Keir Starmer’s decision to suspend Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party
membership – for we must presume that was indeed his in effect –
is being compared to Tony Blair’s decision to abolish the former
Clause Four of Labour’s constitution. The comparison isn’t quite
right.
Blair didn’t actually announce the abolition of Clause Four in
his first speech as Labour leader to his party’s annual
conference. Instead, he said that it was time for an “up-to-date
statement of the objects and objectives of our party” and that
this should “take its place in our constitution for the next
century”.
But the briefing after the speech was clear enough about Blair’s
intention, though he had held back from confronting party members
during it directly.
Similarly, Corbyn’s suspension wasn’t announced during Starmer’s
press conference yesterday morning. It came later, at one o’clock
or so.
The difference is that Blair clearly had a plan to abolish Clause
Four, but Starmer doesn’t seem to have had one to make an example
of his successor.
The decision to act seems to have been sparked by Corbyn’s
defiant statement yesterday morning, and by his later refusal to
renounce it.
And the former Labour leader hasn’t, of course, actually been
expelled from the party: instead, he has been suspended.
The Conservative campaigning machine, so uncertain of itself
recently (think free school meals), has swung into co-ordinated
action: it wants to ensure that the point is taken by the
electorate.
is leading the pack, with an aggressive letter to
Starmer – the central point of which is that Labour’s new
leader was content to serve under the old one.
And has written to Party members. “Keir Starmer is a
lawyer,” her e-mail declares, “and as a lawyer, he follows
whatever brief he’s given”.
Her letter also contains a video of Starmer on The Andrew
Marr Show before last year’s election, saying that “I’m
100 per cent behind .”
You will view this activity either as proof that the
Conservatives are desperate to discredit a new Labour leader who
is a formidable danger to them…
…Or as evidence that they believe Starmer is vulnerable to the
charge of opportunism, given his former presence in Corbyn’s
Shadow Cabinet.
Or perhaps as both. The attack line on the Labour leader for
being a lawyer, one that persistently deploys in the Commons, has the smack
about it of one arising from focus groups.
One take on yesterday’s events is that Starmer will now face a
long drawn-out, debilitating struggle with many Labour members,
some unions and a few MPs over Corbyn’s fate, which will sap and
divert his energies.
We’re not so sure that will do him any harm with voters – though
the question of whether to re-admit Corbyn to Labour, and if so
on what terms, or whether to expel him after all, looks to drag
on and on. A deeper problem for Starmer may be the charge of
opportunism, one to which Opposition leaders are vulnerable.
It is striking that the media has not gone after the
Conservatives over anti-Muslim prejudice in anything like the
same way that it went after Labour over anti-semitism. Part of
the explanation may be that there has been no domestic terrorism
claimed in the name of Judaism, as there has been in the case of
Islam.
But undoubtedly, Corbyn’s long, fitful association with
anti-semites is another, bigger reason. He will now become a
martyr to the hard Left within Labour – which will thereby prove
that, even after yesterday’s report,
anti-semitism will remain a problem for the Opposition and its
leader.
