As Labour’s Membership Drops, Its Fanaticism Rises

NIGEL DRAKE

‘HOW did it come to this?’ must be a phrase that is enjoying its zenith of popularity. A year after the general election, most of us are astonished to find that there are unplumbed depths of awfulness beneath the dismal levels that even the last government reached. We gawp at the appalling ‘achievements’ of this one: the stubborn reluctance to properly investigate the rape gangs; the murderous attacks on the unborn, the disabled and the old; the plight of Lucy Connolly; the suicide of Peter Lynch; the ‘dispersal’ of illegal migrants. On and on goes the endless horror-show.

We are baffled that so much dismay could have been heaped on us in so short a time. The table talk is not whether the government can survive, nor how much longer it has left, but rather how much catastrophic damage it can wreak before it is consigned to nightmarish memory.

Faced with such a barrage of madness, we try to identify the master villains in this pantomime from hell. The cast is long: the emasculated, weakling Prime Minister; his embarrassing, publicly snivelling Chancellor; the selfish goons and harpies desperate to defend their lavatory-paper-thin majorities; the bloodthirsty hyper-feminists pushing ideas that are beyond the realms of sanity, let alone humanity; the vultures lurking on the sidelines, waiting for their turn behind the wheel. If an attempt to list them all were made, it would be the writer, not the topic, that would become exhausted first.

Is there some demonic coordination behind it? Starmer is often described as robotic. Maybe there is a puppet-master, pulling the strings that give apparent life to these repulsive automata, an animus behind their inhumanity, an unseen force, compelling them to do its bidding.

Perhaps there is a clue in OECD’s 2017 review, Preventing Policy Capture, which states:

‘Policy capture is the process of consistently or repeatedly directing public policy decisions away from the public interest towards the interests of a specific interest group or person. Capture is the opposite of inclusive and fair policy-making, and always undermines core democratic values. The capture of public decisions can be achieved through a wide variety of illegal instruments, such as bribery, but also through legal channels, such as lobbying and financial support to political parties and election campaigns. Undue influence can also be exercised without the direct involvement or knowledge of public decision makers, by manipulating the information provided to them, or establishing close social or emotional ties with them.’ (my emphases)

The Labour Party, in recent years, has been susceptible to poisonous infiltrations, including antisemitism, Corbynism and varying levels of race or gender baiting. These have balefully influenced what was once a sane, reasoning party that was aware of its role representing the working class and the will of the people. It is now reminiscent of the remnants of our stock of elm trees that has been ravaged over the decades by the horrible infection spread by elm bark beetles, which burrow under the bark to lay their eggs.

It was probably in the 1990s that the latest infiltration of Labour began. Paradoxically, that happened under the leadership of John Smith, a principled man whose clever rhetoric repeatedly skewered the weak-kneed government of John Major. Smith made Labour electable again and this was not ignored by the unholy alliance of hyper-feminists, nihilists, befuddled post-modernists, neo-Communists and later, transgender fanatics, Britain-haters and others beyond the pale of intellectual respectability. They completed their particular mission in the Long March through the institutions some time ago, greatly helped by Corbyn’s surprise election as Labour leader in 2015. Corbyn was subsequently ousted, but the fanatics stayed, while disillusioned, decent souls threw away their party cards.

As the Labour Party became less and less popular with the general public, the influence of the lunatic fringe of the membership increased. In July 2017, the party membership was 575,000; in July 2025, it is 309,000, dropped by almost 50 percent. In this way, the poisonous fanaticism has been distilled to ever greater potency. Labour left the gate unguarded, and the squatters moved in. Many property owners have found out how difficult it is to remove them.

What does this mean for Labour Party constituency organisations? Firstly, causes can be promoted behind closed doors that are mind-bogglingly unpopular amongst the general public and that would hugely damage the Labour Party if they were adopted as official policies. How convenient! Secondly, pressure could be placed on MPs by constituency activists to follow, support and vote for extremist causes in Parliament. Pressure could easily be applied through the threat of deselection or finding an excuse to start a recall petition to try to trigger a by-election. There are plenty of Labour constituencies where that would be a disaster for the MP but not for Labour’s massive majority. A dissenter would be made an example of, whilst the project to suborn democracy would go on.

There is no better example than the shocking vote in June to decriminalise abortion up to birth. This is something that opinion polls show is opposed by almost everyone. How can Parliament claim to represent the people when they vote for such an extreme position and one so diametrically opposed to public opinion? This stinks.

It’s unlikely that the Tory party is free of malign influences, but it is notable that the vote mentioned above, despite supposedly being a ‘free vote’, with MPs voting as their consciences directed, was clearly split on party lines, overwhelmingly supported by Labour and overwhelmingly rejected by Tories – with the exception of some courageous Labour MPs and the usual Tory suspects.

What does this say about the state of the Labour Party in the constituencies? It’s going to be hard to know without a lot more transparency from Labour and some brave MPs speaking out. Let us hope that we don’t have to wait for electoral death-bed confessions in 2029 to find the real truth.

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This article (As Labour’s membership drops, its fanaticism rises) was created and published by Conservative Woman and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Nigel Drake