Labour in the North-East is scared
JVL Introduction
Helen Pidd reports on some of the grass-roots reaction to Jamie Driscoll deciding to run as an independent candidate for mayor in the North-East.
Kevin, a lifelong Labour voter said Driscoll’s treatment was “disgusting. But to be honest, I don’t think the Labour party is the Labour party any more. Keir Starmer is more Conservative than the Conservatives are… [running] the party like a dictatorship … he will purge anybody who disagrees with him.”
He is clearly not alone in that sentiment.
Driscoll, who said he would run if he could raise an initial £25k, did so within two hours and his fighting fund now stands at £116k.
With the memory of Ken Livingstone challenging the London labour machine and winning in 2000, Labour must be fearing the worst.
Time surely for a rethink – which we would all love to see – but the vibes afer losing in Uxbridge and South Ruislip suggest Labour’s instinct now is to veer ever rightwards.
Is Keir incapable of learning?
RK
This article was originally published by the Guardian on Mon 24 Jul 2023. Read the original here.
‘Labour are scared’: north-east party members quit to back Jamie Driscoll in mayoral vote
North of Tyne mayor has raised over £114,000 to run as an independent after Labour barred him from standing
On Monday last week, Jamie Driscoll pressed the nuclear button. Barred from standing to be Labour’s candidate in the inaugural north-east mayoral elections – despite being the party’s sitting mayor of the smaller North of Tyne region and a member since 1985 – he announced he was quitting the party. He tweeted the news, promising to run as an independent next May if he raised £25,000 by the end of August.
A week later, his fighting fund stands at more than £114,000. More than 5,300 people have donated, mostly fivers and tenners, decrying the “undemocratic decision” to bar Driscoll from the selection contest. “You didn’t leave the Labour party, Jamie. The Labour party left you. And me!” was a typical comment.
Five Labour councillors in the region have quit Labour to campaign for Driscoll, with one saying: “The party was a broad church that allowed for a range of views. A party of fairness, a party of equality, a safe place for my political views. Unfortunately, this once safe place no longer feels like home.”
Quitting has propelled Driscoll to the top of the news bulletins in a way few of his mayoral policies ever did. Talking to people in the north-east constituencies of Blyth Valley and Wansbeck in recent days, his treatment seems to have cut through.
“The reason Keir Starmer doesn’t want [Driscoll] in is because he’s going to show him up, because he’s doing a better job than him and he doesn’t like it,” said Dan Snowden, a dog walker who was exercising eight of his charges on Cambois beach in Wansbeck.
“I think he’s got a great chance. Like any great progressive leader, he is offering hope and change and everyone wants that. What was it Wes Streeting said the other day? ‘No hope is better than false hope’. Unbelievable to hear something like that coming from a Labour MP’s mouth. Plus in the north-east, the one thing we won’t tolerate is injustice and that’s the overarching feeling with what’s happened with Labour.”
Lifelong Labour voter Kevin, having a coffee in Blyth, said Driscoll’s treatment was “disgusting. But to be honest, I don’t think the Labour party is the Labour party any more. Keir Starmer is more Conservative than the Conservatives are. It’s just disgraceful.” Starmer, Kevin said, “runs the party like a dictatorship … he will purge anybody who disagrees with him.”
It was a drizzly day in Blyth but Driscoll was full of sunshine. A confident man who is not above shoehorning his former membership of Mensa – or his black belt in jiu-jitsu – into conversation, even he seemed taken aback by the support he was getting.
“The reaction has been genuinely unbelievable,” he said, giving the Guardian a whistlestop tour of projects he has funded in the “red wall” constituency, from dredging a dock at the Port of Blyth to decontaminating brownfield land for a new housing estate. “I’ve had Tories get in touch and say ‘I’ll vote for you’. One of them was a Tory MP!” He declined to name names.
It is a surreal situation for a man who was widely viewed to be “too leftwing” for Starmer’s Labour party, hence, people believe, the controversial decision by the party to bar him from standing as its north-east mayoral candidate last month.
Driscoll wears his socialist credentials with pride, turning up at pickets and giving the impression of saying what he actually thinks, rather than what a focus group might want him to say. Even when showing us around Nu-castle, a youth club affiliated with Newcastle United FC and built with £2.5m of his mayoral money, he happily dismisses Saudi Arabia – whose sovereign wealth fund bought the Premier League club in 2021 – as “a murderous regime which starts illegal wars”.
