GE Updates #1: The Pitfalls of the Purge

Analysis of Labour's first mistake of the 2024 General Election

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General election campaigns can be highly eventful or deathly dull. It's very hard to predict how they turn out. Sometimes they are influenced by vast global events, sometimes explosive domestic scandals. Personalities can play a part, so can eye-catching policy or brave political strategy. However, after a week this election is yet to evidence many of these. It could just be one of those dull elections.

So why, as many readers may be asking, has the Labour leadership decided to delve into a provocative purge of their supposed ‘undesirables’ at exactly the time the press are scratching for a crumb of a story. It is undoubtedly their first mistake of the campaign. But, as with many of the petty internal happenings of Labour there is a vast kremlinology behind this which this piece will tentatively explore.

124 Years of Factions

Labour’s eternal weakness as a movement is that those within it convince themselves they are the only ones doing the morally ‘right’ thing. This leads to what you could call the Homeric syndrome, where everyone in the party assumes they are the protagonist, in an epic moral fight against their mythological enemy. There are several issues with this outlook. Primarily it warps someone’s view of life: destroying any innate tolerance people have, and splitting people / ideas into binary categories of good / bad or progress / anti-progress. Secondly, it leads to a distinct lack of connection to the real world which one obviously needs to succeed in politics. And finally, it purposefully creates a vague definition of the ‘enemy’, allowing one to shift their hatred onto different people or things that are not deemed morally incorrect at specific moments. The time-natured element allows a very political edge to invade the ‘moral’ motivations of those in the party. 


Thus, this Homeric syndrome creates chronic ideological factionalism, where parts of the party, and wider political system are targeted as enemies because they do not share the ruling-groups political views. What has changed in Labour, however, is how these enemies – or those with different opinions – are to be treated.

Many forget the incessant factionalism and infighting that characterised Clement Attlee’s leadership. From 1935, Attlee faced several challenges from those on the right, such as Arthur Greenwood and Herbet Morrison – including a leadership challenge from Morrison the morning after Attlee won a 146 seat majority! Simultaneously he was attacked by those on the left: particularly from Stafford Cripps’ personally-funded Tribune magazine which harboured Nye Bevan’s pernicious anti-Attlee columns throughout the 1940-45 war coalition. 


Attlee’s refusal to define these people as enemies goes to the heart of his genius. Instead of purging them forever, he made Bevan Minister for Health and Housing, Cripps Chancellor, Morrison President of the Council and Greenwood Lord Privy Seal. All played a fundamental role in the 1945-51 Labour government, with Bevan, Attlee’s greatest critic, a core factor in the NHS’ creation. Attlee did this because he, unlike so many in Labour, escaped the Homeric syndrome. He was not blinded by some eternal battle for the correctness of one’s opinions, or how similar they were to the leadership. Small slights or mistakes were not interpreted as career-ending catastrophes. Instead, Attlee knew his success came from his ability ‘to take things as they come. One should never worry and one should get the greatest pleasure out of things’ (Bew, Citizen Clem, pp. 364-5).

In Attlee’s world, where he was gravely injured in WW1 and scrambled to save the nation in WW2, the idea that the real enemies were on the pages of a left-wing pamphlet was laughable.

Much has changed in Labour since. Factionalism and ideology helped derail the unfulfilled 1960s/70s governments of Wilson and Callaghan. What these Labour PMs refused to do, however, was purge their enemies. Up until the end, these leaders reconciled their bitterly divided parties in an Attlean style. But as the left and right of the party exited government in the misery of 1979’s Winter of Discontent, the party split almost irreconcilably with the SDP founded in 1981. Since then, the left and right wings of the party have been busy writing their own homeric epics of why Labour kept losing elections. On one side the Bennite tribunes of the left, on the other arose the Blairite ruthlessness of modernisation. Since this split, there has never been any serious unification in the Labour movement.

The Corbyn Hangover

This continuing division reared its ugly head with Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership (2015-20). Depending on one's view, especially for those inside Labour, it was either a blossoming of Labour’s true ideas and morality or a catastrophic period of pathetic leadership. It was certainly a continuation of the post-1980 internal fights. The introduction of deselections by Corbyn was designed to damage the right, while almost the entire PLP moved against Corbyn in 2016 in an attempt to kill the left.

One source of division was the antisemitism of Corbyn and much of his movement. Pogrund and Maguire’s conclusions are enough:

When it came to Labour’s relationship with the Jewish community, the failure was his [Corbyn]. The empathy that defined him as a man and politician escaped him. In the face of accusations of racism, he too often empathised with himself. [...] here was a leader whose preference was to split his own party, rather than apologise. (Left Out: The Inside Story of Corbyn, pp. 357-8)

Corbyn’s leadership was a political failure. But to think its repercussions or divisions have been assuaged, or that they can be merely forgotten, is categorically wrong.

Starmer en route to No.10

Starmer’s three steps to fix the Labour party after Corbyn will possibly be seen as one of the best political strategies of Labour’s history. In the wake of the historic 2019 defeat (worst since 1935), he sought to: 

1. Change the Labour Party (remove antisemitism / distance it from Corbyn)

2. Illustrate the uselessness of the Tories 

3. Set out how Labour would change the country

In short: change, attack and hope. It worked because, as with most successful things in politics, it was simple. That simple narrative, after years of complex morality fighting between right and left, of which most people either did not care of or actively disliked, instead offered a period of Catharsis. The Labour left were forced to tolerate the removal of antisemitism and Starmer’s reversal of leadership pledges in return for a more peaceful settlement.

