If Starmer is ruthless, he needs to resolve ‘purge’ accusations quickly
When I asked Sir Keir Starmer a couple of weeks back if he was ruthless, he said he was – but qualified it.
His ruthlessness was trained firmly on trying to get a Labour government that “could change this country for the better”.
He was “not ruthless for [his] own ambition”, nor was it ruthlessness for the Labour Party.
“I’m ruthless for the county,” said Sir Keir. “The only way we’ll bring about change in the country is if we are ruthless about wining the general election.”
But that ruthlessness is now blowing up and knocking the party’s election campaign off course.
Politics live: Another Conservative defects to Labour
After a slick first week, Labour is having its first crisis, as the row whether to de-select Diane Abbott has seized the headlines and muddied the message.
It has prompted, not just open splits at the top of the party, but wider questions about whether Starmer is purging the Labour Party as left wing candidates are blocked from standing and loyalists are being drafted into safe sets.
Ms Abbott herself has called it a purge, while Andrew Fisher, who worked in Jeremy Corbyn’s team asked: “Is it racism, sexism, factionalism or a combination of all? Either way it looks appalling.”
After iron tight discipline, the party is beginning to fray at the edges.
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Ms Rayner, the most senior women in the party, came to Ms Abbott’s defence today, telling me in the Sky News daily podcast that she should be allowed to stand if that is what she would like to do.
Yvette Cooper has also weighed in, describing Ms Abbott as a trailblazer and a “really important figure in the Labour party”.
Starmer, for his part, says the decision hasn’t been taken and will be made by the party’s national executive committee.
But there is clear a split – and it looks ill-disciplined at exactly the time when the party needs to show the public that is not another version of the warring Tories.
Ms Rayner was careful not to lay the blame of this at the feet of Starmer. She told me when I asked if the party leader was trying to purge the left that she “didn’t think Keir was acting in a factional way” – but that doesn’t mean others are not.
When I asked her about what Andrew Fisher had said about this being a very bad look for the party, Ms Rayner said: “It’s not a great look the way Diane was briefed against.”
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Rayner: ‘No reason why Abbott can’t stand as Labour MP’
The briefings the The Times newspaper on Thursday night that Ms Abbott was going to be barred from standing, promoting her defiant response and a rally outside Hackney Town Hall, has taken the issue from being relatively contained to out of control.
And this is the dilemma for Starmer. If he is ruthless about changing Britain, the less left wing firebrands on this benches, the better.
If he only wins a small majority, he needs the support of all his MPs and can ill-afford a left faction frustrating his government. So de-selecting unbiddable MPs and replacing them with loyalists makes perfect ruthless sense.
But when does being ruthless tip over into something more sinister, that seems unfair and actually turns voters off?
Perhaps the Labour high command think they can ride it out, purge these MPs and the news cycle moves on.
But the party already has a big problem in what are supposedly safe seats with the Muslim community that are angry over their stance over the Israel-Hamas war.
They are also facing an independent Jeremy Corbyn in Islington North.
Does the party really want to kick out the first ever black woman MP from the party too?
One senior Labour figure insists to me that his is not a purge and that it’s “important” to see all these cases differently.
But even if that is the intention, it is not how it’s being received amongst big chunks of Labour backers and voters.
If Sir Keir Starmer is really ruthless about winning this election, he might be advised to resolve this issue and quickly.
As Rayner acknowledged, it has become a distraction and that will be – in her words – a “frustration” to Starmer.
His top team have long said they will have wobbles along the way and what’s important is how its handled. This one needs sorting, and quick.
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Politics
Norman Tebbit: Former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government dies aged 94
Norman Tebbit, the former Tory minister who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government, has died at the age of 94.
Lord Tebbit died “peacefully at home” late on Monday night, his son William confirmed.
One of Mrs Thatcher’s most loyal cabinet ministers, he was a leading political voice throughout the turbulent 1980s.
He held the posts of employment secretary, trade secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative party chairman before resigning as an MP in 1992 after his wife was left disabled by the Provisional IRA’s bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton.
He considered standing for the Conservative leadership after Mrs Thatcher’s resignation in 1990, but was committed to taking care of his wife.
Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit in 1987 after her election victory. Pic: PA
Tory leader Kemi Badenoch called him an “icon” in British politics and was “one of the leading exponents of the philosophy we now know as Thatcherism”.
“But to many of us it was the stoicism and courage he showed in the face of terrorism, which inspired us as he rebuilt his political career after suffering terrible injuries in the Brighton bomb, and cared selflessly for his wife Margaret, who was gravely disabled in the bombing,” she wrote on X.
“He never buckled under pressure and he never compromised. Our nation has lost one of its very best today and I speak for all the Conservative family and beyond in recognising Lord Tebbit’s enormous intellect and profound sense of duty to his country.
“May he rest in peace.”
Lord Tebbit and his wife Margaret stand outside the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Pic: PA
Tory grandee David Davis told Sky News Lord Tebbit was a “great working class Tory, always ready to challenge establishment conventional wisdom for the bogus nonsense it often was”.
“He was one of Thatcher’s bravest and strongest lieutenants, and a great friend,” Sir David said.
“He had to deal with the agony that the IRA visited on him and his wife, and he did so with characteristic unflinching courage. He was a great man.”
Reform leader Nigel Farage said Lord Tebbit “gave me a lot of help in my early days as an MEP”.
He was “a great man. RIP,” he added.
Lord Tebbit as employment secretary in 1983 with Mrs Thatcher. Pic: PA
Born to working-class parents in north London, he was made a life peer in 1992, where he sat until he retired in 2022.
Lord Tebbit was trade secretary when he was injured in the Provisional IRA’s bombing in Brighton during the Conservative Party conference in 1984.
Five people died in the attack and Lord Tebbit’s wife, Margaret, was left paralysed from the neck down. She died in 2020 at the age of 86.
Before entering politics, his first job, aged 16, was at the Financial Times where he had his first experience of trade unions and vowed to “break the power of the closed shop”.
He then trained as a pilot with the RAF – at one point narrowly escaping from the burning cockpit of a Meteor 8 jet – before becoming the MP for Epping in 1970 then for Chingford in 1974.
Lord Tebbit during an EU debate in the House of Lords in 1997. Pic: PA
As a cabinet minister, he was responsible for legislation that weakened the powers of the trade unions and the closed shop, making him the political embodiment of the Thatcherite ideology that was in full swing.
His tough approach was put to the test when riots erupted in Brixton, south London, against the backdrop of high rates of unemployment and mistrust between the black community and the police.
He was frequently misquoted as having told the unemployed to “get on your bike”, and was often referred to as “Onyerbike” for some time afterwards.
What he actually said was he grew up in the ’30s with an unemployed father who did not riot, “he got on his bike and looked for work, and he kept looking till he found it”.
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