Diane Abbott’s comments on racism could have wider implications for the future of Labour’s left-wing
Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott: back in 2015 they were heralded as the left-wing “triumvirate who took control of Labour”.
“Never before had Labour’s left – which Peter Mandelson had aspired to place in a ‘sealed tomb’ – wielded such power in the party,” said The New Statesman.
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How times have changed. Of the three MPs, only McDonnell still has the party whip. Corbyn was barred from candidacy for his response to an EHRC report into anti-Semitism in the party, and now Abbott has had the whip suspended following comments in The Observer in which she dismissed racism against Irish, Jewish and Roma people as merely “prejudice” of the sort you might encounter for having red hair.
It seems unlikely that Abbott will be permitted to run again as a Labour candidate, said the i news site, given leader Keir Starmer’s zero tolerance stance on anti-Semitism. For the Socialist Campaign Group of left-wing Labour MPs, Abbott’s fall from grace “represents a loss of one of their number that they are unlikely to recoup”.
‘Into the wilderness’
McDonnell, now 71, and his allies have “been cast back into the wilderness”, said George Eaton in The New Statesman. Long renowned as a ruthless politician – the “Robespierre of the left” – even McDonnell now appears “uncharacteristically guarded”.
The Corbynites have good reason to be cowed, says openDemocracy. Although Labour could benefit from a huge swing from the Conservatives in the UK’s next general election, “accusations of purges, blockings and factionalism” to make way for Starmer loyalists are commonplace.
It is Starmer who is now the ruthless one, says Tribune, implementing an “all-out assault on the left of the party”. The socialist magazine went on: “Rather than a broad church, Starmer and his allies now want to run the party as a narrow factional sect, where debate and dissent are not tolerated.”
As for Abbott, many in the Labour leadership will probably be “quietly pleased to have been able to jettison a Corbynite big beast for a reason likely to provoke relatively little controversy”, said the i news site.
‘Far from irrelevant’
Don’t write the Corbynites off just yet, though. “The barnacles are not quite off the boat,” said Patrick Maguire in The Times. “Look beyond the headlines and the leadership’s bite is nowhere near as bad as its bark.”
In fact, Starmer missed a golden opportunity to expel the Corbynites when 11 MPs put their name to a Stop the War statement against Nato in February last year. “Since then, they have been on their best behaviour, quietly tabling motions in support of Kyiv, doing nothing to jeopardise their possession of the Labour whip,” Maguire wrote.
The left could still wield real clout in the event of a hung parliament or a small Labour majority at the next election. “Excluding three independents, the [Socialist] Campaign Group numbers 31 Labour MPs – nearly a sixth of the Parliamentary Labour Party,” said Eaton in The New Statesman.
As for Corbyn, he remains popular, according to McDonnell. And in electoral terms at least Labour and the left need each other. “The Labour left no longer controls the party’s commanding heights,” said The New Statesman, “yet it is far from irrelevant”.
