Labour splits erupt as left-wing stalwart blasts Keir Starmer

LONDON — Labour leader Keir Starmer has allowed a “right-wing faction” of the opposition party to become “drunk with power,” a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn has claimed.

Senior backbench MP John McDonnell — who ran the shadow treasury team for four years under Starmer’s left-wing predecessor — said Starmer’s closest allies were attempting to “destroy” the left of the Labour Party.

Figures on Labour’s left flank have grown increasingly disgruntled with Starmer’s leadership — despite the party’s commanding polling lead over the governing Conservatives.

They have pointed to the lack of selection of non-Starmer allied candidates in winnable Westminster seats, as well as the suspension of some high profile left-wing figures.

Corbyn himself was suspended by the party and then blocked from standing as a Labour candidate, after he claimed the scale of antisemitism in Labour — an issue which rocked his leadership — was dramatically overstated for political reasons.

Most recently, some on the left have pointed to the launch of an internal investigation into Neal Lawson, director of campaign group Compass and a former advisor to Gordon Brown, over tweets he sent calling for cross-party co-operation. Under Labour rules, members are banned from expressing support for other political parties.

“I’ve written to Keir a few times saying: Look, this factionalism is causing us real problems for the future,” McDonnell told the BBC’s Newsnight.

“What [Starmer has] allowed to happen is a right-wing faction [has] become drunk with power and use devices within the party, almost on a search and destroy of the left … we’ve always been a broad church,” he added, pointing to former PM Tony Blair’s “tolerance” of opposing views within the party.

“[Starmer’s team] seem to be more interested in destroying the presence of the left in the party than getting a Labour government,” McDonnell said.

The current Labour leader has shifted the party away from its policy platform under the left-wing Corbyn, and has abandoned a number of his own most left-leaning pledges from his leadership campaign in 2020. Starmer has blamed this on changed economic circumstances since the pandemic and war in Ukraine.

A Labour spokesperson told the BBC the party has high standards for its prospective election candidates.

“This is a changed Labour Party back in the service of working people so we can build a better Britain,” they added.