December’s general election was undeniably as a hammer blow to Labour activists. It’s fair to say that most probably weren’t expecting to be beaten as badly as we were. Since the election of 2017 all the talk had been about what a socialist-led Labour government would do in office, and although a Commons majority always looked unlikely, many Labour members will have at least fancied their party’s chances of forcing a hung Parliament. These heightened expectations make the scale of the defeat that materialised, and another five years of Tory government, all the more bruising. Now the Labour Party is facing up to the question of how to respond. Some aspiring leadership candidates have toured the TV studios volunteering to abandon high-profile policies from the 2019 manifesto – not because they’re unpopular, which they aren’t, but implicitly bargaining with the media and offering them the chance to set the boundaries of Labour policy in return for more favourable (or just less vituperative) coverage. Regardless of this, support for existing Labour policy remains strong among the party’s rank and file, shortly to be voting for a new leader, and the prospect of any drastic retrenchment from the current manifesto is unlikely to be favourably received. Hence the different tack taken by Keir Starmer in his leadership campaign, positioning himself as the unity candidate working to bring Labour’s draining four-year civil war to an end and take the party back into government on a left-wing programme at the next time of asking, presumably in 2024. This, to be sure, is an appeal which might hold some allure to Labour members – among them many erstwhile supporters of Jeremy Corbyn – especially those still disorientated and demoralised after last month’s election. But there are major problems with it, not the least of these being that a sizeable minority of Labour MPs have no intention of making the kind of compromises Starmer appears to be asking of them.

The Mirage of Unity What is the core of Keir Starmer’s pitch for the Labour leadership? It is, essentially, that as leader he would uphold the bulk of present Labour policy, using something like the 2017 manifesto as his baseline. The implication is that Starmer would be able to take the current Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) with him, reconciling them to these left-wing policies by providing them with a more conventionally acceptable and presentable leader – a sharp-suited former Director of Public Prosecutions at that – than Corbyn. Clearly, there are plenty of people in the Labour Party who might well be receptive to such a pitch. Contrary to common misperceptions, there are very few Labour members who relish internal factional warfare purely for its own sake, and Labour members could be forgiven for being tempted by someone who comes along apparently offering them most of the policies they want, and the chance to implement them, without even more years of upheaval and aggravation. However, this appeal is a fallacy. The unfortunate reality is that a substantial proportion of the PLP is likely to be either outright hostile to any left-wing platform, or lacks the will and determination to reliably defend it in opposition and carry it out in government, in the face of the relentless press attacks these policies would inevitably attract. The popularity of existing party policy, as the recent polling already noted has indicated, is not the issue. The bind Labour finds itself in is that anyone advocating such a programme can expect to be vilified in Britain’s overwhelmingly reactionary press. The most right-wing rump of the PLP would be encouraged by a Starmer win. It would suspect, fairly or not, that Starmer is less committed to the left-wing policies which some rightist Labour MPs wasted no time in attacking as the election results were pouring in last month. By recruiting former Corbyn advisers including Simon Fletcher and Kat Fletcher, Starmer is doubtless aiming to reassure the left about his intentions. Less reassuring, however, is the appointment of Matt Pound – former national organiser for the right-wing Labour First – to Starmer’s campaign team, a move hardly likely to dissuade the PLP right that he could be dragged further in its direction once installed as leader. Nor will appointments like that of Pound do much to reassure those left-wing Labour members tempted by Starmer, but apprehensive about the prospect of a right-wing purge, or an attempt to reverse ‘one member, one vote’ for leadership elections. In appointing Pound, a self-proclaimed “full-time” organiser against the “hard left”, Starmer was (presumably deliberately) sending out a message to the Labour right that its concerns would be heeded and its interests tended to if he became party leader. With Jess Phillips’ leadership campaign seemingly a non-starter, much of the Labour right will be looking to Starmer as a more viable route to reclaiming the party. Perhaps Starmer thinks he can play both sides off against each other while rising above the fray, but this is not how it’s likely to work if he were to secure Labour’s top job. As Michael Walker has pointed out, the Labour left (for all its support at the base) remains only a small presence in Parliament and lacks the easy media access enjoyed by the right. The most acute pressure would come from the latter. It is unlikely that Starmer himself has any intention of presiding over a purge of the party membership. But he will come under real and persistent pressure to marginalise the Labour left, and jettison the detritus of Corbynism – including a good number of its supporters. Thangam Debbonaire’s politically illiterate demand for the expulsion of Ash Sarkar suggests that Starmer would be subject to continuing demands to sling left-wingers out of the party, and not solely from the Blairite right. If he refused to accede to those demands, they would be used as a cudgel against his leadership, with the full support of the media. Given all this, Starmer’s appeals to end factionalism in Labour are, if not knowingly dishonest, at best woolly-headed. Considering the complexity of the Labour coalition between socialists, social reformers and trade unionists, with deep and fundamental differences between them on the nature and extent of the social change required, it is impossible to resolve the contradictions within it simply by instructing people to behave themselves. Such calls tend to translate as demands that the Labour left unilaterally disarm itself, and stop pushing so hard for its candidates and policies. Furthermore, surely one of the crucial lessons of Ed Miliband’s leadership is that without an active, motivated and organised base of support either in the PLP or among the grassroots, any Labour leader is likely to find themselves a sitting target for the party’s right wing and its media allies. This is why alliances between the Labour right and its ‘soft left’ tend to result in the eventual triumph of the former – the right is clear about what it wants and fights hard to get it, while the soft left is less clear, and finds the unavoidable dirty work required to lead the party distasteful.