THE decision by Keir Starmer to block Jeremy Corbyn from standing as a Labour candidate in the next general election poses a significant challenge to Labour’s left — and it is far from clear that the left is rising to meet it.

Starmer’s announcement — for which his authority is unclear — had been long anticipated. That should not, however, diminish the sense of injustice. Removing Corbyn from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) was never anything more than an act of political vindictiveness from a man who once described his predecessor as Labour leader as “a friend.”

The ostensible reason for the decision was Corbyn’s response to the publication of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) report into anti-semitism in Labour in October 2020.

Corbyn’s claim that the incidence of anti-semitism in Labour had been exaggerated by political opponents was both certainly true and also an opinion that the same EHRC report had acknowledged was legitimate to argue.

He subsequently clarified his statement in any case, sufficient for a panel of Labour’s NEC to agree to lift the suspension of his party membership. It was then that Starmer moved to remove the parliamentary whip, in breach of commitments his office had given when negotiating Corbyn’s return to the party.

Apparently, he was pressured by veteran MP Margaret Hodge to do so. Thus the man who led Labour in the 2017 and 2019 elections was excluded from the PLP. After 40 years of his representing Islington North, the constituency party has in effect been ordered to choose another Labour candidate.

The constituency Labour Party has not made any response to this demarche, nor has Corbyn clarified his own intentions as to whether he will stand for re-election anyway. More likely than not, I would guess.

The fact that Starmer’s announcement scarcely came out of the blue, and had indeed been simmering for more than two years, ought to have given time enough for the left to formulate a collective response — the more so since the exclusion of Corbyn forms but a part of the general administrative hammering Starmer’s acolytes are handing the left.

But apparently not. Momentum, it is true, issued a spirited statement — but Labour’s affiliated trade unions have made not a peep, publicly at least.

And as for Corbyn’s colleagues on the parliamentary left, the news of his victimisation was greeted with a muted reaction, with exceptions.

Diane Abbott wrote a strong attack on the decision in this paper (Calling all in Labour to the defence of Jeremy Corbyn, February 18), Jon Trickett tweeted his opposition and John McDonnell described it as a “mistake.” Others have been pictured with Corbyn since at public events, a clear form of support, but the Socialist Campaign Group (SCG), more than 30 strong, has made no collective statement.

Nor, to the best of my knowledge, has any private initiative been taken in Parliament to press the leadership to rethink the issue. Instead, the SCG seems a study in helplessness.

This shift from “Oh Jeremy Corbyn!” to “Who’s Jeremy Corbyn?” does not reflect well on the left. The virtue of solidarity has, to say the least, been neglected.

There are reasons for it, of course. The first is fear, fear that the Starmerites will move against any MP who puts their head above the parapet on this, or indeed, any matter.

This is not entirely irrational. The authoritarianism of the Starmer regime is unappeasable and we cannot be sure that we have reached the bottom there.

However, this can be overstated. For Starmer to move against perhaps more than 10 per cent of the PLP for declaring solidarity with his “friend” would certainly be counterproductive. Such a stand would secure at least some union support, so Starmer would risk creating a left-of-labour party with some mojo and prospects.

Two other reasons are prayed in aid to justify this silence. The first is that Corbyn himself has not asked for anything particular by way of solidarity. At the public level, this is true, and certainly, two years ago he let himself be misadvised that Starmer’s whip withdrawal could be challenged legally, which was always an implausibility.

However, as a general point, solidarity should not be contingent on a strategy for it being outlined by the victim. The smashing of the left in the most symbolic way possible is a collective problem after all.

The second reason is that the whole issue is entangled with anti-semitism. Even many who otherwise admire Corbyn’s leadership do not claim that he handled that matter well. It is no MP’s hill of choice to die on.

But as already outlined, the connection to anything that might constitute actual anti-semitism is very attenuated. To repeat, Labour’s NEC found Corbyn’s mitigation of his original statement, whatever anyone else thought of it, satisfactory.

The attack on democracy and the left is the issue here, not anything else. Of course, it might be said that this is only about one MP’s fate, and the electorate may well have other priorities.

Nevertheless, Corbyn has become, somewhat against his own expectations and certainly in accordance with no known plan, a symbol of the possibility of an alternative society. To politically abandon him is inevitably to negate the hopes his leadership aroused for a socialist transformation.

That, for sure, is what Starmer wants. His leadership is driven by the shrinking of horizons and the limiting of ambition.

So, what is to be done then? Any strategy which simply ends up with much of the Labour left excluding themselves from the party by publicly supporting a non-Labour candidate would have little to recommend it. Let Starmer provoke the split if there must be one.

The key is building an alliance in defence of party democracy. The backlash against the exclusion of a popular local candidate from consideration for parliamentary selection in Broxtowe, the latest in a train of such outrages, illustrates the potential for such an alliance. Several unions have publicly dissented.

Above all, leadership is needed — not by a single individual but through a coming together of all who want to defend Labour as a democratic organisation. Quiet capitulation risks embracing irrelevance.