Keir Starmer is under increasing pressure to end what his critics say is a “purge” of those on the Labor left ahead of next week’s meeting of the party’s governing body.
Party members on Thursday accused the Labor leader of orchestrating a “left-wing massacre” after several senior figures were told they will not be selected as candidates for seats they have previously held or contested.
Members of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) will meet next week to agree Labour’s full list of candidate MPs in what is shaping up to be a stormy meeting where the fates of several candidates will hang in the balance.
One of those likely to spark the fiercest debate is Diane Abbott, the veteran London MP who said this week she was barred from standing again as a Labor candidate but vowed to stand again, even as an independent.
Abbott received the backing of Labor deputy leader Angela Rayner on Thursday, who told the Guardian that the Labor veteran should be allowed to stand again and had not been treated “fairly or appropriately” by some party colleagues.
Her comments sparked speculation that the Labor leadership would back down on its demand for Abbott to stand aside, with Starmer himself insisting on Thursday that no final decision had been made.
Others also complained about being canceled, including Feiza Shaheen, who had already started campaigning in Chingford and Woodford Green, and Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who was suspended as Labor MP for Brighton Kemptown.
Labor has already chosen a candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green: Shama Tatler. She was a key figure in the centrist organizing group Labor to Win, which vied for influence with Momentum for votes at the Labor conference and in the election battles.
Abbott was suspended as a Labor MP last year after she wrote a letter to the Observer in which she disparaged racism against the Irish, Jews and Travellers. Her whip was restored this week after a months-long investigation.
Rayner said: “If Diane wanted to stand up again, I see no reason why she couldn’t… The investigation has concluded and it is confirmed that she is now back in the Parliamentary Labor Party and on the whip.”
Starmer was pressed on Abbott’s fate during a campaign visit to Wales. “No decision has been taken to ban her and you have to remember that she was a pioneer as an MP,” he said. “She has overcome incredible challenges to achieve what she has achieved in her political career.”
But in comments that sparked further anger in the party, the Labor leader added: “I have always been keen that we have the best quality candidates as we go into this election.”
Starmer denied deciding the fate of Labor candidates across the country, insisting that Labour’s NEC should make the final decision on who is allowed to contest the election.
However, his critics point out that several of his close allies have been selected as candidates for safe Labor seats in the past 48 hours, including Josh Simons, head of the Starmerite Labor Together think tank, and Luke Akehurst, a centrist member of the executive committee.
On Thursday night, Labor announced a number of key union figures in safe seats, including Halifax Community’s Kate Dearden. Some were members of the NEC, such as Unison’s Mark Ferguson, who edited LabourList and managed Liz Kendall’s leadership campaign in Gateshead; and Usdau’s Michael Wheeler at Worsley and Eccles. The chairman of the NEC, James Asser, was also elected in West Ham and Becton.
The intra-party battle is likely to come to a head next week when the commission meets to sign off on the final list of candidates across the country.
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Mish Rahman, a left-wing member of the NEC, said: “Starmer’s bully boys want to find seats for their girlfriends, so they’re picking left-wing women of colour. They think their public humiliation plays well with the target voters. There will be a price for this. The communities that Labor takes for granted will not be counted on forever as long as the party continues on this path.”
Gemma Bolton, another panel member, told BBC Radio 4’s World at One that she hoped the meeting would lead to “a clear consensus that Diane [Abbott] must be a candidate’.
Starmer’s allies have a majority in the NEC and can push through their chosen slate of candidates if they choose. However, some in the party believe they are likely to back down, at least in the case of Abbott, to avoid further rifts within the party.
One Labor official said: “The problem with the last few days is not that Kiir can’t get what he wants, it’s that we’ve spent valuable time on the campaign trail talking about our domestic issues rather than the Tory party.”
While Abbott’s fate remains unclear, Shaheen, who was told on Wednesday night that she would not be allowed to stand in the seat she contested in 2019 due to past social media activity, has promised to take his case to court.
Shaheen said she had been subjected to a “systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and harassment”. She added: “I have come to the inescapable conclusion that Labour, far from being a broad and inclusive church, has an ingrained culture of bullying, a palpable problem with black and brown people and thinks nothing of dragging a person’s good name through the mud in pursuit of a factional agenda without thought to the impact on the mental health and well-being of the members involved.’
Abbott reacted to the news of its cancellation by posting on X: “Horrifying. Whose bright idea was it to kill leftists?’
Some on the party’s left believe other MPs could also be suspended in the coming days, and some said they were trying to keep a low profile to avoid being singled out by the leadership.
Starmer spent much of Thursday trying to avoid comment on the deepening row within his own party. However, his frontbench ally Darren Jones, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, denied that left-wingers had been deliberately targeted for factional reasons.
“There are many colleagues of mine in the parliamentary Labor Party who would self-identify as left-wingers who are endorsed Labor candidates in their constituency,” Jones told Times Radio on Thursday.
