Keir Starmer’s allies purging Labour left, says John McDonnellon July 4, 2023 at 8:28 pm

Supporters of Sir Keir Starmer are “drunk with power” and conducting a purge of the Labour left, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has said.

In a BBC Newsnight interview, the veteran left-winger warned that a “right-wing faction” was weakening the party.

He was speaking after figures on the left complained that they are being blocked from positions in the party.

He has raised his concerns with the Labour leader in writing, warning: “If you stumble, these are the people that will come for you.”

The former shadow chancellor said: “What [Keir Starmer’s] allowed to happen is a right-wing faction [has] become drunk with power and use devices within the party almost on a search and destroy of the left.

“They seem to be more interested in destroying the presence of the left in the party than getting a Labour government.”

His intervention comes after aspiring MPs said they are being excluded from an approved list of parliamentary candidates drawn up by the party’s National Executive Committee, Labour’s governing body.

Sitting MPs facing selection battles in new seats created by the Boundary Review also say they are losing out to Starmer loyalists. Others on the left have been successful.

And Neal Lawson, director of campaign group Compass and a stalwart of the soft left, recently said he is facing an official investigation over some old tweets calling for cross-party co-operation.

The party says it is looking into his support for other political parties, which is a breach of Labour rules.

In a statement, a spokesperson told the BBC said it had “high standards” for prospective election candidates, and this was “absolutely right”.

“This is a changed Labour Party back in the service of working people so we can build a better Britain,” they added.

In his Newsnight interview, Mr McDonnell said: “I’ve written to Keir a few times saying: Look, this factionalism is causing us real problems for the future…There is a sort of a right-wing faction that have got into fairly senior positions and they seem be waging some form of purge against the left.

“And what I said to Keir, is we’ve always been a broad church. This doesn’t help the party, and we’re always successful when we’re a broad church.

“Previous leaders and prime ministers of the Labour Party have always had in their cabinet a broad church approach – left, right and centre. They’ve tolerated different views within the party.

“In fact, many of them have welcomed it because you get better discussion, better debates and you get a better decision policy making as well.

“And I said: there’s a faction here that actually are so intolerant of dissent that they’re removing people, it will weaken our party. And I also said to him, if you stumble, these are the people that will come for you.”

Mr McDonnell, a close ally of the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has also raised concerns with Sir Keir over former shadow home secretary Diane Abbott’s suspension as a Labour MP.

The Labour whip was withdrawn from the veteran left-winger in April, pending an investigation into a letter she wrote about racism to the Observer.

In the letter, she said “many types of white people with points of difference” can experience prejudice, but they were not subject to racism “all their lives”. She later withdrew her remarks and apologised “for any anguish caused”.

Mr McDonnell said her comments had been “wrong”, but added that he had given Sir Keir “several examples of MPs where they’ve made similar mistakes, some of them worse,” and had the party whip restored.

“Why are we discriminating against the first black woman in Parliament? Is it because she is on the left? And there’s too many examples like that have taken place,” he added.

The former shadow chancellor said he had advised the Labour leader to ask barrister Martin Forde KC, who was commissioned by Sir Keir in 2020 to examine allegations of bullying, racism and sexism, to re-examine “factionalism” within the party.

He added that he should also be consulted on “some of these issues about the individual cases and complaints that have been made”.

“In that way, we might be able to restore confidence in the whole process within the party [around] selections and disciplinary process.”

The former shadow chancellor also said that former PM Tony Blair, who is reviled by many on the left, had tolerated different views when he was prime minister.

Mr McDonnell said: “If you look at [it] under Tony Blair, we didn’t have mass expulsions like this or anything like that. We didn’t have the withdrawal of the whip unless it was something very extreme. There was an atmosphere of tolerance, but actually respect as well.”

Josh Simons, director of the Labour Together think tank that is supportive of Sir Keir’s leadership, denied there was a purge of the Labour left.

He told Newsnight that Sir Keir was building a party “capable and equipped to govern this country and transform it,” including getting people “with talent, with energy, with vigour and commitment into Parliament to do that”.

He also added that the Labour leader was implementing recommendations from the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, which published a review in 2020 into how the party handled complaints of antisemitism within the party.

“And if there are people who have tweeted things, shared things on Facebook, engaged with posts that fall foul of those EHRC recommendations, then those people are and should be blocked from being part of the Labour party’s leadership in the future,” he added.

You can watch BBC Newsnight’s interview in full on Tuesday 4 July from 22.30 BST on BBC Two.