During the Jeremy Corbyn era, some of the left-wing leader’s fiercest critics have given up and left Labor side: not so Luke Ackhurst.
Behind the scenes, Akehurst was doing what he had been doing since he was a 16-year-old political activist – organizing to get his Labor wing back on the front foot and later help cement Keir Starmer’s control of the party.
“There weren’t many of us in the proverbial trench in 2018,” says one Labor insider at the time.
Six years later, Ackhurst is one of Labour’s newest candidates, standing for Durham North among a list of many party officials and aides parachuted to safety just weeks before the election.
However, Akehurst is particularly controversial – even something of a hate figure – to some on the left, both inside and outside Labour. While Akehurst and his allies call themselves “moderates”, their opponents would call them “the Labor right”.
Part of the antagonism comes from Akehurst’s work as director of an organization called We Believe in Israel, which he runs as a non-Jewish devout Zionist. In this role, he strongly defended Israel’s actions in Gaza as proportionate and campaigned in solidarity with Israel – a view not widely shared in Labor.
Momentum, the left-wing group that grew out of Corbyn’s leadership, described his views on the conflict as “a slap in the face to voters across the country who are already outraged by Labour’s failures in Gaza” and claimed he was “not fit to be a candidate”. .
A former colleague who worked closely with Akehurst said: “At the end of the day, why he is hated by some is that he is proud of his beliefs and challenges them, as well as the relationship with Israel. He is a believer and a friend of Israel.
Other criticism has been leveled at him for his efforts to wrest control of Labour’s National Executive Committee, the conference agenda and the Labor Party constituency from the Corbynite left. He is now a member of the NIC, which helps select candidates for the upcoming elections.
Ackhurst’s history of strong social media engagement and his labor-focused blogs may also be a factor. Since being announced as a candidate, he has defended comments that the UN is such antisemite and that Jews were “politically black”.
“One of the things that’s interesting about Luke’s reputation is that he’s a lot better than the internet thinks he’s going to be,” says the colleague. “People who don’t like him show up to fight him and find a really nice guy.”
Now 52, Ackhurst delivered his first Labor leaflets aged 10 for his mother when she ran for parish councillor. He joined as a member aged 16 before becoming National Secretary of Labor Students and later an agent for Frank Dobson, the late former Labor MP and Health Secretary. He stood unsuccessfully for the party in Hampshire and Essex during the Blair years.
Ackhurst has also crossed swords with the party’s left in Hackney, Diane Abbott’s east London seat, where he was a Labor councilor for 12 years from 2002. There is speculation that this is the ideal place where he would seek a seat. had become available. But his political career was hampered in 2010 when he developed a neurological illness and spent five months in hospital, followed by a further nine months in a wheelchair. He now uses a cane.
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In the following years, while the party was in opposition, Ackhurst returned to organizing through Labor First, a group set up by MP John Speller, who says its aim was “to reverse the takeover of the party by extremists, particularly the Leninist left, who made Labor unelectable” in the 1980s. Akehurst became its secretary and remained in that role while the group played a role in organizing against Corbynism in Labour.
Ackhurst’s candidacy is “extremely well-deserved,” says Speller. “He is a force of nature in terms of helping people across the country and has played a significant role in rebuilding the Labor Party. Luke was an amazing organizer of the moderate cause in the party and on the national executive.’
When Starmer took over the leadership, Labor First joined forces with another organisation, Progress, to form an umbrella group called Labor to Win, dedicated to bringing the party to power.
Sources say it was Akehurst, armed with a spreadsheet of the names of 650 constituency parties and details of their delegates, who helped push through the 2021 party conference rule changes, which ousted the party’s left further from power .
Despite his reputation as an organizer of the new leadership, Ackhurst is not personally close to Starmer, with the two men having only spoken in substance once or twice. He does have allies in the leadership, with Matt Pound, one of the key officials involved in the selection of seats, having worked with him as an organizer at Labor First.
If he becomes an MP, as expected, Ackhurst is likely to be known for his force of personality and organizational strength, those who know him say. One says, “He loves spreadsheets and behind-the-scenes graphics. I would have thought it was meant for the whips office.
