Keir Starmer is under mounting pressure to end what his critics say is a “purge” of those on the Labour left before a meeting of the party’s governing body next week.
Party members on Thursday accused the Labour leader of orchestrating a “cull of leftwingers” after several high-profile figures were told they would not be selected as candidates for seats they held or had previously contested.
Members of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will meet next week to agree on Labour’s full list of parliamentary candidates at what is set to be a stormy meeting where the fates of several candidates will be in the balance.
One of those likely to generate the fiercest debate is Diane Abbott, the veteran London MP who said this week she had been barred from standing again as a Labour candidate, but who has vowed to stand again even if as an independent.
Abbott received the backing of Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, on Thursday, who told the Guardian that the veteran Labour MP should be allowed to stand again and had not been treated “fairly or appropriately” by some party colleagues.
Her comments triggered speculation that the Labour leadership would back down in its demand that Abbott stood aside, with Starmer himself insisting on Thursday that a final decision had not been made.
Others have also complained about being deselected, including Faiza Shaheen, who had already started campaigning in Chingford and Woodford Green, and Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who was suspended as Labour MP for Brighton Kemptown.
Labour has already selected a replacement candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green: Shama Tatler. She was a key figure in the centrist organising group Labour to Win, which vied for influence with Momentum for votes at Labour conference and in selection battles.
Abbott was suspended as a Labour MP last year after writing a letter for the Observer in which she downplayed racism against Irish, Jewish and Traveller people. She had the whip restored this week following a months-long investigation.
Rayner said: “If Diane wanted to stand again, I don’t see any reason why she can’t … The investigation is concluded and it’s confirmed that she’s now back in the parliamentary Labour party and on the whip.”
Starmer was pressed over Abbott’s fate on a campaign visit to Wales. “No decision has been taken to bar her and you have to remember that she was a trailblazer as an MP,” he said. “She overcame incredible challenges to achieve what she achieved in her political career.”
But in a comment that stoked further anger within the party, the Labour leader added: “I’ve always had the aspiration that we will have the best quality candidates as we go into this election.”
Starmer has denied deciding the fate of Labour candidates across the country, insisting that it was up to Labour’s NEC to make the final decision on who should be allowed to fight the election.
His critics, however, point out that several of his close allies have been chosen as candidates for safe Labour seats in the last 48 hours, including Josh Simons, head of the Starmerite thinktank Labour Together, and Luke Akehurst, a centrist member of the executive committee.
On Thursday night, Labour announced a number of key trade unionists in safe seats, including Community’s Kate Dearden in Halifax. Some were members of the NEC, such as Unison’s Mark Ferguson, who used to edit LabourList and ran Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign in Gateshead; and Usdaw’s Michael Wheeler in Worsley and Eccles. The NEC chair, James Asser, was also selected in West Ham and Beckton.
The internal party battle is likely to come to a head next week when the committee meets to sign off the final list of candidates across the country.
Mish Rahman, a leftwing member of the NEC, said: “Starmer’s bully boys want to find seats for their mates, so they pick on leftwing women of colour. They think that publicly humiliating them plays well with target voters. There will be a cost for this. Communities that Labour is taking for granted will not be relied on for ever as the party continues down this path.”
Gemma Bolton, another member of the committee, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One she hoped the meeting would produce “a clear consensus that Diane [Abbott] should be a candidate”.
Starmer’s allies have a majority on the NEC, and can push through their selected list of candidates if they choose. However, some in the party believe they are likely to back down, at least in Abbott’s case, to avoid further fallout within the party.
One Labour official said: “The problem with the last few days is not that Keir can’t get what he wants, but that we’ve spent valuable time during the campaign talking about our internal problems rather than the Tory party.”
While Abbott’s fate remains unclear, Shaheen, who was told on Wednesday evening she would not be allowed to stand in the seat she contested in 2019 because of previous social media activity, has promised to fight her case in the courts.
Shaheen said she had been subject to “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”. She added: “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that Labour, far from being a broad church encompassing different views, has an ingrained culture of bullying, a palpable problem with black and brown people, and thinks nothing of dragging a person’s good name through the mud in pursuit of a factional agenda, with no thought of the impact on committed members’ mental health and wellbeing.”
Abbott reacted to the news of her deselection by posting on X: “Appalling. Whose clever idea has it been to have a cull of leftwingers?”
Some on the left of the party believe other MPs might also be deselected in the coming days, and several have said they are trying to keep a low profile to avoid being singled out by the leadership.
Starmer spent much of Thursday trying to avoid commenting on the deepening row within his own party. However, his frontbench ally Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, denied that leftwingers were deliberately being targeted for factional reasons.
“There are many colleagues of mine in the parliamentary Labour party who would define themselves as being on the left who are endorsed Labour party candidates standing in their constituency,” Jones told Times Radio on Thursday.
