Labour after the Spending Review

The 11 June Spending Review showed the Labour leadership swerving under pressure from the labour movement; but swerving so as (they hope) to deflect criticism of the rest of their policy, and simultaneously signalling a desire to clamp down.

Many Constituency Labour Parties had condemned benefit cuts and pressed their MPs to speak up. Rachel Reeves has a minus-28% approval rating among Labour members, and Liz Kendall minus-22. They are by far the most unpopular cabinet members, and the next most unpopular is Keir Starmer himself.

Labour councillors (not members), when polled, identified Imogen Walker as the most right-wing of Labour MPs, probably because she is the partner of Morgan McSweeney. Starmer, Reeves, and Kendall were all rated towards the right-wing end of the spectrum.

The Starmer-Reeves leadership know that their talk of “stability” producing “growth”, and that then resolving all social problems, is empty. There is no new growth. The substantive Labour policies which were supposed to help drive it, like setting up GB Energy, have been stalled. Trump’s tariff wars make the prospects of renewed capitalist stability and growth even fainter.

They swerve, and they will probably raise taxes a bit later in October, but they want to clamp down. On 20 May they pushed through Labour’s National Executive (NEC) decisions no longer to release Labour membership figures, even to the NEC, and to suppress women’s conference and planned Black members’ and LGBT conferences. We should be on the watch-out for new anti-democratic rule changes being pushed through the NEC and then through Labour conference (28 September-1 October) at the last minute this year.

Starmer and Reeves know a clampdown will encourage yet new tranches of activists to quit Labour or dial down activity, and maybe even some unions to disaffiliate. They positively want that. They cannot get a membership which likes what they do, but they aspire to get a membership which is too beaten-down to make protests.

We should argue with activists against letting Starmer and Reeves have it their way. This is the time to revive our activity in the Labour Party, and to draw those who have lapsed back into action.

For Labour conference, the rule requiring that CLP motions be “contemporary” was reintroduced in 2024 and is still in force. Exactly what the rule means has always been slippery, even more so now.

CLPs should be sure to schedule a meeting early in September, on or before 10 September, so the CLP can decide a motion and get it in by the deadline (5pm, Thursday 11 September 2025) while minimising the risk of it being ruled out.