Divide and Conquer; Labour
Editor’s Note: Daggers are drawn in the Conservative Party at the highest level. Letters of No Confidence are being held to topple Rishi Sunak after the Local Elections on May 2nd; this is when Rishi’s enemies believe he will be at his weakest.
Whoever succeeds Rishi will still face a united Labour party. Keir has not only purged the Labour backbenches, he has gone as far as blackballing Corbynites from standing in local elections. Jamie Driscoll has been blocked from running as North East Mayor on the basis that he once ‘shared a platform’ with Ken Loach.
The Parliamentary Labour Party, as it stands, is more united than it was in 1997. They are expecting a larger majority; and there are only so many cabinet positions to go around - and so the careerists who the NEC have imposed on to selections will vote with the whip religiously. Wes Streeting does not present the same rival source of authority as Gordon Brown did. Keir is so confident in his position that he is openly threatening to sack internal critics.
Without the application of precise external pressure, Starmer and Gray will easily secure two terms of power. The hope of a ‘realignment of the Right’ in 2029 is a false one. Labour’s masses of enfranchised immigrants and 16-17 year olds will easily smash through a Right which is divided between a Wet Tory Rump and whatever version of Reform is produced by a motley coalition of well meaning ex-GB News Commentators and dribbling post-liberals who wish to ban pornography and bring back the book of Common Prayer.
J’accuse has written before about the potential for opening splits in the Labour coalition by exploiting the growing division between the leadership and it’s BAME contingent; reflected in Baroness Lawrence (mother of Stephen Lawrence) openly criticising Keir Starmer for withdrawing the whip from Dianne Abbot. In this article, Netzach, a new contributor, discusses deeper tensions between factions of the Labour Party; and how the growing resentment of Labour grandees towards Keir and his advisors could be used to avert Keirtastrophe.
Divide and Conquer; Labour
Netzach
With the imminent accession of Labour to executive power, contingencies must be put in place to ensure a future for Rightist politics. Deep, exposed gashes exist in Labour’s electoral strategy and power networks. Some have been dealt with in this publication already. Ripped open after careful probing, they have the potential to inflict immense damage.
To be as dry and brief to my point: the upper spheres of Labour do not hum quite as harmoniously as first appears. By using the original New Labour grandees against the current leadership, I will argue, you can launder a number of politically fatal issues back into the bipartisan press ecosystem. As a postscript to this, a bevy of minor ministers can be goaded into publicly feuding with Starmer.
This will be long, so I start on terra cognita. The Tory machine is currently working to undermine Angela Rayner, who at the time of writing has gone to ground. Though a laudable plan, it’s being used against what is essentially a talentless small-fry. You actually want to apply this scandal-mongering technique to important nodes in Labour’s power networks. Ideally, this is someone so vacated of personality that they can’t hit back at hostile questioning. I tender Pat McFadden as a candidate.
A brief portrait of Pat McFadden will suffice. Gordon Brown recently inked a set of anti-democratic reforms. Readers know this, so we will glide nimbly over it. Less explored is how much they’ve now mutated outside of Brown’s control.
Labour are now planning to bring in something called an Executive Cabinet, and a series of permanent Policy Departments (called “Mission Boards”).
Executive Cabinet will exclude all but four ministers (plus Gray) to narrow conversations about priorities. Rayner’s and Reeve’s presence on this is a sinecure and formality, respectively. The real nucleus is Starmer, Gray, and Pat McFadden.
Mission Boards will inject rapid policy options into government to match the stimmed-up Cabinet’s requirements. The division into “boards” is to make overall control difficult for those without the fingers for pulling bureaucratic threads. These boards will take policy making away from elected Ministers; who as we have seen with NHS England, will still be blamed by the press for shortcomings in performance.
These ‘mission boards’ will then be entrenched constitutionally: they will be sold as a “Whitehall efficiency measure”. Acting as Labour’s permanent crypto-veto on policy, they will controlled by Whitehall loyalists no matter who takes over afterwards. Even if you were able to return to power in five years’ time, your horse is houghed. This is important.
A Top Business Figure will be given nominal control of the boards. In truth, the mandarin presiding over this will be *Rt Hon. Pat McFadden*, Blair’s onetime Political Secretary. He has a long and occasionally unsuccessful record of securing ministerial power, but possesses a vast range of bureaucratic and diplomatic experience. He has sat on every conceivable bland but necessary portfolio. He was Downing Street’s man in Pakistan after September 11th. He is an essential Whitehall enforcer on national and international policy. He will run the Cabinet Office brief, and is running Labour’s campaign with Morgan McSweeney.
His prior job as Chief Shadow Secretary to the Treasury granted him immense power on fiscal policy. His replacement, Darren Jones, is a born-again Blairite careerist. I suspect he will function as McFadden’s backdoor into retaining a veto on fiscal policy.
McFadden is one of those people, like Gray, who is running everything. People go silent when he speaks in Parliament. This makes him frightening for you, but worry not: I have an set of proposals to sink or damage him.
Now comes the interesting part. Brown hates McFadden. He disliked him as a fellow Scot who took Blair’s side. He “got the worst of it” in the Blair-Brown fracas. He was so loyal to Blair he quietly and dutifully delayed his parliamentary ambitions, at Blair’s request, to smooth over any ruggedness between Number 10 & 11 over selection of allies for the PLP.
This partially explains Brown’s extraordinary language regarding the proposed Exec-Cabinet, describing it as a Maoist innovation. Throwing this Red paint bucket over Keir is not what a lithe, unified upper party echelon pressing for power does. The Angry Scot is incensed, and there’s a dimension of personal rancour.