Keir Starmer's Unity Mongering

He's bringing sexy back. Well, maybe not but Keir Starmer wants to see the return of Alastair Campbell to the Labour Party. This brings back memories from early in the campaign in which Keir said he would not rest until everyone who left the party over anti-semitism were back in the fold. We know that's coded repartee for the right wing departee, such as Change UK and other miserable toerags, as per the Tory-supporting John Mann and Ian Austin. The question is with a commanding lead, as suggested by the latest YouGov why Keir wants to reach out to these dreadful relics, especially when the core of his support stood by Jeremy Corbyn and feel anything but a frisson of warmth when their names are uttered.

It's all about burnishing them unity creds. Having scooped up Labour First, Paul Mason, Sadiq Khan, Momentum's Laura Parker, and, whisper it, His Blairness, demonstrating this desire more isn't going to hurt his chances. Campbell stomped off like a stroppy three-year-old back in the summer, but reaching out shows Keir to be the better man, of someone putting aside past grievances and showing the party is once again welcoming to his sort. It's a conciliatory move that builds on similar from John McDonnell, who was keen to head off another bout of infighting just as the parliamentary shilly-shallying over Brexit and the general election ratcheted up. Of course, Keir is more credible when it comes to this because of his remainy remainism, and a practical demonstration of his centrism for wanting to bang up benefits cheats on 10-year stretches.

This seems to me to have two consequences, whether anticipated or fortuitous happenstances. The first is neutralising trouble from the Labour right. Known now for the scabs they always were, this self-same section of the right were the ones who provided the press briefings and stirred the pot during the Ed Miliband years and, before him, likewise undermined Gordon Brown. As most of these hitched their tiny wagon to the Jess Phillips farce and, defeated, meekly boarded the Lisa Nandy express, inviting back their lost kin draws a line under the previous regime and the clock starts ticking anew. Perhaps one or two of them will get jobs too, and I'm sure they'll repay their gratitude with a steady stream of leaks from the shadow cabinet to their favourite journalists. There are still others for whom Keir will never feature on their Christmas card list because he served in Corbyn's leadership team, and will prove as petulant tomorrow as they were yesterday. You can try mollifying them, but its going to be a complete waste of time - as Keir will find out when the EHRC report drops, they will use it (and anything) for scorched earth factional advantage. They are not going to stop until the left are put back in the box, and anything looking remotely Corbynist is purged from the policy platform.

While we're paddling in centrist waters, the second moment in play here is affecting an ambition old Tonty long nurtured: the unification of the Labour and Liberal traditions (in Blairspeak, two moments of the "radical tradition"). The new membership surge Labour has experienced contains not a few who, over the last few years, decamped from the party and shacked up in the Liberal Democrats before returning to the fold to get their man the top job. And if the members flow, perhaps so will those voters lost to the yellow party in December. It's also going to make the LibDems much more constructive in their approach to Labour - RIP Jo Swinson nonsense. This is handy because the way the Tories are looking to tilt their electoral system even more in their favour, like it or not Labour is going to have to come to some sort of arrangement with the LibDems and Greens ahead of the next election - assuming the Tories' position isn't totally destroyed by an as yet unanticipated cataclysm. Keir's unity pitch then is not just aimed at those in Labour sick of infighting, but those outside wanting to see some sort of unified opposition to Boris Johnson. And it could work.

Nevertheless, Keir is helped by neither of his opponents wishing to contest his unity pitch. Lisa Nandy is more interested in being this contest's "truth-teller". Ironic considering her habitual mischaracterisation of the positions of others. And Rebecca Long-Bailey's campaign, which has much to recommend it, has gone hard on policy and, consequently and despite her best efforts, allowed her challenge to be seen coming from one wing of the party as opposed to Keir's floaty ascendance above the fray. Indeed, if one was even more cynical, Keir's courting of Campbell and friends is about consolidating control and diluting the left by contriving a situation where the resignation letters pile up making his particular unity more unifying via (self) exclusion. A recipe for winning an election, perhaps, but not one that bodes well for the social and political change we need to see.