If you put the Diane Abbott row to one side, it has been a very successful week for the clique who control Labour’s candidate selections. Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an election eight days ago means that the National Executive Committee can now impose who they want on constituencies across the country. More than 100 have since been slotted into seats, ahead of the party’s self-imposed deadline of all candidates being chosen by next Tuesday – an impressive exercise in party management. It is certainly a marked contrast with the 150-odd vacancies which their Tory equivalents need to fill.
The candidates selected over the past week are very much Starmer’s people. Their politics are moderate; their brand professional. They represent a continuation of the ‘Starmtrooper’ phenomena identified by Katy Balls, whose massed ranks are now being swelled by the addition of this ‘parachute regiment.’ Of particular note are the 20 candidates selected since Tuesday, since when the NEC have been able to select candidates without giving the local membership a choice. Some are significant figures in their own right. Torsten Bell, the new candidate for Swansea West, is the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation. Paul Waugh, chosen for Rochdale, is a veteran journalist for the i newspaper. Josh Simons will stand for Makerfield and is the director of Labour Together.
Others are well-respected figures on the Labour right. Georgia Gould is the daughter of the New Labour strategist Lord Gould and has served as leader of Camden Council since 2017. Deirdre Costigan inherits Ealing Southall, having ‘whipped’ much of West London into ‘Corbyn-free zones’ in the words of one Labour insider. The most intriguing selection though is Luke Akehurst to succeed Kevan Jones in North Durham. Few men know more about the intricacies of Labour’s interminable NEC rules than this master-factionalist and director of the cross-party lobby group ‘We Believe in Israel.’ Akehurst’s selection has triggered a predictable storm of criticism online. ‘It’s certainly got the Corbynites rattled’, exclaims one delighted Starmer supporter.
Score-settling has been very much the theme of the past few days, with Corbyn supporters Faiza Shaheen and Lloyd Russell-Moyle both blocked on Tuesday night. After the purging of the left follows the the rewards for the right. Shaheen was replaced by Shama Tatler, a key figure in Labour to Win. During the Corbyn years, this group vied for influence with Momentum for votes at Labour conference and in selection battles. Russell-Moyle’s successor is Chris Ward, Keir Starmer’s former speech writer. Five members of Labour’s NEC have also been chosen in the past 72 hours: in addition to Akehurst there is Mark Ferguson, Gurinder Singh Josan, James Asser, and Michael Wheeler.
After the chaos of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Starmer’s inner circle hope that their careful selection process will prevent the party lurching off course once again. A stronger parliamentary party also means a great talent pool from which to draw when Starmer is forming his first government. If Labour wins on 4 July, the likes of Bell, Gould and Ward will doubtless sit on the front bench in the years to come. This is all the more important when one remembers just how inexperienced the next parliament could be. The 1945 general election had the record number of first time MPs returned (51 per cent) while 1997 had the highest number of new Labour MPs returning with 43 per cent.
With the Starmtroopers currently polling 20-point leads, and a record number of Tory MPs standing down, both landmarks could be broken in five weeks time.
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