It Could Be Said #20 The Labour Right's Escape From Reality
A look at how British Parliamentary Parties elect their leaders and why Keir Starmer's changes to Labour's system are so unusual
Keir Starmer celebrating but not necessarily for the reason you would expect
The past week has seen the Labour Party convulsed with Keir Starmer’s surprise attempt to exhume the Electoral College from the grave that his Shadow Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Secretary dug for it in 2014. Starmer ultimately accepted a compromise that sees the nomination threshold for future leadership candidates doubled, with 20% of the Parliamentary Labour Party now needed to successfully nominate a leadership candidates.
It’s the latest twist in the long story about how British Parliamentary Parties select their leaders. A story that until now has evolved in only one direction - towards giving more people a greater say in the process. That Starmer has successfully unwound this process says something rather alarming about the Labour Party.
But first….a trip down memory lane.
The Usual Channels
You may have heard the old saw about Britain having an unwritten constitution, not true, all our laws are written down on paper. But we really do have an unwritten history about how leadership elections evolved in our major political parties. This was partially due to the need to protect the feelings of the monarch, who was meant to have a freehand when selecting their Prime Minister. As late as 1894, Queen Victoria played a crucial role in the surprise elevation of Lord Rosebery to the premiership1.
As late as 1905, when parties entered opposition, the previous Cabinet’s former Leaders of the Lords and Commons2 assumed joint leadership of the parliamentary party, with an understanding as to who was preeminent emerging either quickly or awkwardly3. Should death or boredom mean a vacancy for either position emerged then a replacement would mysteriously emerge from informal soundings.
But there was nothing so vulgar as elections. William Gladstone didn’t have to challenge his successors to retake the leadership in 1880, they sadly told an irate Queen Victoria that his OG neo-conservative speeches during the election had made him the only person who could replace the defeated Benjamin Disraeli. When Liberal Imperialists tried to neuter “Little Englander” Henry Campbell-Bannerman in 1905, they didn’t call for a Vote of No Confidence, but unsuccessfully tried to bully him into accepting a peerage so Henry (or was it Herbert?) Asquith could lead in the Commons. Campbell-Bannerman persuaded Asquith to abandon the plot, and then ultimately gave way to the younger man in 19084.
The closest one of the two major parties got to a leadership election was the Tories in 1911. With Arthur Balfour exhuasted after amassing a record in leadership (3 elections lost, none won) that would make even Labour leaders blush, it seemed a certainty that his erstwhile deputy Austen Chamberlain would become leader. But Chamberlain was unpopular amongst a Tory Party he still technically wasn’t a member of, and so Walter Long refused to stand aside. A vote of the Carlton Club was scheduled, but before such a gauche spectacle could occur, the usual channels convinced both men to withdraw in favour of Andrew Bonar-Law. Ironically a decade later, the usual channels would arrange for Chamberlain to replace Bonar-Law and then for Bonar-Law to replace Chamberlain within eighteen months.
In 1919, the Liberal Party would adopt the practice of the Labour Party in having its MPs elect a chairman of their parliamentary party at the start of a new parliament. Oddly, fifty years later, within a year of each other, both parties would split the chairmanship and leadership into separate roles, giving backbenchers the type of independent champion that the Tories had enjoyed since the formation of the 1922 Committee…in 1923. The Tories would however have to wait slightly longer to elect their own leader with only the backlash to the Queen calling Alec Douglas-Home in 19635 persuading everyone that it was time for the monarch to surrender their remaining involvement in choosing who should be Prime Minister6.
Knowing Their Place
So finally as Britain entered the 1970s its three major parties had fully entered the parliamentary era, with written rules laying down what the role of Leader was, and how they would be elected by their parliamentary colleagues. But in both the Liberal and Labour Parties this would be quickly challenged by calls for activists to have a greater say. Both would respond with electoral colleges, the Liberals’ one being a somewhat ingenious one where every constituency association got a vote, but that this vote would be weighted based on the Liberal Party’s strength in that constituency in the previous general election. This was a system built on the great argument for extraparliamentary leadership elections over parliamentary ones; that the former ensures the whole country is involved in the process rather than just those bits that returned the party’s candidate as their MP. And even better it rewards local parties that are successful in persuading their neighbours to vote for the party. It’s genuinely brilliant. It was only used once.
