What does Labour stand for?

I am grateful to Lord Bonkers for the link to an article by the always-perceptive Michael Crick. Crick shows that, far from the weak and vacillating post-holder that the media make him out to be, Sir Keir Starmer is a ruthless operator. The article lists examples of Starmer and a few key executives able to eliminate candidates with any taint of socialism from selection contests, irrespective of the Labour Party's committees' views. (Welsh Labour has not gone quite that far, but presumably nudged by London has allegedly rigged ballots in favour of conservative candidates. The forthcoming merger of the Merthyr Tydfil and Cynon Valley seats, eliminating one of the two current Labour MPs, provides a case in point.)

What worries me is that Starmer also seems to want to replace anti-Semitism in the party (a laudable aim in itself) with Islamophobia. Not only the socialist tradition within the party is being discriminated against, but also many loyal, mainstream Muslim activists and those who protest Israeli prime minister Netanyahu's attack on civil rights.

It is known that openly-divided parties suffer in the polls. Starmer seems to have gone to the opposite extreme. But, as Crick points out:

Past Labour governments, by contrast, have always thrived on being a “broad church”. Attlee’s cabinet counted Nye Bevan and Stafford Cripps among its towering figures, yet both had suffered periods of expulsion from the party only a few years before. Wilson’s benefited from the presence of Dick Crossman and Barbara Castle; Callaghan had Tony Benn and Michael Foot (another former expellee), while Blair’s deputy John Prescott had been one of the “tightly knit group of politically motivated men” denounced by Wilson during the 1966 seamen’s strike.

As the experiences of both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss demonstrated, it’s a mistake to confine ones government to a narrow band of loyal yes-men and women. Cabinet government needs the odd maverick, people who are willing to come up with alternative ideas and scrutinise and challenge existing policy. “Keir is blocking off his exits,” a former Corbyn aide recently told him. “You need some people who are creating space, and who enable the party to be a bit bolder.”

There is always a danger of people at the top of a party hierarchy acting as dictators, even in such a liberal organisation as the Liberal Democrats. The quarantines of the last few years have tended to produce an in-group effect at the top. Before the next general election, efforts must be made to return to our open and tolerant tradition. We must follow Labour down a bland and featureless path.