Welfare reform: ‘So much for new Labour MPs being ultra-loyal Starmtroopers’

Some 59 of the 108 first signatories of the reasoned amendment opposing welfare cuts are new Labour MPs. Weren’t the newbies in the class of ’24 supposed to be ultra-loyal “Starmtroopers”?

A year ago, the idea so many of the new intake would be publicly rebelling on such a high-profile issue within the new government’s first year would have felt laughable. Even a few months into the government, LabourList heard some MPs grumbling about how eager to toe the line many of their newest colleagues were.

It’s not just the fact they are fresh-faced MPs with a still-fresh debt to the party leadership for helping to get them elected (particularly in seats Labour had not won for decades) that is significant.

It’s the fact that as Katie Balls wrote in a 2023 cover piece in The Spectator about the rise of the “Starmtroopers”, the new crop of then-candidates are – or at least seemed to be – “very much, Starmer’s people”.

Pre-election Labour focused relentlessly on weeding out the left

“Since becoming leader, his main focus has been rooting out the Corbynite influence at every level of his party and finding moderates to replace the far left,” Balls wrote.

She was bang on the money.  LabourList has written countless stories over the past few years about the leadership’s remarkable success in thwarting many aspiring left and soft left candidates’ bids to get picked in parliamentary selection contests.

READ MORE: Welfare reform bill: MPs on why they back the amendment – or back Kendall

A tiny sample of the pre-election headlines in the ‘selections’ area of our website speak for themselves.

“Almost a quarter of non-MPs on NEC selected”.  “Poll leads mean Starmer thinks he can afford to ruthlessly reshape Labour”.  “Labour denies ‘purge’ but union slams ‘jobs for the boys’ as Shaheen deselected. “Selections drama as Waugh and Starmer allies Akehurst and Simons picked but Russell-Moyle out and Shaheen ‘at risk’.” “Protest planned at Wolverhampton West hustings amid row over selection process”.

Some candidates not even obviously on the left and with significant local experience or support were blocked from reaching shortlists, for not-so-obvious reasons. With due diligence tests beefed up and seemingly the toughest in a long time, perhaps it was thorny ancient social media posts; perhaps it was stopping them as serious rivals to regional officials’ favoured candidates.

Members in many areas were also denied a proper say over their candidates, with procedures changed and selections or retirements left so late in the day pre-election it fell to national executive committee members and CLP panels to hand-pick candidates or “shortlists of one”.

Ruthlessness was supposed to prevent rebels ever being kingmakers

Granted, the party always faces accusations of selection cronyism. But veteran political journalist and selection-watcher Michael Crick has written that the leadership’s tactics went ” way beyond the dark arts of Peter Mandelson, Alastair Campbell and New Labour”, and that the tactics of the Jeremy Corbyn regime were likewise “ruthless” – but “never on this scale”.

The logic was clear, though. Underlying it was the same ‘Ming vase’ mindset of 1990s New Labour, the deeply held fear the electorate may well not give Labour its biggest landslide for decades. After all,  Labour has only governed for about a third of the past century.

Alienating members to regain power for the first time in 14 years was clearly seen as a price worth paying. Right-wing media storms over candidates’ left-wing views were one potential problem the party could avoid.

READ MORE: Welfare reform bill: Full text of reasoned amendment and list of rebel Labour MPs

Beyond that, the aim was to ensure if Labour had a small majority, it was not beholden to the whims of a tiny number of rebellious kingmaker MPs, continually teetering on the brink and bartering over key votes as Labour had to at times in the 1970s.

And yet here we are – with the government’s ability to pass a major piece of legislation in doubt, and some suggestions the vote could be delayed beyond next week to thrash out a compromise that picks off enough MPs to get it over the line.

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Labour’s majority once looked unassailable at around 165, meaning around 84 MPs need to rebel to risk defeat. But the number of MPs prepared to defy the government on welfare has grown, not shrunk, in the past day despite the government’s frantic whipping efforts – and stands at around 123.

The leadership seems to have underestimated the fact that for 2024 intake MPs of virtually all factions and none, “one of their most common reasons for getting involved in the Labour Party was opposition to Conservative austerity and welfare cuts,” as the BBC’s Henry Zeffman noted in February.

As one Labour insider wryly noted to LabourList this week: “Whoever ‘hand-picked’ this new intake is probably going to have a tough quarterly assessment.”

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