The Labour Party is closed to socialists, argues Vladimir Unkovski-Korica

Last night, the Labour Party punished seven MPs who rebelled over the government’s rejection of an amendment to the King’s Speech, calling for the end of the cruel two-child benefit cap.

Starmer suspended the prominent left wingers, Apsana Begum, Richard Burgon, Ian Byrne, Imran Hussain, Rebecca Long-Bailey, John McDonnell and Zarah Sultana for six months for defying the government whip. The surprise move came in spite of the fact that eleven affiliated unions support the scrapping of the cap.

Starmer’s authoritarian streak

But the suspension should not really have come as a surprise. To an extent, we’ve seen this all before. Time and again while Labour was in opposition, Starmer signalled that he was prepared to stick to establishment-friendly stances, and to crack down on his left opposition, even when rebels take up a popular cause.

It was not too hard for the Labour leadership to discipline its left wing over the latter’s support for a Stop the War Coalition statement on the Ukraine war in early 2022. The left MPs were told they had to take their signatures off the statement or face expulsion. They duly obeyed their leader, probably fearful of taking on the jingoist tone of the British media following Putin’s full-scale invasion.

But, remember, almost exactly two years ago, during the popular strike wave against sub-inflation pay rises across the public sector, Starmer sacked a junior shadow transport minister for joining striking rail workers on a picket line. The party line was that it was for ministers and unions to negotiate terms. Not to support industrial action by working people for better conditions.

Similarly, in November 2023, despite mass support in the country for a ceasefire in Gaza, Starmer ordered MPs not to vote for a ceasefire motion in parliament. This forced ten frontbenchers to resign from the shadow cabinet to vote for a ceasefire rather than abstain. Dozens of local councillors left the party over its refusal to back a ceasefire, and others were suspended over the matter in the months that followed.

This new suspension is a similar move. What’s different now is that Starmer is no longer disciplining the left in opposition. He’s doing so from a position of office, with a massive majority, and no real threat to his position.

What’s new?

Such an assault on democracy within the Labour Party is unprecedented. Tony Blair faced an early rebellion of almost fifty MPs in the Commons shortly after taking power over a controversial Bill to cut benefits for single-parent families. No one was suspended following the rebellion.

So what’s different now? The right wing’s crackdown is clearly a reaction to its loss of control of the party while Jeremy Corbyn was leader from 2015 to 2020. Its determination to prevent such eventuality from ever happening again is behind Starmer’s purge or Labour ranks.

The purge began in 2018, when the right concocted an anti-Semitism crisis in Labour and called on the party to adopt the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. The move was clearly aimed at stymying Jeremy Corbyn’s position as a stalwart of the anti-war movement and thereby silencing the left via accusations of anti-Semitism.

John McDonnell and some of the rest of the left made the mistake of supporting the adoption of the IHRA – in the hope that it would demonstrate the left’s loyalty to party unity. But that’s exactly what the right has historically banked on. The right’s loyalty is not to the Labour Party but to the establishment and the British state. The right uses the left’s loyalty to the party and its electoral prospects to discipline the left on behalf of British capital.

That explains the Labour right’s documented willingness to sabotage its own party’s electoral campaigns in 2017 and 2019. It was more afraid of a Corbyn victory than a Labour defeat. Starmer’s positioning as willing to continue Corbyn’s programme during his leadership campaign was an obvious ruse, followed by his ruthless campaign to suspend and the expel his predecessor.

Lessons for the left

The purge proved to be a process, and Corbyn was only formally expelled from the Labour Party after choosing to stand as an independent earlier this year. The election in Corbyn’s constituency of Islington North was a close-run thing. Labour voters did not initially appreciate that their local MP was no longer running on a Labour ticket. It took mass campaigning for several weeks to deliver the result in favour of Corbyn.

Indeed, Corbyn’s exceptional rise in 2015 was closely tied to his appeal to the extra-parliamentary movements against war and austerity that had been built in the years preceding his election as Labour leader. The rise in party membership after his election attested to his appeal that went beyond Blairite circles. But that proved to be Corbynism’s fatal flaw. Its struggle with the British establishment was conducted within the hostile territory of the Labour Party, with its loyalty to party unity an Achilles heel.

The Labour left’s adoption of the IHRA in 2018 and then of the idea of a second Brexit referendum in 2019 fatefully wounded the party’s appeal. It was particularly disastrous in the midlands and the north, where decades of neglect under Blair’s Labour governments had bred deep resentment and anger at Labour’s ties with the establishment. It has been downhill for the left ever since.

Now, with seven of its most prominent remaining members suspended, the Labour left faces a simple choice.

It can either choose to continue to compromise with the right for the next six months, arguing that the whip should be restored to the seven and the two-child cap dropped. It can continue to praise the government’s promises of minimal improvements and concessions. It can continue to accept the role of a subordinate and loyal opposition.

Or it can pick up on the popularity and righteousness of the causes it champions to drive a wedge between the Starmer leadership and the mass of the working class. It can be a proud and bold opposition that is part of building an alternative to Starmerism on the streets and in the workplaces, where the left is undoubtedly stronger than the right. It can be part of building a new, left alternative.

The five pro-Gaza independents elected at the last election have published a joint statement welcoming the seven former Labour and now new independent MPs and offering them cooperation on a range of issues where they agree. This is a positive development. The left inside and outside the Labour party should of course express solidarity with the expelled MPs and work with them at every opportunity.

There is huge support for an alternative outside of parliament. It is expressed through the Palestine solidarity movement now, but Starmerism is breeding significant resentment which will find mass expression outside the halls of parliament on other issues in the coming months and years. If we do not wish this dissatisfaction to be expressed by the likes of Reform UK or worse, we must begin to build an alternative to Starmerism – and the Labour Party.