Afternoon summary
Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has said she would like to see the party whip restored to Diane Abbott. (See 4.07pm.)
NHS waiting lists in England have fallen for the fourth consecutive month, according to new figures, although the number of people waiting longer than 18 months for treatment has increased. As PA Media reports, cancer waiting times also remain well below target, the data shows, with charities calling for a long-term cancer strategy. An estimated 7.58 million treatments relating to 6.32 million patients were waiting to be carried out at the end of January, down slightly from 7.60 million treatments at the end of December.
What Tom Baldwin's biography says about Starmer and Labour's disciplinary machine
Comparing what Keir Starmer said about Diane Abbott’s suspension with what Angela Rayner said about it (see 4.07pm), it is tempting to conclude that, while Rayner wants her back in the party, Starmer definitely doesn’t.
Starmer’s interview with LBC could be seen in this light too. Asked about Abbott’s suspension, Starmer said this “needs to be resolved, of course it does”. But when Lewis Goodall, the interviewer, put it to him that it should not take 11 months to investigate a single letter, Starmer replied:
But it was a pretty offensive letter … this wasn’t just a casual remark.
However, Rayner and Starmer are in a different situation. As deputy leader, Rayner can say, as she did, she would like to see Abbott back, but it’s not a decision for her. In the Labour party, the deputy leader little or no power over the party machine. But the party leader can’t say he would “like to see” such and such an outcome without implying that he is putting pressure on those taking the decision. In its report in 2020 the Equality and Human Rights commission said “political inteference” in antisemitism complaints from the leader’s office meant the party was in breach of the Equality Act.
Under Starmer, Labour has been accused of developing a control freak culture that goes way beyond what happened during previous bouts of faction fighting in the party. This is apparent in candidate selection and in the way disciplinary rules are enforced. But it is not entirely clear to what extent Starmer himself is pushing this, and in his new biography of the Labour leader, Tom Baldwin claims that Starmer was worried when he heard about one of the most egregious examples of someone being purged – the Compass director Neal Lawson (who wrote about his experience for the Guardian).
Baldwin says:
It’s also fair to point out that Starmer is prevented from getting involved in any disciplinary process which, under his reforms, is meant to be independent of interference from the leadership. Indeed, he is understood to have been surprised and a little perturbed when it emerged that Neal Lawson, a longstanding campaigner from the soft left for a ‘progressive alliance’ with the Liberal Democrats and the Greens, was under investigation for a social media post that showed him praising co-operation between parties as ‘grown-up politics’. Lawson, meanwhile, vented that Labour had been ‘captured by a clique who see only true believers or sworn enemies’ which was behaving like ‘playground bullies’.
Baldwin also says that Starmer is not involved in the murkier decisions about candidate selection.
Although Starmer had tightened central control over selections by pushing through reforms at the National Executive Committee, he keeps away from the business end of it, with one official saying: ‘Keir doesn’t need to know how sausages are made.’
Journalists often write mid-flight biographies of politicians on the basis that one day they might become prime minister, generally they are worth a read, but few of them are likely to stand the test of time. Baldwin’s book is an exception; as well as being very well written, he obtained considerable access and he presents a compelling picture of what Starmer is like, and in particular how he was brought up. If you admire Starmer, you should definitely read it. And if you don’t like him, you should read it anyway, because he could be PM for the next 10 years and it may be a very long time before anyone produces a better or fairer account of what makes him tick.
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