Overall, step one was completed, step two as well, with step three in process (and likely to finish in the manifesto). To prove step one remains complete there admittedly needs to be added vigilance to a resurgence of antisemitism or callous attacks on the leadership. But this week's purge has extended beyond vigilance and has transformed into another bout of open warfare. 

Dianne Abbott was rightly suspended for her remarks suggesting that Travellers / Jewish people faced prejudice, but not racism, and that this discrimination they faced was similar to those with red-hair. After her suspension last April, she apologised for her remarks and completed an antisemitism awareness course. In doing so, she had the whip restored and was invited back into the party. The expectation was that after completing everything that was asked of her in the disciplinary process she would be allowed to stand. But the news that she has now been banned from standing shattered this.

The National Executive Committee, Labour’s ruling body, is extremely powerful and, importantly, has a Starmer majority. It can override the rule book, which it seems to have done in banning Abbott. This action of purging someone after being allowed back in the party has never, to the best of many insiders’ knowledge, been used by the NEC before. It is thus a serious escalation in internal party purging, and shows a party moving further towards the centralised Tory apparatus. While many can have their reservations about Abbott, as the first black woman to become an MP she is historically important to the Labour movement, and particularly the Labour left. But yet again those in charge of Labour have revelled in their ability to construct enemies and purge them. As Stephen Bush notes:

That lack of a decent rationale for making a change and going beyond Labour’s rule book is bringing one of Labour’s grubbiest practices — its use of power politics and fixes in its safest seats — to the forefront of the general election campaign. That is a headache that the party simply does not need.

The news that Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Fazia Shaheen, two avowedly Corbynite MPs, are also to be purged only heightens the growing storm. Russell-Moyle’s last minute suspension is pure, unadulterated factionalism, and while one could certainly imagine him guilty, its timing is highly political. Shaheen’s comments are fraught with hazard over recent events in Gaza, but if one banned those who thought Israel might be committing war crimes, or accused some of Islamophobia in the Labour party (of which there is some evidence in their reaction to the Muslim vote abandoning them) Labour would have few voters left. Both may deserve punishment. But the timing of the deselection, with no time for a proper process and assessment of evidence, is a sorry state. What's even more alarming, as with Abbott, is that even if you make a mistake and amend it according to the Party’s request there is still no guarantee of reconciliation. Revealingly Sue Gray has briefed papers on her dislike of these purges:

the leader’s chief aide, is said to have expressed concerns about the political fallout of suspending another candidate on grounds likely to prompt accusations of factionalism.

Gray, previously a Labour outsider, would be wise to escape the Homeric syndrome many fall into at the top of the party.

The Future of Labour and the Left

So what does the escalation of purging from Labour’s leadership mean for the future of the party? In the immediate context of the election, it could become a slight headache, though nothing too strong. Brighton Pavilion will now likely remain Green, the fact that Russell-Moyle was Brighton MP for Kemptown hurting Labour’s fight in the southern progressive city. Other left-leaning seats, already fuelled by the Gaza division, such as Bristol Central (challenged by the Green’s leader Carla Denyer) may come into play. The motive for those on the more radical left to vote tactically may slightly weaken.

As Rob Ford rightly states, this is more likely to hurt Labour in the longer term, not short. The local elections already illustrated that even at the Tories peak dislike the left wing vote will rebel on its perceived alienation. Ford continued: ‘things will look very different if/when Labour [in future elections] declines in polls and can no longer afford losses on its left flank.’ Early evidence from More In Common suggests that Abbott’s national standing ensures that the purge is cutting through as an issue. Meanwhile Rayner’s statement against the NEC that Abbott should be allowed to stand only illustrates the danger this purge presents by triggering a wider left-right conflict in Labour.

But it is also a problem for a future Labour government. One of our three recurring mistakes Labour governments historically make is the obsession with ideological purity. Without differences of ideas creativity is reduced, but incorporate too many rivalling ideas and it's a mess. While Abbott was never to be a minister, and would likely have been a complete failure had she become Home Secretary under a Corbyn government, the message it sends to other left wing MPs is plain and simple: piss off. Why try and be a team player if the leadership will never see you as the same team? Labour must overcome its continuing plague of seeing its main enemies on the videos of PoliticsJoe or Novara Media, and instead focus on those on the other benches or on the chronic problems the country faces. A disagreement does not transform one into an enemy. The Attlean tolerance Labour once prided itself on seems to have vanished from the party entirely.

It's fair to believe Abbott or others should never stand as an MP purely because of their actions. But the timing and nature of how Labour have purged them has continued its chronic long-term problem of factionalisation. Starmer is no Odysseus or Achilles in an epic fight against the enemies of the left-leaning Troy. One can’t criticise Boris Johnson for purging 21 MPs and then turn a blind eye to Starmer’s use of the same grubby tool. The fact that Labour have decided to do this during a pivotal election campaign is even more questionable. Reconciliation may be a dirty word, but even with one’s supposed ‘enemies’ it is a necessary one. 

Tom Egerton is a political writer and researcher, his upcoming book ‘The Conservative Effect 2010-24: 14 Wasted Years?’ is out on 27 June 2024, published by CUP and co-edited with Anthony Seldon. Follow him on X / Twitter here.