The Left Lay Out Their Plans To Retake The Labour Leadership

The Socialist Campaign Group lays out its plans to put in a more radically left leader.

On the 27th members of the SGC (The Socialist Campaign Group) appeared at a The World Transformed event to talk about the future of socialism in the Labour party and how they plan to get a member of the SCG back into a position of leadership.

Labour MP for Brighton and Kemptown, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, made extremely strong criticisms of Keir Starmer in what was perhaps the most strongly worded criticism of Keir Starmer from the SCG yet.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle: “This has been a goddamn awful conference with a goddamn awful leadership… he may be a nice man, but he is not a Politian for the Labour party.”

The SCG, a socialist coalition in the Labour party that contains prominent members of the Labour party such as Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnel and Rebeca Long Bailey, discussed how they were unpleased with the direction Labour leader Keir Starmer has taken the Labour party, and that they will try and call for a leadership election if he doesn’t keep to his original 10 pledges.

While not at the event Andy McDonald left this message to attendees :“I agreed to serve in Starmer’s front bench team on the basis of the 10 pledges he made on his leadership bid… My message to Keir is he must return to 10 pledges on which he was elected to leadership by the members. Comrades, If he fails to do so he should go back to the members to seek another democratic mandate as a matter of integrity.”

The 10 pledges were promises made by Keir Starmer during his campaign for Labour leadership. While promising a “moral case for socialism”. However, Keir since distanced himself from some of these pledges, ruling out the nationalisation of energy companies. The 10 pledges are also not mentioned in his new written essay the road ahead, instead toning down the harsher language directed at business in the pledges, instead focusing Labour “a government that works in partnership with the private sector."

With the Labour Annual Conference having recently come to end the tensions between the left and right of the party have increased with anger over rule changes to electing Labour leader, Andy McDonald leaving the shadow cabinet and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union cutting ties with the party.

Can the SCG win?

One of the biggest shadows leaning over the recent conference was Keir Starmer’s failure to bring back the Electoral College. This voting system would have deeply hurt the SCG’s chances of electing any of their members from winning a Labour leadership due the high percentage of the vote it gives to MP’s.

However, while not being able to bring back the Electoral College, Starmer was able to get though a rule change that means you would need 20 percent of MP’s nominated to run as a nominee instead of the previous 10 percent. This would leave the SGC in trouble as they have 36 members, 4 shy of the 40 they would need to nominate a one of their candidates for a leadership election.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle: There 36 members of the socialist camping group who are serving members of parliament… We need four more”

The SCG’s Plan

However, not all motions passed were detrimental to the SCG. One hugely significant win for the SGC was a motion passing that candidates for Labour MP in a snap election must be agreed by a panel made of 3 local party reps and 1 representative from the regional executive committee. This puts significant power into the hands of party members when deciding who runs for the position of MP. This is why the SCG wants more members to join, because members of the party historically have swayed to the left when deciding their leader, like Jeremy Corbyn or Keir Starmer when he was running on his “socialist” 10 pledges.

Lloyd Russell-Moyle: “One of the rule changes we did get though that was positive was the role you play in selecting your MP’s.”

But another key plan of the SCG is increasing the number of Labour party members. While to this would seem like more of a boost to Keir Starmer, boosting the ability for people to canvas in elections, John McDonnel contest that would be a massive boost for the left and give socialists more power to campaign in the party. John says he wants to see one million members in the Labour party and made it very clear they wanted the membership to stay in the party.

John McDonnell: You can not fight the fight unless you’re in the struggle. That means our primary task is to build the membership. I want a party of not 500,000 but 1,000,000 socialists out there… The best from of building is to be part of every, industrial struggle, every occupation, every demonstration, every social movement that’s forcing progressive change in this country.

John McDonnell says using this membership they will boost the chances of any socialists winning the nomination to run as labour MP’s in what he issues as “a warning to some”.

Why Did Keir Starmer want to make these changes?

On the 30th of September, Keir Starmer went on Sky news interview, Keir Starmer justified the new rule changes, saying they had been democratically voted in and give a direction for the Labour party to unify over.

Keir Starmer: "It’s a broad church and there is something now to unite behind. a credible program for government. We had Rachel Reeves with very serious fiscal rules on Monday, we set out proposal on housing, on employment, on education. We can unite around the program that is credible and that will put us in the position to put us into government.”

Starmer has had a strong focus on “credible” policies. In a report of the 2019 General election by think tank Labour Together, it was revealed that while people like the 2019 Labour policies, many people didn’t believe Labour could preform the policies.

Starmer had even cited the difference of Labours members and the genral public as a reason for wanting to bring back the electoral college, according to the Guardian.

Keir Starmer: “We need party reforms that better connect us with working people and reorient us toward the voters who can take us to power,”

Keir Starmer went into the conference hopping his new rule changes would make it harder for the SCG to put in another leader and close the door on the Corbyn era. However, while Starmer secured wins this conference, he didn’t secure enough to keep the SCG from a chance at power. With the rules of the game set and battle lines drawn, a new battle for power over the Labour party is now beginning.