Convert, Cooperate, or Condemn: What Could the Labour Left Do Now?
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058231218320 |
| Author | Colm Murphy,Alfie Steer |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
16 POLITICAL INSIGHT • DECEMBER 2023
These are tough times for the Labour
Left. Divided over Europe, disdained
in the press, pulverised in the
2019 election, and damaged by
scandals over foreign policy and (especially)
antisemitism, the Labour Party’s anti-capitalist
wing has not had a happy ve years. Jeremy
Corbyn’s landslide victories in 2015 and 2016
feel like a long time ago. As the likelihood of
a Labour government grows, Keir Starmer’s
internal opponents also struggle for a hearing
outside of already sympathetic media. When,
for example, was the last time you saw John
McDonnell on BBC Breakfast or ITV’s This
Morning?
Nowhere are the Left’s woes clearer than
in Labour’s Stakhanovite organisational
politics. The ongoing process of parliamentary
Convert, Cooperate, or
Condemn: What Could
the Labour Left Do Now?
The Labour Left, ascendant under Jeremy Corbyn, has been
marginalised and frozen out by Keir Starmer. What could the future
hold for Labour’s anti-capitalist wing? Colm Murphy and Alfie Steer
investigate.
candidate selection routinely sees once
powerful groups like Momentum defeated
by their bête noire Labour to Win. The high
number of open selections (due to the scale
of the 2019 defeat and the redrawing of
constituency boundaries) only exaggerates
this trend: several MPs in the ‘Socialist
Campaign Group’, including Beth Winter and
Sam Tarry, have been deselected.
The Left have been here before. Throughout
Labour’s history, the party’s more anti-capitalist
tendencies were usually subordinated by
some combination of social democrats,
Christian socialists, and cautious, trade-union
dominated labourists. But for a socialist
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Political Insight December 2023 BU.indd 16Political Insight December 2023 BU.indd 16 10/11/2023 11:4010/11/2023 11:40
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