Infighting mars start of Labour conference as
Starmer and Rayner clash over voting rules
Critics say the leader has hijacked the gathering by
getting bogged down in voting issues and losing sight of a focus on policy
Toby Helm
Sun 26 Sep
2021 07.00 BST
When Angela
Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, stood up to huge cheers to address her party’s
conference on Saturday, the slogan “Stronger Future Together” was projected on
the big screen behind her and all around the vast hall.
Before what
had been billed as Keir Starmer’s defining conference, when he would reveal the
real Keir to the nation, the party leader had also spoken last week of the need
for togetherness in the party in a 35-page pamphlet spelling out his vision for
Britain.
“In recent
decades, the legacy of the 1997 Labour government has become contested to the
extent that the party has at times felt like separate families living under one
roof. This has been harmful and alienating,” Starmer wrote.
But before
most delegates had even arrived in Brighton, hopes of Starmer’s party hanging
together for four days by the seaside and focusing on attacking the Tories, as
they struggle to deal with the threat of fuel shortages and empty shelves in
supermarkets, had been horribly shattered.
Before
Rayner’s speech her friends were briefing that she was furious with Starmer.
The deputy leader, they said, was enraged that her boss had allowed the start
of the annual gathering, potentially the second last before a general election,
to be hijacked by an unnecessary row over changes to rules on how future
leaders should be elected, to which she was opposed.
Rayner had
to spend much of Saturday morning, when she should have been preparing for her
big conference moment, holed up in an emergency meeting of the national
executive committee in Brighton’s Hilton hotel, trying to amend Starmer’s plans
into an acceptable form, and forge compromises on other rule changes with the
unions.
“She was
against Keir’s main plan,” said a source. “But she also had to try to broker
some deal before the whole party fell apart. She was very cross because she had
spent months talking to the unions about the serious economic plans we wanted
to launch at conference, only for them to be buried in the media under coverage
of this mess.”
On
Saturday, the centrepiece of the Starmer plan – to weaken the role of the
400,000 party members and strengthen that of MPs by returning to the old
electoral college system for electing leaders – was pulled hours before the
gathering opened after the unions ganged up to oppose it. The left saw it as an
anti-democratic stitch-up and an attack on individual members who had elected
Jeremy Corbyn that was designed to prevent another from his wing of the party
ever becoming leader. The conference mood had been set before a single motion
had been debated.
Not only
were the leader and his deputy at odds, the unions were defiant in victory and
the media focused on little else. But across the party, from top to bottom,
there was disbelief at how the fiasco could have been allowed to happen.
Unlike
previous leaders, from Neil Kinnock over his battle with the Militant tendency
to John Smith’s fight to deliver one member one vote (Omov), and Tony Blair’s
confrontation with sections of his party over the rewriting of clause IV,
Starmer had just taken on the left – and lost.
A senior
shadow cabinet member said: “It is has been a very, very, very bad start. The
problem is that they just don’t listen to advice. Why did they try to introduce
these rule changes at all and why did they then do so before checking first that
they could land them? It really is unbelievable.”
Another
senior figure said that Starmer had mentioned the plan only briefly in a
meeting of the shadow cabinet last Tuesday, and in such a way that many of
those present probably didn’t clock what he meant.
“It is
pretty clear that what they were trying to do is to get a win over the left for
Keir, a Kinnock moment, and by doing it so late and quietly, they hoped
opposition could not build in time.”
Another
senior source said there was widespread suspicion that Peter Mandelson had had
a role in suggesting the idea, something he denies. “There is a view that Peter
was involved – if not directly, then at once or twice removed,” said the
source.
Rows
between Labour leaders and their deputies have happened before. Two years ago,
the opening of the conference was wrecked by a clumsy attempt by Corbyn
supporters to abolish the post of deputy leader, then occupied by Tom Watson.
Such was the uproar at the way the plot had been hatched in secret that the idea
had to be swiftly abandoned – but not before much bad blood had been spilled.
On Saturday
senior figures said Starmer’s disastrous start was worse than in 2019. One
said: “It is difficult to upstage what happened two years ago but Keir has had
a bloody good go, hasn’t he?” Another senior source, when asked if the leader
could pull the conference back from the brink, was pessimistic: “I really don’t
think so. His authority is shot.”
Outside the
conference hall there were cries of “Stop the purge” and “Starmer out.
Socialism in”. Members of the frontbench desperately tried to sell the rule
changes that were in the end agreed, including one that makes it more difficult
for local parties to deselect their MPs, as a great success. “Despite all the
noise,” one shadow minister said, “Keir has made his mark. He has locked out
the hard-left in MP selections.”
But
privately, even loyalists were in despair. The Brighton gathering had been
billed for months by Starmer’s team as the moment he would truly define himself
in the minds of the electorate, after criticism of his lack of eyecatching
policies and Labour’s failure to overtake the Tories in the polls, despite
successive government crises.
Despite all
this, moods can change fast. There is still an opportunity for the party to
unite behind a set of ideas and policies that will allow delegates to leave
Brighton on Wednesday in upbeat mood.
Conference
organisers say Starmer’s speech will be packed with announcements. Ed Miliband,
the shadow business and energy secretary, is going to push his foot hard down
on the “green new deal” with bold plans to modernise and green the steel
industry in the interests of saving the climate and preserving jobs.
Miliband
has been making the case in shadow cabinet for a president Biden-style stimulus
to decarbonise industry, create jobs in low carbon industries, and rapidly
retrofit homes. There will also be more announcements on security in work and
training and education for young people.
However,
Starmer will wrap up the conference on Wednesday with even more now riding on
his speech than before.
But
speaking out against Starmer’s leadership is no longer regarded as shocking and
on the left it has become commonplace. The attention-grabbing policies have yet
to be revealed.
On Saturday
in a blistering article in the Observer the former shadow chancellor John
McDonnell says he no longer feels able to play the loyal elder statesman and
instead has no option but to speak out. And on Saturday night, Starmer’s
predecessor Jeremy Corbyn hinted that the left could organise against Starmer
because of their feeling that he has betrayed them.
The words
“Stronger Future Together” may be plastered across every surface in Brighton,
but last night that slogan appeared less apposite than at any time since
Starmer became leader.
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