Labour Party

Keir Starmer used a speech welcoming the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s (EHRC) end to its monitoring of the Labour Party for antisemitism to rule out Jeremy Corbyn standing as a Labour candidate in the next election. In Labour’s rules, Starmer has no power to making that ruling. But selections in the last 18 months have shown the right-controlled National Executive (NEC) doing effectively whatever it likes. Previous guarantees that candidates with enough branch or union backing would automatically make longlists or shortlists have vanished. Former MPs have been prevented from standing...

Members of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet, other politicians and officials and representatives of big capital met on 9-10 Feb summit to discuss “the failings of Brexit and how to remedy them in the national interest”, as the Observer put it. But we do not need David Lammy and John Healey sitting down with Michael Gove, senior executives from GlaxoSmithKline and Goldman Sachs, and the assistant secretary general of NATO, with Peter Mandelson in the chair, behind the backs of the labour movement and public. We need to break the silence about Brexit in the trade unions and Labour Party, and...

Nicola Sturgeon resigned as leader of the SNP and Scotland’s First Minster on 15 February 2023. She has held both posts since 2014. Sturgeon will continue to hold both posts until a successor has been elected – with the process due to be complete by the end of March – and will continue to sit as an MSP until at least the next Holyrood election in 2026. There has been a lot of speculation in the media and social media about the ‘real reason’ for her resignation. But maybe Sturgeon resigned for the same reason that millions of other people jack in their jobs. She’d simply had enough, and there...

Labour Party National Executive right-winger Luke Akehurst has posted on Twitter to recommend an article by Solidarity contributor Sean Matgamna on left antisemitism. “Quite a read”, he says. True enough. But how does Akehurst reconcile his support for purging people from the Labour Party just for social media “likes”, “shares”, or “retweets” of Workers’ Liberty output with his own tweet? The ban on Workers’ Liberty passed by the National Executive in spring 2022 had a “dispensation” saying it was all right for people to attend Workers’ Liberty meetings if they were “debating”, and that...

Lee Anderson. Suella Braverman. The Tories are likely to lose a general election in 2024, but their response is not to soften their line. On the contrary. They are rushing to push through as much as they can: Public Order Bill, Minimum Service law, EU regulations bonfire, Rwanda plan, block on Scotland’s gender-recognition law. They do that both because they want the measures through in the limited time they have, and to rally their political base. The government is being more stubborn than private employers about making real wages and public services bear the brunt of the economic downturn...

It's happened too often to be written off as a momentary slip: the Morning Star and its political masters at the Communist Party of Britain (CPB) have a Jewish problem. The paper has consistently claimed that allegations of antisemitism within Labour have been overwhelmingly "manifestly untrue and malicious" and the work of "not only British and Israeli state actors but an unscrupulous assembly of reactionary forces of all kinds" (quotes from a Morning Star article by Nick Wright, 22 October 2020). When the Equality and Human Rights Commission published its highly critical report into...

In an interview with the Times last month Wes Streeting, Labour's Health spokesperson, said: "I'm minded to phase out the whole system of GP partners altogether and to look at salaried GPs working in modern practices alongside a range of other professionals." Sounds good. A salaried GP service has been a progressive call since the inception of the NHS and has long been the preferred model of the MPU (the Medical Practitioners' Union), now usually known as Doctors in Unite. But the question remains, salaried to whom? In 2004 APMS contracts were introduced, which allow private organisations such...

At London Labour Party conference (28-29 January), the Starmerite leadership / machine let a series of leftish motions go through without opposition. The motion where they decided to fight was one supporting strikes and calling on the whole party, including elected representatives, to do so. That motion ( page 7 of motions document ) was defeated by just over 1% – 49.4 to 50.6%. It was defeated because Labour’s biggest affiliated union, Unison, actively opposed it. I haven’t checked the exact figures, but Union's delegation probably represents something like 15% of the conference. If Unison...

Around 20 people participated in the online "crisis call" organised by "Labour for Trans Rights" on 3 February. Most Labour MPs abstained on the Tories anti-trans wielding of Section 35, and Keir Starmer has opposed 16-year-olds legally changing gender. L4TR is distinct from the (long-dormant) "Labour Campaign for Trans Rights" . The meeting felt like an inaugural public meeting. We discussed issues without yet collectively agreeing on concrete plans. There was disagreement (in emphasis) between those favouring a bureaucratic approach, and those more democratically-orientated. The former...

Keir Starmer's claim at the 25 January Prime Minister's Questions that Rishi Sunak is "hopelessly weak" reflected a favourite Labour leadership theme. The problem with the Tories is supposedly that they are weak, incompetent, and so on. Their policies serve the interests of the rich at the expense of the majority? That is played down, secondary, considered a less vote-catching comment. So a strong Tory government, competently implementing its noxious agenda, would be better? Starmer claimed that Sunak was "too weak" to deal with Nadhim Zahawi's tax evasion. Such a nonsensical idea fits well...