Review | The Starmer symptom

On the eve of Labour’s conference, Pat Stack reviews Mark Perryman’s essay collection on Starmer’s betrayals and his party’s deepening crisis.

As a child I learned the nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty. Although any illustrated edition showed Humpty as a big smiling egg, it was never made clear whether Dumpty was a good egg, a bad egg or a curate’s egg (good in parts). This may seem of little importance, but as a kid what fascinated me was whether it was worth the impotent efforts of the king’s horses and men to put old Humpty back into shape.

Reading this collection of essays edited by Mark Perryman somehow brought back the quandary for me. First a few words about Perryman. He rose to prominence on the left as the young voice of Marxism Today, the magazine of Britain’s Eurocommunists. A dedicated advocate of that magazine’s belief that profound changes were taking place in British politics with the rise of Thatcherism and that the only way to halt that seemingly unstoppable rise was by the left abandoning some of its long-held positions and seeking alliances with those to the right of them. 

Perryman was and remains, unusual in Eurocommunist circles, by being interested in – and to a degree, receptive to – arguments coming from his left as well as his right. For instance, in the 70s, when the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism were formed, I remember the Eurocommunist students in the NUS leadership having to be forced, kicking and screaming, into supporting those campaigns. Perryman was a genuinely enthusiastic participant from very early on.

This book is in many ways a reflection of that. In his own essay and in those of a number of the contributors there is still a heavy Marxism Today influence, but there are also contributions from people like Hilary Wainwright and James Meadway who come from a very different tradition, much to the left of Eurocommunism

What all the essayists have in common is a recognition of the terrible betrayals of the Labour government. Whether it be welfare, race, immigration, the environment or Gaza, writer after writer seethes with anger, frustration and disgust at what Starmer’s government has done. Perhaps nowhere in the book is the sheer rage articulated better than in the concluding lines of Gargi Bhattacharyya’s piece in which they tears into the Labour Government’s record on both Palestine and racism and concludes that the government 

amplifies acts of state racism presented as extension of the public will…a government that relies on a repeated whipping up of hatred as an energy that substitutes for consent…I curse them with the core of my being.

Starmer’s rise to leadership came off the back of the failure of the Corbyn project. Yet there is surprisingly little analysis as to why the biggest swing to the left in modern Labour history ended in failure, nor the key role the Labour right played in sabotaging the project. In part I think, whilst some of the authors were enthusiastic backers of Corbyn, others were at best decidedly lukewarm. More than one essay seeks to draw a parallel between Starmer and his coterie’s tight grip on the party, the exclusions, the ditching of candidates who didn’t meet with approval, the removal of the whip, the shameful treatment of Diane Abbott with the way Corbyn dealt with the party’s right.

The truth of course is that Corbyn was surrounded by an overwhelmingly hostile parliamentary party, hell bent on ignoring his overwhelming mandate from the membership. There was no attempt by him to correct this democratic deficit, no systematic deselections, no punishment of parliamentary indiscipline, no one hung out to dry. The manipulation of the Labour right around Brexit, and accepting the highly problematic (to say the least) IHRA definition of antisemitism, both contributed greatly to his downfall.

For some of the authors, much as they dislike Starmer, you sense a relief that the Corbyn project has come and gone. The other missing element, which is not the editor’s fault, Your Party was launched days after the book was published. It would have been good to see how some of the essayists responded. Hundreds of thousands have expressed an interest in, and a desire for, a genuine left alternative. Leaving aside, for the moment, the chaotic internal machinations that threatened to destroy the project at birth, this is a challenge that the book missed out on.

Indeed Perryman’s take would have been interesting. He clearly is looking for a Labour Party that is rooted in community struggle, built from below, connected to trade union and anti racist struggles – not afraid to be radical. He wants to ‘test the limits of Labourism to destruction’. The problem however is that Labour has never really been the vehicle for transformation, that can rid us of the evils of capitalism. Yes, in times of capitalist prosperity it could introduce reforms, but so deeply tied to capitalism is it that in times of difficulty it can’t even grant that. Instead it pursues policies that favour the interests of capitalism and our class enemies. Furthermore the party machine experienced a left victory, and has put every mechanism available to it in place to ensure that will not happen again. 

Which brings me back to Humpty. There are some really interesting essays in this book and it is well worth a read, but too many of the authors are tied to somehow putting Labour ‘back together again’ , The truth is though, that as with the kings horses and men the task is hopeless, and what’s more, the egg that was bad from the start is now simply rotten. 

The Starmer Symptom is edited by Mark Perryman and published by Pluto Press (£16.99)