SALLUST
Napoleon, with the dogs following him, now mounted on to the raised portion of the floor where Major had previously stood to deliver his speech. He announced that from now on the Sunday-morning Meetings would come to an end. They were unnecessary, he said, and wasted time. In future all questions relating to the working of the farm would be settled by a special committee of pigs, presided over by himself. These would meet in private and afterwards communicate their decisions to the others. The animals would still assemble on Sunday mornings to salute the flag, sing ‘Beasts of England’ and receive their orders for the week; but there would be no more debates.
George Orwell, Animal Farm
It’s been an interesting few weeks for Labour. The stress of holding onto power is beginning to bite. The New Statesman says it’s been a tense weekend for the party when a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting was held. Of course, the ends justify the means:
A close ally of Keir Starmer, the Attorney General, told the meeting that the party’s focus shouldn’t be on internal politics but on the Government’s successes over the past few days. The Attorney General pointed to Labour’s £1.5 billion investment in cultural venues, Shabana Mahmood’s recent policing reforms and the Prime Minister’s recent exposure of Tory opportunism at PMQs, among other things. [Richard] Hermer told gathered MPs: “What we are achieving as a Government is radical, deeply principled and nothing short of an attempt to rework the state, so it is fairer and more equal for all.”
It’s not instantly clear how blocking dissent and cancelling elections constitute being “deeply principled”. It’s even less clear how in tune the Government is even with its own party. According to the Telegraph: “The little-known National Executive Committee is fiercely loyal to the PM – and lets him stamp out dissent.” The matter of the moment of course is the blocking of Andy Burnam:
Its decision to prevent the Mayor of Greater Manchester from standing in the Gorton and Denton by-election has almost certainly killed off his ambitions of becoming Prime Minister, leaving another ‘what if?’ question for future historians to ponder.
Thanks to Starmer, and to an extent Sir Tony Blair before him, the NEC has been moulded into the instrument through which Labour Prime Ministers impose their will on their party, and by extension the country as a whole.
Almost as soon as he got the job, Starmer extracted the resignation of party general secretary Jennie Formby, whom he saw as a roadblock to the changes he wanted to make, then installed Margaret Beckett as NEC Chairman. Thirteen members of the NEC walked out in protest at her appointment.
Thanks to the changes made by Blair, Starmer was able to swiftly wrestle back control of the NEC, forcing out [Momentum founder Jon] Lansman and other Corbyn loyalists until he had the support of a majority of committee members, something he could not have done when the unions were in control.
A former adviser to Starmer says: “The NEC is where the power is and Keir always knew that if he was ever to get into Downing Street, he needed to sort out the antisemitism problem and other problems in the party and a big part of that was through the NEC.
“Blair would never have taken the decision to block Andy Burnham within 24 hours of him putting his name forward for selection,” says the Labour veteran. “There would have been more of a process and more consultations, it would have been more subtle and he would not have got so directly involved.
“I don’t think any leader other than Keir would have attended an officers’ meeting and personally voted to block Burnham. These are brutal decisions and it tells you a lot about the character of Keir, he is pretty spiky when he wants to be.”
Apparently, though it’s tit-for-tat:
A Labour peer says: “Burnham being blocked is the Left getting a taste of their own medicine.
“The Left under Corbyn behaved appallingly in making sure good candidates like Roger Godsiff [the former Birmingham Hall Green MP who had defied the Labour whip on key Brexit votes] got deselected.
“So those on the Left who want Andy Burnham to be selected to fight a parliamentary seat so that he can mount a leadership challenge really don’t have a leg to stand on.”
The New Statesman says backbenchers are getting worried:
On Monday, two letters began swirling among soft-Left backbenchers – including one from the Tribune Group – putting pressure on the NEC to re-think its decision. Over 24 hours, several MPs have made their disquiet known, including the north-west MP, Anneliese Midgley, who described the NEC’s decision as a “huge mistake”. When asked how they felt about the events of this weekend, one MP on the Left of the party responded with an exploding head emoji. Some MPs skipped the meeting altogether. (One said that as it was Hermer speaking it was unlikely to be that “spicy”.) Another bluntly described their party’s fate to the New Statesman: “It’s the end.”
According to the Guardian, the magnanimous Prime Minister is prepared to countenance the return of Andy Burnham to the Commons, but only under certain conditions which appear not to be acceptable:
Starmer is understood to have offered to support Burnham running for another seat in the north-west of England in 2027, nearer the end of his mayoralty, by which time the voting system would have changed in Labour’s favour and the party would be able to line up a strong replacement.
However, the proposal was not accepted and the Prime Minister’s allies have since suggested that Burnham’s publicly angry response to being blocked may mean that even a tentative deal will not come to pass.
A letter being circulated by soft Left Labour backbenchers said the decision to block him from running was a gift to Nigel Farage and that losing the byelection would be “unimaginable”. It came after Burnham himself appeared to predict that Labour would lose the byelection.
As for the PLP meeting, the Guardian has no better news for the Government:
Reactions were mixed. One usually loyal MP said: “Everybody was in a massive grump before Christmas and now they’ve come back and nothing has got any better. Keir has used an opportunity to demonstrate strength and instead demonstrated weakness.”
The Daily Mail says “50 Labour MPs” have signed a letter of protest:
“As a former Cabinet member and the current Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester, there is no legitimate reason why Andy Burnham should not have the democratic right to put his candidacy to the local people of Gorton and Denton,” the letter said.
“This is particularly important as polling clearly shows he may be our very best chance at winning this by-election.”
It is not just the hard-Left of the party that has turned on Sir Keir – former Cabinet minister Louise Haigh said the decision should be reversed “otherwise I think we’ll all come to regret this”.
Last night Brian Leishman, Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, told LBC that there is a “degree of inevitability” that the PM will face a leadership challenge this year, adding: “There’s no doubt about it, the Prime Minister is not Mr Popular on the doorsteps.”
Meanwhile, an independent councillor who is also Deputy Leader of King’s Lynn and West Norfolk Borough Council has quit over a “disgraceful” cancelled election, in another Telegraph story:
Simon Ring, who was elected to Norfolk county council in 2024, has chosen to trigger a by-election so that voters can have their say on whether he stays in his post.
He condemned the Government’s “disgraceful decision” to cancel elections, saying it represents the “erosion of democracy”.
The retired financial adviser called for other councillors to follow his lead in local authorities where voting has been delayed.
Ring said: “Democracy is being eroded and we’ve got to take a stance somewhere. This is my stance.
“I would like to see every councillor resign in areas where their elections have been cancelled.”
Let’s return to George Orwell, and the words of Squealer as he explained to the other animals why there would be no more debates:
Do not imagine, comrades, that leadership is a pleasure! On the contrary, it is a deep and heavy responsibility. No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?
Indeed. Animal Farm is always worth reading in full.
This article (Labour’s Cancellation of Democracy is Becoming a Habit) was created and published by The Daily Sceptic and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Sallust
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