The Left pierced Sir Keir Starmer’s armour with Gaza ceasefire revolt – it’s a severe blow to his authority
AT one Labour conference in the early 1980s, when the party was in the middle of a bitter civil war, the colourful MP Austin Mitchell said to reporters: “Come in, the blood’s lovely.”
His words are a perfect description of the explosive crisis that has gripped the Conservative Party, making the Government look dysfunctional and the Prime Minister doomed.
The biggest beneficiary of this chaos is Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Only this week, one survey put Labour on 44 per cent and the Conservatives on just 21 per cent — their lowest rating since Rishi Sunak entered Downing Street.
It is a remarkable turnaround for Sir Keir.
When he took over from Jeremy Corbyn in early 2020, Labour had just suffered one of the worst defeats in history.
At the time, it appeared likely that Labour would spend the remainder of the decade in the political wilderness.
Napoleon said that he liked his generals to be lucky and Starmer has been an extremely fortunate leader.
It is largely the Tories’ meltdown that is propelling him towards office rather than any political brilliance on his part.
Indeed, he lacks both conviction and charisma, just as his party is nothing like an effective well-oiled machine ready to form the next government.
But those glaring weaknesses have not been fully exposed to the spotlight of public scrutiny because all the attention of the media at Westminster has been focused on the Tories’ psychodrama.
This week has provided a revealing insight into the fissures and friction that still prevail within Labour.
Beyond the woes of the Tories, the public could see that Labour are far less disciplined than their cheerleaders pretend.
The much-vaunted new unity turns out to be a shallow veneer which was ripped away by the intense pressures of the conflict in Gaza.
Although it was the warring Tories that were again trapped in the harsh glare of media interrogation after the Supreme Court ruling on the Government’s Rwandan policy, events in the Commons on Wednesday evening exposed how badly fractured Labour really are.
In by far the largest internal rebellion since Starmer became leader, no fewer than 56 of his MPs defied the Labour whip and voted for a Scottish Nationalist motion calling for an immediate ceasefire in the Gazan conflict.
Glaring weaknesses
Just as damningly, eight Shadow Ministers and two Parliamentary Private Secretaries rebelled against Starmer, among them the high-profile Birmingham Yardley MP Jess Phillips.
All ten of these front-benchers have either resigned or been dismissed.
Apart from the severe blow to Sir Keir’s authority, there were two other fascinating aspects to this rebellion.
The first was the demonstration of the Left’s continuing influence over a large section of Labour’s ranks, despite the expulsion of Corbyn from the Parliamentary party and the boasts from Starmer’s office about a move towards the centre ground.
In reality, anti-Western, anti-Israeli and anti-capitalist views still flourish within the movement.
The radicals have not gone away but, even before the election is held, they are shrieking about the betrayal of Labour’s values and agitating against him.
Yesterday the left-wing commentator and activist Owen Jones wrote that “Starmer risks becoming a hate figure to large sections of Labour’s natural voting coalition”.
That hardly bodes well for a Starmer government.
Apart from ideological antipathy to the Israeli cause, another prime reason so many Labour MPs rebelled against Starmer is that they are worried about losing the Muslim vote, both nationally and in their own constituencies.
In the Parliamentary seats of many of the rebels, including Jess Phillips, Rachel Hopkins in Luton South and Yasmin Qureshi in Bolton South East, Muslims make up more than 30 per cent of the local population.
Across England there are estimated to be at least 30 constituencies where the Muslim electorate is bigger than the sitting MP’s majority.
‘Gaslighting Muslims’
Given that 75 per cent of Muslims have traditionally backed Labour, these voters are seen as essential to a Labour victory.
But there are fears within the party that Starmer is putting this support in jeopardy by stoking disillusion.
“I have never seen anger like this within the Muslim community within my lifetime,” says Ali Milani, chair of the Muslim Labour Network.
That indignation was highlighted in a series of outbursts by Mish Rahman, a member of Labour’s ruling National Executive, who accused Starmer of “gaslighting Muslims on an epic scale” and presiding over a party that is “institutionally Islamophobic”.
Only last month a study by the group Muslim Census claimed that Labour is “at risk of losing 66 per cent of the Muslim vote” over Gaza.
Labour has plenty of other problems including the low calibre of the Shadow Cabinet, its internal splits on transgender ideology and the emptiness of its policies on immigration and the economy.
This week could serve as a chilling warning of things to come if they win next year’s election.