Keir Starmer: purging the Corbynites

Keir Starmer, it seems, is blessed with that “most potent of political advantages, good luck”, said Miranda Green in the Financial Times. Last week Nicola Sturgeon, that “one-woman block to Labour’s recovery in Scotland”, unexpectedly announced her resignation; and on the very same day, the Equalities and Human Rights Commission gave the Labour Party a “clean bill of health in its fight against antisemitism in the ranks”. Starmer seized the moment to announce that Jeremy Corbyn, whose tenure as leader was stained by antisemitism within the party, would not be allowed to stand for Labour at the next election. “The Labour party is unrecognisable from 2019 and it will never go back,” Starmer told party members. “If you don’t like that, if you don’t like the changes we have made, I say the door is open and you can leave.”

Starmer has closed “one of the sorriest chapters in Labour’s history”, said Andrew Grice in The Independent. It is remarkable that a party so long committed to anti-racism should have been found to have tolerated systematic harassment of its Jewish members. Last week’s good news allows Starmer to “send a wider signal about how he has transformed Labour”. Transformed is right, said Owen Jones in The Guardian. It now seems clear that “Starmerism” is about “permanently eradicating the Left from the Labour party”. For the “factional warriors” who surround the Labour leader, “sparring with Tories is business but crushing the Left is pleasure”. Right now the Corbynites are being purged, but once in office Starmer will try to sideline the “soft left” too – the likes of deputy leader Angela Rayner. He should be careful what he wishes for. While Labour still lacks a clear vision, and is only heading for office thanks to the Tories’ “self-immolation”, the “most interesting ideas are bubbling away on the left”.

The Corbynites think Starmer has “doublecrossed” them, said John Rentoul in The Independent. And, to some extent, he has: he ran for the leadership promising to respect Corbyn’s legacy. When asked how he squares this with his current, resolutely New Labour position, he bats the question away, skilfully deploying “bland generalities”. He’s not so much a pragmatist as a ruthless and stealthy “political chameleon”. All of which invites the question: could it be that Starmer’s dull, competent, managerial image has been a clever ruse all along? “Could it be that he is actually brilliant at politics?” Starmer’s dullness is his superpower, said Janan Ganesh in the FT. He has realised that audacity and interesting ideas seldom win elections. “The task of a politician is not to inspire. It is to get a plurality of voters to say, ‘Oh, go on then.’”