In a Guardian article, former shadow chancellor John McDonnell took down Keir Starmer, branding his Labour Party “poorly led, strategically inept and shorn of democracy”. Quite. McDonnell also detailed how the Treasury and corporate elites have captured Labour through ushering in austerity 2.0 and controlling the selection process for candidates.

John McDonnell: taking aim at Starmer

John McDonnell writes that the disability cuts bill, which passed with the Universal Credit (UC) health cuts remaining, in part comes from the “Treasury’s capture of the incoming government, enabling officials to bring back the same old austerity agenda of benefit cuts that they developed for George Osborne”.

The Independent MP for Hayes and Harlington, who Starmer suspended last year for voting against the two child benefit cap, said the bill has left Starmer “weakened and directionless”.

Anti-democratic Labour

John McDonnell said:

It is the absolute hollowing out of democracy in the Labour party, which enables a centralisation of power under a self-serving bureaucracy that is effectively out of control, operating with impunity. Poor decisions are made on strategy and policy from top to bottom because democracy has been stripped out of the party.

Internal Labour democracy acts as test for policies to see if they are palatable, but Starmer has reignited Tony Blair’s agenda of stripping away that democracy.

He continued:

The selection of candidates for council or parliamentary elections is so tightly controlled that anyone with a hint of independence of thought stands virtually no chance of being allowed on candidate lists. The selection process for candidates for forthcoming council selections has become more akin to the Spanish Inquisition or McCarthyite hearings.

Indeed, in the 2024 election, Keir Starmer deselected or blocked numerous progressive general election candidates, overriding local democracy and preventing local Labour members from having the chance to vote to select them.

Starmer operates a top-down system where National Executive Committee (NEC) panels select candidates. As Labour List reported:

Five pro-leadership members of the NEC itself have now been picked themselves for… seats – chair James Asser, Gurinder Singh Josan, Luke Akehurst, Unison’s Mark Ferguson, and Usdaw’s Michael Wheeler – as well as former Keir Starmer adviser Chris Ward in Brighton after Lloyd Russell-Moyle’s last-minute deselection, former Rachel Reeves adviser Heather Iqbal, and Starmerite think tank Labour Together’s director Josh Simons.

Starmer also deselected inequality economist Faiza Shaheen, attempted to push Diane Abbott out of politics and, in 2023, attempted to deselect Zarah Sultana. These are all progressive women of colour.

The former shadow chancellor also wrote:

parliamentary selections in many cases have been ruthlessly fixed to parachute allies of the elite into safe seats that often they rely upon a satnav to find. Members of the PLP are looked upon simply as bothersome lobby fodder, whose views are ignored unless they seem equipped to cause turbulence in the face of threats, such as losing the whip or the chance of promotion.

Featured image via the Canary

By James Wright

This post was originally published on Canary.