Keir Starmer has been accused of presiding over a Labour party obsessed with “petty tyranny”, as the head of the centre-left pressure group Compass claimed he faced expulsion as a member after 44 years.
In a move that will reignite concerns of overzealous factionalism on the part of the Labour leader’s allies, Neal Lawson said they were determined to maintain a “domineering power” that had even left some MPs “cowed by the fear that they will be next”.
Lawson, an ardent supporter of overhauling the voting system to introduce proportional representation, said he was being driven out by “bullies” who had abandoned a longstanding acceptance of pluralism.
He said he received a “cold and clinical” email last week that “broke my political heart”, informing him he was being expelled for a tweet sent in 2021. Lawson said he had shared a Liberal Democrat MP’s call for some voters to back Green candidates in the local elections, accompanied by his own suggestion that doing so represented “grownup, progressive politics”.
A Labour spokesperson said it was “entirely false” for Lawson to claim he had been expelled. They said he had been sent a letter that put to him allegations that he expressed support for another political party, and he was given two weeks to respond.
Writing in an article for the Guardian, Lawson stood by his comment in the 2021 tweet. He said he made it because “the progressive majority in our country is thwarted by the electoral system” and that cooperation was an important tenet in achieving political ambitions.
“The Labour party was founded on the principle of pluralism,” he wrote. He cited the party’s founding out of a federation of trade unions and socialist societies, Labour’s 1945 manifesto being inspired by the “Liberal minds of John Maynard Keynes and William Beveridge”, and the “strong bond” forged by Tony Blair and Paddy Ashdown in 1997 to “get the Tories out and usher a new Britain in”.
He said “realistic and hopeful politics” resulted in Labour councillors working “hand in hand with Greens and Lib Dems, defending communities from Tory cuts”, and the Welsh Labour government running the country “successfully in alliance with Plaid Cymru”.
Lawson wrote: “Why use an uncontentious tweet from over two years ago to try and expel me?
“The reason is that the party machine is no longer run in this long and rich spirit of pluralism. It has been captured by a clique who see only true believers or sworn enemies. They are behaving like playground bullies, using people’s desperation to get rid of Tories and the limitations of the voting system for their own factional ends.
“All this is fast amounting to an abusive relationship in which first-past-the-post gives members no realistic alternative party to leave for, and the voters nowhere else to put their cross.”
Labour was afraid of embracing proportional representation, said Lawson, arguing it did not want to sacrifice its “domineering power”. He said the party was in the grip of a “paranoid, top-down way of political thinking”.
He added: “The machine doesn’t care if there’s an absence of hope in its project: it doesn’t matter what you think or feel, so long as you obediently support it. I feel a deep sadness that I’ve tried to do my bit to make Labour a more hopeful, ambitious, generous and compassionate place, and everything has come to this end.
“I feel the hurt of seeing my MP and activist friends cowed by the fear that they will be next; that they must walk some arbitrary line that keeps them constantly watching their backs. I feel shocked that the factionalism I warned against at the start of the year in these pages has taken its revenge and pretty much proved the point; it’s a petty tyranny. It will be tragic if this is the culture Labour takes into government, because it will fail.”
The Labour spokesperson said: “He was served with a notice of allegation seven days ago, putting claims to him that he expressed support for Green party candidates in 2021. He has 14 days to respond. He is yet to do so.”
The Guardian understands that following the 14-day period, the issue will be examined by a panel, after which a decision about expulsion would be made.
