Keir Starmer goes further than Blair and Brown on Labour rebels
In February 2003 no less than 122 Labour MPs backed a Commons motion saying the case for war with Iraq had not been proven. Even so, the motion was defeated because the Conservatives voted along with government loyalists. This was followed in March that year by a back bench rebellion of 139 Labour MPs as Blair sought a [[Commons]] mandate for his war in Iraq. Again, Blair got his way with the support of the Conservatives. This was the largest rebellion against the party whip seen under any governing party on any issue for 150 years.
These were by far the largest backbench rebellions Blair faced, but they were by no means the only ones.
In February 2002, 45 Labour rebels voted against plans to promote faith schools in England. Blair faced this rebellion down, helped by Conservative support.
In November 2001, more than 30 Labour MPs voted against the government on controversial anti-terror measures. The measures still went through. These are the measures which Starmer recently used to proscribe Palestine Action. The rebel Labour MPs cited their fears that the measures could easily be used by the government to clamp down on protest groups.
In 1999, in shades of the recent [[Commons]] rebellion over cuts to disability benefits, 53 Labour MPs rebelled against plans to make changes to incapacity benefit. This was not Blair's first backbench rebellion, that came in December 1997, when his government was only seven months old. Forty seven Labour MPs rebelled over government plans to slash [[benefits]] for single parents.
The rebellions continued throughout Blair's term in office. In 2007, 95 Labour MPs rebelled against plans to renew Trident missiles. Many of these revolts were tacitly stirred up by Blair's jealous chancellor Gordon Brown and his faction. Brown spent most of Blair's time in office plotting to take over as prime minister, but when he finally did so in 2007, it soon became clear that he was much better at plotting and backstabbing than he was at governing.
Labour backbench revolts intensified under Brown. There were 103 Labour revolts in Gordon Brown's first full session as prime minister. The Labour MP who rebelled most often was Jeremy Corbyn, but at no point did he ever lose the Labour whip.
Keir Starmer, with his markedly authoritarian instincts, is determined to run a very different kind of [[Labour Party]]. For all their many and serious faults, Blair and Brown respected the long-standing tradition of the [[Labour Party]] as a party which was a broad church and which welcomed and respected differences of opinion amongst party members.
Starmer has a very different view: For him the Parliamentary Labour Party is merely an instrument of the will of the party leadership. Dissent will not be tolerated.
Upon becoming party leader, Starmer set about ensuring that only those loyal to him would be nominated as Labour Party candidates, weeding out potential members of the awkward squad before they got a chance to rebel.
Remember the shenanigans surrounding the imposition of the nodding donkey Michael Shanks as the Labour candidate in the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by election in October 2023 over the candidate favoured by the local constituency party. This was far from being an isolated incident.
Within weeks of taking office, Starmer signalled his zero-tolerance for dissent, suspending seven Labour MPs who voted to support an SNP motion calling for the abolition of the two-child cap on [[benefits]].
Starmer faced his biggest rebellion over his plans to slash disability benefits earlier this month when 47 of his backbench MPs voted against the Government, which had been forced to contain a much larger rebellion by essentially offering to kick the issue into the long grass.
Inevitably, Starmer has now hit back against this threat to his authority, removing the Labour whip from four of his MPs. However, Starmer's political fragility has been revealed by the fact that only four of the 47 rebels have had the Labour whip removed. The four are those who have most consistently shown a willingness to speak out against Starmer. They include Neil Duncan-Jordan, Chris Hinchliff and Rachael Maskell. The MPs will sit as independents in the House of Commons until such time as the Labour whip is restored.
One Scottish MP is amongst the four, Grangemouth and Alloa MP Brian Leishman, who not only rebelled over the disability benefit cuts but has also spoken out against the Labour Government's failure to keep its pre-election promises to the workers at the [[Grangemouth]] plant, which is in his constituency.
All four of the suspended MPs have developed a track record of willingness to speak out against decisions of the Starmer iteration of Labour. Speaking to The Times newspaper, a senior Labour source said that the four had been suspended from the party for "persistent knobheadery".
You might have thought a much better definition of being a knobhead was to throw 250,000 disabled people into poverty while refusing to countenance a wealth tax, or promising Waspi women that if they vote for you, you'll ensure they get fair compensation only once you get elected to go: "I've changed my mind, soreee."
Speaking after he was booted out of the PLP, Leishman said in a statement that he wanted to continue as a Labour MP. Leishman is still in the denial stage of grief. He's got anger, bargaining and depression to process before he gets to acceptance of the reality that the Labour Party he's really a part of is not the Labour Party he wants it to be.
Then he'll realise why so many people in Scotland who became disenchanted with the Labour Party under Tony Blair frequently used the figure of speech, 'I didn't leave the Labour Party, the Labour Party left me'.
That is now what has literally happened to Brian Leishman.
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