The only public explanation for his blacklisting came from the shadow business secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, who suggested it was because Driscoll had hosted an event with Ken Loach earlier this year, discussing Loach’s films. The film-maker was suspended by Labour in 2021 for supporting Labour Against the Witchhunt, which claimed allegations of Labour antisemitism were “politically motivated”.
The move has not gone down well among many Labour supporters in the north-east, with 11 out of 22 constituency Labour parties (CLPs) in the region refusing to endorse any mayoral candidate in protest.
Mary Murphy was one of a number of Labour councillors to quit the party in solidarity, pledging to campaign for Driscoll instead of Labour’s chosen candidate, the Northumberland police and crime commissioner, Kim McGuinness.
Murphy, a Northumberland county councillor, thinks Labour will come to regret blocking Driscoll’s candidacy. “I think it’s a complete misreading of the strength of feeling in the north-east of England with regard to democracy within the party, and our respect for our incumbent mayor. None of this is anti-Kim. It’s very much about the process. I think they’ve just totally underestimated this all.”
Ian Mearns, the Labour MP for Gateshead, picks his words carefully: “The decision to exclude Jamie Driscoll from the longlist wasn’t done with a great deal of openness and transparency. If there was a good reason to block him, they [Labour’s national executive committee] should say what it was.”
Mearns has not yet heard of any of his local members quitting as a result, but with membership already down two-fifths on the Corbyn era, he cannot afford to lose many more. “If you have a membership who are at all uneasy about the process by which candidates are selected it doesn’t exactly motivate people to go out and campaign. The danger is that apathy reigns.”
None of the other 16 Labour MPs in the north-east would go on the record about the selection shenanigans. But Driscoll’s Tory rival from 2019 was happy to talk.
Charlie Hoult came second, polling 45,494 first-round votes to Driscoll’s 62,034. He described Driscoll as an “intellectual ideologue” and criticised his “lack of profile in a cheerleading role” for the region, compared with the Tees Valley Conservative mayor, Ben Houchen, a Downing Street darling. Nonetheless, he thinks his old rival stands a chance of victory: “He’s got a good length of time to build his support.”
But Hoult hopes Driscoll will split the Labour vote and make a Tory victory more likely. “The more candidates there are, the more splits there are.” He believes he may have won in 2019 had it not been for the presence of an independent candidate, John McCabe, a well-respected business figure who is now chief executive of the north-east chamber of commerce. McCabe won 31,507 first-round votes before being eliminated.
Stuart Murray, who until earlier this year was media officer of Blyth Valley Labour party, resigned his party membership last week and predicts a “landslide” victory for Driscoll.
“He’s competent, he’s got a proven track record. And I think they’re just scared. [Labour are] scared of the damage that he could do to them because he wouldn’t just be a yes man. Everybody in our area that has been imposed on us have been people who will nod their heads to other decision-makers rather than the electorate that they’ve been tasked to represent.”
McGuinness, he said, “is a candidate that will agree to whatever her paymasters tell her, and her paymasters are the London Labour office”.
It is a suggestion that clearly riles McGuinness. “I’m nobody else’s candidate … I am a woman who wants to represent the region that I live in,” she says. “And it is as simple as that. I have my own ideas. I have my own brain. I have my own decision-making capacity, surprise, surprise – imagine!”
McGuinness says her No 1 priority is to end child poverty, describing Starmer’s decision to retain the two-child cap on child benefit as “a really disappointing position, but it’s where we have been left by the government and I understand that”.
She refuses to answer any questions about Driscoll. Wouldn’t she rather have beaten him fair and square? She answers a different question. “I just have got a vision for the north-east, I have put myself forward because it is something that I’ve wanted to do for a long time. And it’s something that I’m doing because I really want to improve our area. I don’t want to spend the next nine months talking about a man. You know, there’s one woman mayor in this country [Tracy Brabin in West Yorkshire]. And there’s two called Andy. And we need more women in these positions.”
Devolution and Independence for the North East
Jamie Driscoll is the start
Tories of all colours are finished
REJOICE
I hope Jamie thrashes the careerists and authoritarians of Starmer’s right-wing party which no longer a real Labour Party. It should be better called Fake Labour.
JVL asks at the end of the introduction “Is Keir incapable of learning?”.
The context and tone of the question suggests that the editor would wish Starmer to understand that his opportunism is counterproductive and that if he wants more votes he should advocate a different political line – equally cynically presumably, since there is no evidence that Starmer has any principles whatsoever other than gaining power.
