It was reported by the Times on Tuesday that Keir Starmer, the party leader, is considering expelling left-wing Labour MPs who do not voice “unshakeable support for Nato”.
This followed an incident at the start of the invasion of Ukraine in which 11 Labour MPs were forced to withdraw their names from a Stop the War Coalition letter that criticised Nato and argued the security alliance should “call a halt to its eastward expansion”. Starmer is apparently worried that the Conservatives will portray Labour as a party unchanged at the next general election, and Starmer as a leader who, should he become prime minister, would be tightly controlled by a handful of radical left-wing MPs.
The fact that Boris Johnson is today in the pocket of his own libertarian backbenchers is apparently beside the point.Īnd yet, the left hasn’t always been so enamoured by the concept of the broad church.Įd Miliband suffered a comparable misfortune in 2015 when he was portrayed by the Conservative Party as in the pocket (quite literally) of Alex Salmond, the Scottish National Party leader.
