of Parliament is against the day that there will be an election for a new Labour leader.

Starmer has already changed the rules to ensure that there is no chance of a Corbyn-type figure being elected again. The nominations of 20 per cent of Labour MPs are now required to get on the ballot paper.

At present, the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG) of MPs accounts for no more than 15 per cent of the PLP, and it is not itself always united by any means. In a larger body of Labour MPs after the next election, with few if any additions to its ranks, the SCG would be in a still more enfeebled position when it came to nominating for leader.

Had the 20 per cent rule been in force in 2020, no candidate other than Starmer himself would have made it onto the ballot paper to begin with, turning his election into a coronation.

Ideally, the right wing would like a similar situation next time around which, should Starmer fail to secure victory in 2024, would be soon after — an anointment of Rachel Reeves or Wes Streeting.

The latter, to the surprise of no-one, has emerged unscathed from lionising renegade Mike Gapes, who stood against Labour at the last general election, and from abusing Corbyn as “senile.”  

Coronation may not prove possible, and room could be found for Angie Rayner or Lisa Nandy on the ballot paper as well. Andy Burnham would be a serious contender if he has re-entered Parliament by the time there is next a vacancy at the top. But at all costs there must be insufficient left MPs to secure one of their own on the ballot paper.

The experience of 2015 shows that the membership just can’t be trusted not to support a left candidate if they are given the chance. The right wing are impelled by one thought — never again will there be a Corbyn-type leadership.  

In this they act, as ever, as the instruments of the Establishment and its media. The compelling requirement is for an alternative to the Tories which will leave the rich in undisturbed enjoyment of their loot, and can assure everyone from Murdoch to the money markets that capitalism will not only survive a period of Labour government — but may even thrive under it.  

All that being the case, it brings to the fore the question as to what the left can do. It is clear that Starmer distrusts Labour’s members, perhaps with good reason. That should be a source of encouragement.  

Britannia rules the black hole

Whether there actually is a “black hole” in the government Budget is rightly contested. The “hole” does indeed sound like the latest excuse for doing something Tories want to do anyway — renew austerity.  

However, some see possibilities. Step forward Luke Pollard, Labour MP for Plymouth. Here is his opinion: “The £30 billion cost of Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-Budget could have bought four new Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers or 23 new Type 26 frigates…”  

So, if there was an extra £30bn sloshing around, we should use it not for the NHS or social care or infrastructure investment — but to build four new aircraft carriers. He does acknowledge that other ideas for spending £30bn “are available.”

His idea would take the navy’s fleet to six. The US presently has eleven carriers, and no-one else has more than two.  

Pollard does not elaborate on what these carriers might do — one was last seen chugging around the Far East trying to intimidate China while the other got no further than the Isle of Wight before breaking down.  

Promoting schemes to make Britain a naval superpower as society slides into destitution suggests that if Britannia has lost control of the waves, Pollard has lost his political senses.