Please stop dreaming. A sentimental attachment to the totalitarian mental prison that the labour machine has become serves only to weaken what should be our resolve to crush it. We should instead be rejoicing at every hammer blow that strikes that prison and liberates a portion of its inmates from their enforced stupor! The sooner the LP fractures the better chance the left has of resurgence.
The idea that voting for Starmer clones in a general election is to vote for a lesser evil is utterly false. A Starmer election victory with a large majority would be the shortest route to true despotism: worse even than a slim Tory majority, and far worse than a hung parliament. The reason for this is that if a Starmer regime did not quickly itself install an authoritarian regime worse than the present one, the unpopularity of its austerity policies combined with its false branding as ‘socialist’ by the populist right would very soon cause it to be replaced by a government dominated by the neofascist right, seeking to divert discontent into the purest forms of hatred of minorities. Politicians who play with fire risk being consumed by fire.
To fear that a break-up of Starmer’s LP would lead to a massive Tory victory is to misread the runes. The Tory brand is toxic in large swathes of the country and there is a a gaping political hole waiting to be filled by a movement – perhaps an alliance – openly advocating investment in public services, wealth redistribution and net zero policies. Politics abhors a vacuum and the only thing which currently prevents that vacuum being filled is the illusion of the LP as a vehicle for the left – once again the incubus of the tradition of dead generations.
Helen Pidd reports that Jamie Driscoll is ‘not above shoehorning his former membership of Mensa – or his black belt in jiu jitsu- into conversation’. Nor is he averse to boasting of his ‘achievements’ as elected Mayor of North of Tyne. This can only be a good thing, serving to highlight the popular appeal of devolved government enhancing local democracy and implementing tangible progressive policies, such as accessible integrated public transport, the creation of proper jobs and the management of public utilities for the benefit of ‘the many’ not the CEO or the shareholder. Viewed in this light, I think that Driscoll’s pragmatic and calmly articulate parrying of attempts to label him as left, centre left, socialist, Corbynista etc is understandable, particularly in a region where Labour and its huge historical constituency has been notably conservative. Likewise his constant stress on keeping representatives of local minority political parties onboard. His job is not to overturn global capitalism.
What is developing here is an optimistic and generally beneficial populism, in stark contrast to Johnson’s rancid populism.
Plus, I agree with George Wilmers about the relationship between Starmer and ‘principles’.
One of the more insulting aspects of Labour’s decision to exclude Jamie from its shortlist of mayoral candidates was the attempt to insinuate that he was tainted with antisemitism. This was supposedly based on his having participated, among his many mayoral engagements, in an event with Ken Loach, at which nobody has claimed that anyone even mentioned Israel or Palestine. In other words: “We can’t beat him on policies; he’s popular with Labour members and the public because of his effective record; so let’s get the Jews onto him and try to make people think he’s some kind of antisemite.” Of course no Labour official actually said this in public, but it’s an accurate summary of their thinking.
Disgusted at being brought on as a stage army in Starmer’s faction fight, a group of us wrote an open letter about it https://www.jewishvoiceforlabour.org.uk/article/some-northeast-jews-speak-out-in-support-of-jamie-driscoll/ . We only sent it to local media, but I now wish we’d gone national and included the Guardian. Weeks later, I’m still enraged at Labour’s attempt to exploit my ethnicity. And I’m happy to say that those of us who go to shul or participate in the “official” Jewish community have not been ostracised — people are still talking to us.
I totally agree with George Wimers who presents and compelling and intelligent analysis of the current political landscape.
I want to add this: Socialism is not just about winning elections it is also and more importantly about doing what is morally right.
An electoral system that gives a political party an 80 seat majority with just 42.3 percent support and enabled Boris Johnson to force through a Hard Brexit without the endorsement of even half of voters is not morally just or democratic. Those on the left should stop dreaming of a 1945 landslide and even if it was possible, 47.7% of the popular vote achieving a majority of 145 seats is also not democratic.
An unfair voting system distorts our politics and encourages arrogance in our political class.
The forthcoming General election presents an opportunity to deny Starmer a majority and introduce electoral reform. I believe we should vote tactically to achieve that essential democratic reform.
Agree with George Wimers Starmer, Evans and all who sail with them are utterly deluded that they will ever change. My only reason for remaining in Labour is the hope that I can alleviate the now corrupt PLP.
we just have to look at who funded Starmer’s leadership campaign to recognise his priorities adopted to gain further funding independent of membership.
George Wimers well said. Starmer thinks he has changed the Labour Party but what he has done is kill it.
https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1683182129293713409
Pretty much agree with George Wimers. Scary as it is to contemplate, Labour is now an enemy of progress, fairness, justice and democracy, and it’s not just a question of the present leader.
