In the recesses of the minds of right wing Labour MPs, councillors and members, a nagging doubt must be starting to form. Labour are trailing the Tories by up to 13pts in the polls. Keir Starmer's personal ratings are also falling sharply. That doubt raises some fundamental questions about Keir Starmer: is he a dud? Is he unelectable? Should he be replaced with a new leader? The outcome of the next general election will be determined by the answers to those questions.
Polling shows that if Keir Starmer led Labour into a general election tomorrow, the party would win its lowest number of seats since 1935. How did we get here, with Labour polling lower than the 32% of the vote that Labour won under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn at the 2019 general election?
Labour is in a worse position now than it was before, it is trailing behind arguably the worst Tory government in history. Starmer's personal ratings are also falling. How did Labour end up imitating Tories? Who thought that was a good idea? Here is a brief recap of how we got here:
In the summer of 2016 a group of Labour MPs executed a coup to usurp the office of the leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, Jeremy Corbyn. 172 Labour MPs voted no confidence in the newly elected leader. The reason the MPs organised a vote of no confidence in Corbyn was to try to overturn the result of the 2015 leadership contest when he was overwhelmingly elected leader by members. While Mr Corbyn was boosting membership and increasing the party’s funds and popularity, a majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party were refusing to respect the mandate and authority of their recently elected leader.
The coup against the leader of the Opposition began in 2016. The plotters eventually achieved their objective and usurped the Labour leader in 2019. Having been unable to topple Corbyn for three years, they finally succeeded by using the People’s Vote campaign to create a wedge issue between Corbyn and pro-EU Labour members. Supporting a second referendum forced Labour into taking the electorally doomed position of refusing to accept a decision made by a 65% supermajority of constituencies.
By pushing a policy which guaranteed defeat for Labour, Starmer was able to both topple Corbyn and position himself to be the next Labour leader. He was clearly very keen to get his leadership campaign underway, his leadership website was launched just 91 minutes after the exit poll results for the 2019 election were published.
A study published in 2020 found that coups tend to lead to more repressive regimes, and that has been the case following the coup against Jeremy Corbyn. Keir Starmer has appointed David Evans, a self-declared Blairite, as the party’s general secretary. Since his appointment Mr Evans has suspended the former leader Jeremy Corbyn, denied members their free speech and democratic rights and suspended members who protest for those rights. The coup against the former leader has led to a highly repressive regime being imposed on party members, most of whom are volunteers who freely give their time and money to the party.
Despite David Evans’ clampdown on free speech, Labour branches and CLPs are passing votes of no confidence in both Mr Evans and Mr Starmer. So far, over a hundred CLPs have passed either motions of no confidence in Starmer and Evans or motions of support for Jeremy Corbyn.
The coup appears to have been a great success for the plotters. They toppled Corbyn and now control the party machinery and Labour’s most powerful bodies. But were there any flaws in their plan, did they overlook anything? I think they did.
All projects are based at least partly on assumptions, we cannot know everything before taking action and therefore need to make some assumptions. I believe the flaw in the coup against Corbyn is that the plotters were so focussed on getting rid of him that they didn’t give enough thought to the obvious next question: who will replace Corbyn?
Keir Starmer was not their first choice. It was revealed in the leaked Labour Report that the then general secretary Iain McNicol had prepared what he titled “Project Cupcake”, a plan for Tom Watson to take over as leader if Mr Corbyn was forced out. Following Tom Watson’s resignation that was no longer an option.
The assumption of the plotters was that they would be able to find a replacement. The question is whether Keir Starmer was the right choice. I believe they have made a mistake backing Keir Starmer. In my view there is already ample evidence that he simply does not have what it takes to be a Labour leader, I have provided that evidence in this article.
If I am right then all the work involved in plotting and executing the coup against the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition was in vain and will unravel, and the plotters will have betrayed the Labour Party, and the millions of people who desperately need a Labour government, for nothing.