#Labour under Keir #Starmer is waging a ruthless war to eradicate the #left of the party, in a show of #corruption and #authoritarianism.
This battle is being overseen by Labour’s election campaign director Morgan McSweeney, who worked on Starmer’s leadership campaign and was briefly his chief-of-staff. McSweeney “doesn’t have room for compromise with the hard Left”, says his friend Nick Forbes, a former leader of Newcastle City Council. “He thinks they need to be eradicated from the party because they are so dangerous.” This ruthlessness now underscores every Labour selection process...
There’s a more worrying issue too. What does this tell us about how a Starmer #government will handle its critics? Labour’s selection processes appear to be deeply unjust, open to abuse, and verge on the corrupt. Left-wingers, passionate trades unionists, troublemakers and mavericks need not apply. The plan seems to be to wipe out the Left completely, to find the flimsiest excuse to block anyone who doesn’t toe the party line. It is not inconceivable that if Angela Rayner, John Prescott, Margaret Beckett, or Neil Kinnock now applied to be a candidate, they would be blocked at the first hurdle by an NEC panel.
The Starmer team looks fixated on achieving total control, intent on stamping out anything that might embarrass the party. Their tactics go way beyond the dark arts of Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and New Labour, though it’s not clear how much Starmer knows about how the selection system is being rigged, and whether he — a former human rights lawyer — turns a blind eye to the abuses.
https://unherd.com/2022/12/starmers-ruthless-attack-on-the-left/