Yes, there are some good people still in the party and some vaguely progressive organizations working within it and of course we have a links with the trade unions (though they themselves are often far from progressive in a more general context).
The problem for any electoral alternative is the electoral system, and, as we know from recent history, the media and the establishment will use any weapon whatsoever to destroy any vaguely progressive movement or leader from getting near power.
Remember that when Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party, and he was not that radical in traditional terms, the BBC had generals speaking on the news to say that the army would never allow Jeremy Corbyn to become Prime Minister. That was before the antisemitism allegations campaign took off. In the end, that proved sufficient and there was no need for an open military intervention.
I have long considered Labour to have become a party where any criticism of Israel is taboo for members. The influence of that view within the Party is intolerable in the context of human rights and democracy, and its advocates have developed techniques of dishonesty to a high degree. All of this, as I understand it, is woefully contrary to the fundamentals of Judaism.
Just as regime change in South Africa was brought about peacefully, so the world needs to work to get change to take place in Israel and not to allow it to get away with murder, as is now happening.
Well done George Wimers for taking the realist left stance. His warning that a Starmer election victory would open the door to something much worse is particularly insightful and something we dismiss at our peril.
Thank you George Wimers for saying so eloquently what I feel. I wonder too if Starmer even cares if the Unions disaffiliate, apart from the optics perhaps. He has shown where his loyalties lie and will get his funding from Israel, Murdoch and corporate interests who want to milk the UK further. We need a new social democratic party but we also need to unite under one banner rather than a plethora of smaller parties. I really hope some of the left wing heavyweights will step forward and help to give people fiery focus we need!
“False hope is worse than no hope. Labour won’t make promises it can’t keep”
Wes Streeting
Labour! Tough on Hope. Tough on the causes of Hope.
All the very best to Jamie Driscoll. I so hope he is returned as the Mayor of North of Tyne (home on my maternal side). Interesting to see article by the Guardian. Wonder if people have seen George Monbiot’s article in today’s Guardian about what lefties his constituency (Totnes) are doing to identify a truly lefty to get behind in elections.
There is a tendency to say that blocking popular left-wing candidates is a ‘mistake’ or an ‘own goal’ by the leadership. The fact is however that the Starmerites would rather lose elections than win with the wrong candidate. They decided in 2019 that they would prefer to lose rather than win under Corbyn’s leadership and the reverberations of this are still working their way through. The old assumption that winning elections is the bottom line for everyone in the Labour Party needs to be abandoned.
As an example, the leadership are well aware that Labour would have won in Uxbridge if the local party had been allowed to select the candidate freely but still do not regard their actions as a mistake. Through them they not only prevented the election of an independent-minded Labour MP but also got the opportunity to undermine an elected Labour Mayor with his own supporter base and to repudiate a progressive policy supported by the mass of the membership. For Starmer and his allies this is a win-win-win situation.
Kim McGuinness appears to be the perfect Starmerite candidate. She ‘says her No 1 priority is to end child poverty’ but then endorses Starmer’s decision to adopt a policy designed solely and specifically to increase child poverty. This willingness to identify one’s most fundamental principle and then sacrifice it very publicly on Starmer’s altar is the sort of symbolic display of obeisance that marks people out for preferment in today’s Labour Party.
McGuinness also follows the standard right-wing script in playing the victim. I assume she is not Jewish as if she were she would certainly accuse her critics of antisemitism. As it is she has to make do with implying that they are all misogynists.
It was very clear in Camden that the Starmer wing wanted a MUCH smaller party. They not only wanted to get rid of the left but wanted a neat ‘modern ‘ career-ladder organisation with almost no members, just a few who could be drafted in to deliver occasional leaflets they’d had no part in writing or discussing. The result in Holborn & St Pancras is barely-existent branches, some of which only meet to vote their friends in once a year. The constituency office is permanently locked. Reducing membership is a major goal — if possible members on the left first, but not only those. I agree entirely that Uxbridge was a win-win for the Starmer-Streeting faction. I wonder if Danny Beales will come back here and do any local work as a councillor? Presumably the career ladder awaits somewhere else.
Number one priority is to stop a Sir Kid Starver majority government, it is not beyond anyone who has strong support or face recognition in their communities to flip those seats
Under FPTP you only need one more vote than the others to win
Cost £30k, equates to about £2 per supporter, you will raise that when JC holds a rally in your constituency
Eminently Doable