It was four weeks before election day when I spoke to one member of the constituency Labour party in Holborn and St Pancras, in central London, as he was on his way out of the door to go canvassing in Barnet, several miles away in north London. This is not at all unusual: victory is assured in Keir Starmer’s constituency, which has been continuously red since its creation in 1983. Next door, in Islington North, it was once a similar story. It has been Labour since 1937, with a couple of turbulent SDP years in the 80s; their canvassers have in the past been twinned with Stevenage, considered more useful there than in their own backyards.
Bookies are giving odds on Starmer’s win in his constituency of 1/250 and 1/500, making him one of the safest bets in the general election. The result in Islington is less predictable, since Jeremy Corbyn is standing as an independent. His popularity as a local MP is well known. But, as Corbyn’s communications guy, Oly Durose, tells me, there are the people on the doorstep who say: “I’ll vote Jeremy, of course. I’ll vote Labour.” Hard to say from this distance which of those loyalties will win out – the party or the man – once everyone is clear that they are at odds.
Almost every member of the constituency Labour party who spoke to me did so on condition of anonymity. Sometimes that was because what they’re engaged in would see them expelled from the party (canvassing for Corbyn, for instance, when Labour’s candidate is Praful Nargund); other times because they’re embroiled in local rivalries and enmities of such epic history, spanning decades, that to break cover in the press would be an inelegant escalation.
In neither constituency is any party but Labour in serious contention, but in each there is an independent challenger from the left. That reflects the wider picture: this election has 459 independent candidates standing, about 10% of the overall number, and more than twice as many as in 2015. But the red-on-red battle varies from place to place, in its subjects and its symmetry.
Starmer is opposed by Andrew Feinstein, a 60-year-old film-maker and author who was an ANC activist in his native South Africa. An ally of Feinstein’s says he is standing because Starmer is “simply invisible”: “I’m walking through the streets of Camden now, and I can’t see a single Labour poster,” he says.
Feinstein’s issue is also Palestine. A “Gaza week” in Kentish Town at the start of June saw daily speeches and rallies, as well as counter-protesters holding Israeli flags. Four arrests were made on 6 June, with both sides claiming it was their opponents who had caused the public order offences, and the police declining to be drawn. Labour’s slow and diffident stance on Israel’s war in Gaza has driven a wave of independent candidates, particularly in areas with high Muslim populations. For some Labour voters, the manifesto commitment to recognise the state of Palestine will alleviate the tension – but not for all.
For all the talk about Labour’s antisemitism from rightwing politicians and the mainstream press, they show little understanding of what Palestine means in the party. The majority of Labour members support Palestinian rights (a sizeable majority support the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement), considering it fundamental that people can’t be oppressed in broad daylight without that affecting human rights everywhere. Palestine has also traditionally been the conduit for discussing US imperialism, while Israel – sliding from the early leftwing ideals of the kibbutz to the current political dominance of the far right – came to represent a broader disappointment in the radical promise of bygone times.
Played out in constituency Labour party meetings, talking about Palestine and Israel was a coded struggle between the left and the right factions of the party. As an ally of Nargund says: “Basically, anyone that didn’t buy into their views on Israel/Palestine and Stop the War was treated like dirt.” (This ally has been in the Islington North party for years, but was never active in the Corbyn period.)
These disputes made many Jewish members uncomfortable, but it’s not that simple. Loads of not-Jewish, centre-right members also felt uncomfortable, and many members expelled for their pro-Palestinian views are Jewish. There are very deep convictions here – it would be remiss not to point out that everything and worse that pro-Palestine members warned of and dreaded has come to pass during the course of the war. While Feinstein poses no immediate electoral threat to Starmer, this rift will not simply evaporate.
The bookies have Corbyn as odds-on favourite in Islington North – he’s been the MP for 41 years. The name recognition alone, never mind the number of people he’s helped in that time, can’t be written off. His supporters’ ground game is impressive – at least 1,000 people have signed up for canvassing sessions – so it’s quite a mountain for Nargund, but he also has a significant activist army. Some are drawn from out of the area, it’s true (the same goes for Corbyn), and some from within the constituency Labour party, just not part of its Corbyn-era in-crowd. Nargund also, naturally, has the support of the party’s big names.
This is not just about whether Labour is radical enough, or about bread-and-butter issues such as the cost-of-living crisis and the NHS – which Corbyn’s team say is the key dividing line between him and his opponent, who used to work in private healthcare. It’s also about candidate selection and internal party democracy.
Islington North has been without a Labour candidate for two years, but one was suddenly rushed in without any membership involvement at all. Nargund’s team explains this was to avoid a situation where the candidate selection was still going on after Corbyn had announced his candidacy. Nargund has declined interviews with us (fair, a national paper isn’t a priority), the Islington Tribune (an ally cited its open support for Corbyn, though the paper argues that he gets all the space because he’s the only one who’ll communicate), and hustings with the Camden New Journal, which is baffled.
There’s always been a lot of grit in the relationship between Labour’s central command and its members, and a hearty debate about whether a powerful membership is better or worse for the country as a whole (look what happens when the Conservative members get their way). While the “commonsense” view is that members of all parties are cranks and best ignored, that’s quite consequential for democracy: it jettisons the only concrete and transparent mechanism a citizen has to participate in their representation.
You have to wonder, too, whose influence is taking precedence over that of party members: is there really a large body of “normal” people, whose “normal” political desires are easily legible? Are those desires best relayed to party elites by the media alone? Labour members, at least, are not ready to give in without a fight, and there is a new ferocity to the tension, as the election grinds like a juggernaut over fragile ententes.
Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist
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