Ben Cobley

Keir Starmer’s big problem? It’s his party

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When Labour MP Neil Coyle took to Twitter for his extraordinary rant against Jacob Rees-Mogg and Brexit voters, he perfectly summed up Keir Starmer’s main problem as Labour party leader: it’s his party.

In purely political terms, Starmer himself has done well, dampening down internal Labour party dramas, showing himself as relatively normal and clawing his way to level-pegging in the polls after a summer of Covid chaos for the Government. However Coyle’s outburst – for which he has since said sorry – shows the danger his MPs and activists pose to his ambitions when it comes to the politics of identity – of aligning to certain types of people over others.

As leader of this ravaged, interest group-dominated, bureaucratic nightmare of a party, Starmer cannot completely avoid these muddy waters. His flip-flopping on Black Lives Matter is one example of this. One minute he was taking the knee to the activists, the next he was backtracking to call BLM merely a ‘moment’ and distancing himself from their revolutionary agenda. After a ticking-off from black Labour MPs and activists, he turned once more, telling black journalists, with some adroit lawyerly footwork, ‘This is not a moment for not standing with the Black Lives Matter movement’ and later promising to take unconscious bias training.

Starmer has taken further flak from MPs and activists as part of continuing recriminations over perceived anti-Corbyn bias and the sympathetic treatment of anti-Semitism complaints. New MP and Corbyn loyalist Claudia Webbe has referred to how ‘black members are saying they don’t feel safe and welcome in our party’ and others have complained of racism and sexism by party staff and even fellow MPs, albeit while revealing few details. Starmer has met several times with representatives of the BAME staff network to hear complaints and receive demands.

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