Starmer must face down the self-righteous clowns on his back benches
Keir Starmer’s attempt to select compliant MPs has backfired, producing a rebellious and ill-informed parliamentary party that has already successfully vetoed its own government’s economic policy, says Paul Ormerod
A fundamental feature of the social and economic world is that intentions are not the same as outcomes.
Morgan McSweeney and his colleagues exercised very close supervision over the selection of Labour Parliamentary candidates in the run up to the July 2024 general election.
Where a sitting MP was retiring or a candidate was being chosen in a winnable seat, apparatchiks believed they were excluding anyone who might exercise independence from the shortlist. Social media posts were closely interrogated and those thought to have left-wing views, or even contact with known leftists, were usually excluded.
The intention was to produce a set of MPs who would be compliant. A variant of the Stepford wives, without a single thought or purpose except to show devotion to the Leader, or Keir Starmer to give him his real life name.
The outcome has now been shown to be completely different. It turns out that substantial numbers of Labour MPs are not the compliant automatons they were meant to be.
Heads bursting with rubbish ideas
Far from being vacuous, it turns out that their heads are full to bursting with ideas. Unfortunately, most of these ideas are rubbish.
These strands came together in the effective veto which a large block of the Parliamentary Labour Party exercised over the proposals of the Chancellor to make modest reductions in the benefits bill.
Including pensions, the total annual cost of benefits in the UK is now over £300bn. Yet for many Labour MPs, the suggestion that a cut of £5bn could be made seemed to be the equivalent of slaughtering their partners and their children and then dancing on their graves.
This attitude exhibits an almost complete ignorance of the history of the Labour Party.
The modern welfare state was set up under Clement Attlee’s government, elected in 1945 in a Labour landslide. But it was meant above all to be a safety net. There would always be a small number of people who genuinely could not work because of disability. There would always be some unemployed when firms closed down.
The intention was certainly not that a life on benefits would be a lifestyle choice.
In Grimsby, for example, more than half the population of working age is now on some form of benefit
Yet the outcome has proved to be exactly that. In Grimsby, for example, more than half the population of working age is now on some form of benefit. Across the UK as a whole spending on disability benefits for anxiety and depression has doubled since the pandemic. Official figures show that £3.4bn was spent last year on personal independence payments to claimants allegedly suffering from these complaints.
All this is against the background of the outcome of Rachel Reeves’ tenure as Chancellor. From the outset, she intended to promote economic growth. But the reality has been that the economy has stagnated.
To be fair, she realised that things have to change. But rather than, say, reverse the disastrous increase in employers’ National Insurance rates, she chose to try and reduce benefits.
In comparison to large numbers of the new intake of Labour MPs, the Chancellor appears as a titan of economic thought. But this was not enough to save her from the outcome of personal humiliation and tears, possibly before bedtime but certainly in the House of Commons.
The ultimate responsibility for these divergences between intentions and outcomes lies with the Prime Minister. It was his immediate entourage which created the current Parliamentary Labour Party.
Far from being compliant and exhibiting a sense of discipline, substantial numbers of the new MPs are rather dim and very earnest, largely unaware of their actual levels of ability.
Keir Starmer needs to assert his authority and face down, once and for all, these self-righteous clowns.
Paul Ormerod is an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Business School at the University of Manchester, an economist at Volterra Partners LLP, and author of Against the Grain: Insights of an Economic Contrarian, published by the IEA in conjunction with City PM