Meanwhile Labour would ultimately divide the movement into three estates; MPs, Trade Unions and Socialist Societies, and Constituency Labour Parties. What is commonly forgotten about this system today, is that before the 1994 leadership election, the Block Vote was in operation. That meant a Trade Union General Secretary or a CLP delegate cast votes on behalf of their wider organisation. The latter was a particular gift to the Hard Left, who tended to dominate delegate elections.
It was therefore no surprise that the days of privileging activists was brief. Upon merging with the SDP, the new Liberal Democrats maintained the smaller party’s use of one member, one vote. It would take a drunken punch up for the Labour Party to get there, but before then they would abolish the Block Vote so that ordinary trade union, socialist society, and party members could cast their own vote for Leader. Indeed, particularly diligent Labourites could vote many, many times if they had signed up to enough affiliated organisations.
Naturally the Tory Party slept through the idea of giving its activists a privileged position in party democracy, and just went straight to giving members a greater say as part of William Hague’s broader reforms of the party in 1998. Even then they kept the members on a tight leash, limiting them to selecting between the two candidates who had survived successive ballots of MPs. And even this was too much for Michael Howard, who after preannouncing his resignation, unsuccessfully tried to water down the members’ role even further.
His failure proved irrelevant as his preferred successor won anyway. Indeed that was the irony of over thirty decades of party democracy; activists and members seemed to always follow what the MPs would’ve done anyway. In the various formulations of the third party, David Steele, Paddy Ashdown, Charles Kennedy, Ming Campbell and Nick Clegg7 were the clear choices of the parliamentary party, whilst Roy Jenkins somehow managed to convince everyone to make him SDP Leader in 1982. Meanwhile over in Labour, it was a close run thing in 1981 but Dennis Healy managed to cling onto a deputy leadership in the face of Tony Benn’s spirited challenge thanks to strong support from the trade unions. Then in the 1983, 1988, 1992 and 1994 leadership elections the same man clearly won all three sections. And in their twenty-one years of party democracy, Tory members rubber stamped the choice of their MPs three out of our four times, with the lone exception being because the runner-up realised that the election had become so hopeless she might as well withdrew before members got a chance to reject her8…something something babies’ heads.
And yet it was all getting a bit weird in the Labour Party.
A Very Labour Rebellion
David Miliband easily won the opening round of the 2010 Labour Leadership Election, clearly gaining the most nominations from the Parliamentary Labour Party. And this was despite lending several to Diane Abbott to help “broaden the debate”. It cannot be understated what a dominate position this placed Miliband in; the previous eleven extraparliamentary leadership elections across the three major parties had all seen the MPs’ favourite win. And yet somehow he lost to his younger brother due to losing the Trade Unio and Socialist Society section of Labour’s electoral college in a landslide. Then despite overhauling the rules in a way that was assumed to help the party’s right, the same thing happened again in 2015 and 2016, with Jeremy Corbyn winning on the first round despite having next to no support amongst MPs. So popular was Corbyn that his raw vote in 2015 amongst Party, Trade Union and Socialist Society members was high enough to convert into a first round performance of 44% under the old rules, despite him having next to no support amongst MPs9.
Many across the Labour Party have spent the past six years sulking how the ordinary members could have imposed the bad man on them, and whining about how some in their own number gave the poor bloody infantry the chance to do so. But that’s nonsense. Parliamentary parties with less than a tenth of the strength of the PLP have been able to guide members to support their preferred choice. Indeed the Liberal Democrats were able to do it in 2020, when the MPs preferred choice of Sir Ed Davey defeated two women who showed a worrying inclination to make them a radical left-wing party10.
The problem was that the PLP was arrogant, and refused to even try to win over party members. In the same way Gordon Brown twisted every arm imaginable lest he have to demean himself with a dutch auction to keep John McDonnell’s vote sufficiently low, New Labour’s grandest prince refused to apologise for the Iraq War, rule out supporting further spending cuts, or defend the trade union link as he entered the final stretch of an ever-tightening leadership election. David Miliband lost by less than a percentage point. Likewise, the 2015 election autopsy began with the PLP and their allies in the media hyping up not one, not two, but three Blairite contenders11, seemingly oblivious to membership unhappiness at Ed Miliband’s diffident and half-hearted embrace of left-wing ideas12.
The reality is that the Parliamentary Party does not need to insist that candidates for the leadership are nominated by 20% of its members, nevermind that a third of the voting power be reserved for its membership, to get its own way. We know that because it got its own way in 2020. It is not a coincidence that when feeling they were on the back foot, the PLP got its act together and embraced someone who could plausibly appeal to all but the most ideologically rigid members of the Hard Left. Unlike Brown and the elder Miliband, and unlike Burnham or Cooper until it was too late, Keir Starmer did not confront the membership with “hard” choices. Instead he pandered and he pandered hard, and was rewarded with an overwhelming victory.
This Great Movement Of Ours
This bizarrely sudden attack on the leadership system that elected him against the preferred choice of the Corbynites seems a worrying sign that Starmer regrets that moment of weakness. But this is nonsense. Every successful leader panders to their party, Tony Blair backed John Prescott for Deputy Leader, and David Cameron promised to withdraw from the European People’s Party. That need to pander doesn’t go away when you become Leader, even if you aim to be a transformative one; Prescott really did become Deputy Prime Minister and the European Conservatives and Reformists really did become the Tories’ new home in the European Parliament…well for awhile at least.
The reality is that you can’t take the politics out of politics. No one would say someone was being a successful Prime Miniter if the country hated them, and the same is true of the relationship party leaders have with their membership13. In the same way, that a good Prime Minister needs to be able to take the country with them, a good Leader of the Opposition needs to be able to take their party with them too. If they can’t do the latter, they almost certainly will fail at the former. And if Starmer and his allies really think the Labour membership is so far gone that without constitutional kludges to weaken their voice the membership will render the party unelectable, then maybe Starmer and the Labour Right14 should work harder to recruit less toxic members.
The outgoing Prime Minister would have recommended someone else but was not consulted
This was when the Prime Minister would always act as the Leader of the House that he was a member of, and the Leader of the other House would usually act as his quasi-deputy.
Best example of a harminous partnership is Lord Derby and Benjamin Disraeli, with the older man acting as a mentor and champion for the young radical turned One Nation Tory. The best example of a toxic partership would be Lord Salisbury and Stafford Northcote, with the former conspiring with the “fourth party” of backbench Tory MPs to undermine his rival to be the Tory’s candidate for the premiership.
Campbell-Bannerman was dying, and was in such ill health he stayed in 10 Downing Street until his death nineteen days after his resignation. Meanwhile his elevation to the premiership was so sudden, that Asquith still delivered the 1908 Budget despite having appointed David Lloyd George to replace him.
I was very proud of myself repeating Michael Brown’s prediction that the Tories would elect Michael Howard by acclaimation in 2003 to my drama teacher despite his repeated insistence that it wasn’t 1963 anymore. And I was also incandasent that a BBC reporter had so little understanding of modern political history that they said the resulting coronation was the least controvesial Tory Leadership Election since 1963!!!
The Palace’s sensivity to its perogative was not an empty matter with George VI objecting to the appointment of Anthony Eden as Deputy Prime Minister in 1951. Weirdly, there’s been no attempt by The Palace to similarly realise that it’s in their interest to always have a clearly identified Deputy Prime Minister lest the Prime Minister be suddenly incapicated or killed.
More recently, the MPs only put Vince Cable forward in 2017, and Ed Davey was clearly the parliamentary party’s favoured candidate in 2020. It is less clear who MPs preferred in 2019.
Theresa May was such a universally popular choice that she was even leading Boris Johnson in polls of Tory Party members before the champion of Brexit withdrew from the race
Admittedly, reserving 33% of the vote to MPs may have depressed Corbyn’s support by making him seem non-viable. Then again Ed Miliband managed to overcome his issues amongst MPs to win in 2010.
One of whom was deemed sufficiently dangerous she was prevented from getting to the membership ballot
Liz Kendall, Tristram Hunt and Mary Creagh.
Something Ed Miliband has himself since bemoaned
Another change Starmer pushed through that is similarly insane is making it even harder to deselect MPs - something that encourages MPs in safe seats to let their local parties rot away lest they attract future challengers. Which was part of the reason why Labour suddenly lost seats in Scotland and Northern England to national-popularist surges
Starmer is of course originally of the Soft Left but has clearly moved to the right since becoming Leader. Meanwhile Angela Rayner, also originally of the Soft Left, has clearly moved to the left since being elected Deputy Leader. So we get the usual Right vs Left battles, with the added frisson of each side accusing the other of betraying them. Well…they’re not called Soft for nothing.