Thread by @MrBenSellers

🧵 The amount of pressure / leverage that can be applied to the Parliamentary Labour Party is limited. In the past I’ve absolutely advocated for this strategy & I can understand why people think it might work again, but we have to understand the recent history of the party. 1/14

We aren’t dealing with Ed Miliband’s Labour here. It has changed beyond recognition, exactly because the people who’ve now got a vice-like grip over it, were determined that they would never lose control again after getting the fright of their lives between 2015 & 2017. 2/14

Take it from those of us who were close to the ground during the Corbyn years - these are some of the most poisonous, morality-free people in politics. Remember, to them, the Labour Party was their plaything. 3/14

They ‘owned’ it, and pre-2015 they kept control through the bureaucracy of the party - that is the paid staff at Labour HQ & regional offices. 4/14

Added to that, a constant stream of vetted candidates that came through routes they dominated - the party bureaucracy itself, local councils they controlled, and moderate trade unions. 5/14

This bolstered their power in the party & ensured that they never had to worry about the left. Where that left had any control at all, it was controlled & neutralised. 6/14

In 2015, all those certainties collapsed. Their reaction was to hang on within the bureaucracy & the Parliamentary party, and dig in for the long game. 7/14

But they knew that they couldn’t wait too long, because democratic changes might eventually mean a crucial shift in both the number of MPs & paid staff who were loyal to the old, ‘centrist’ project. 8/14

Hence the antisemitism crisis, which fell into their hands due to the weak defence by the left in & around Westminster, but also was nourished by them with the help of the rightwing & liberal press. That was their jab, if you like. The People’s Vote chaos was the knockout. 9/14

Both of those ‘campaigns’ were completely disingenuous & damaging to the things that they claimed to be for, like winning the working class & the integrity of anti-racism, but remember, none of those things mattered compared to chasing socialists out of the party. 10/14

They couldn’t gain control & rebuild their project without first achieving that. Order was restored thanks to the defeat in the General Election in 2019 & the collapse of the Parliamentary left in the aftermath, leading to disillusion & fragmentation amongst the wider left. 11/14

But, we need to understand this: the lessons have been learned. There has been more than a ‘shoring up’ since, the party has been held up by it’s trousers, shaken down & all that remained of the left has been emptied, like so much loose change. 12/14

Starmer has been the willing agent of this shaking down & played his part very well, but he isn’t the driver behind it. That is the people in the shadows, the political gangsters who never let go. They now have more allies than they ever had on the frontbenches/backbenches. 13/14

Any rebellion, any concessions, and u-turns must be seen in that context. The direction has been set, and any compromises will only be about public perception & party management, not fundamental rethinking. They will never take their hands off the wheel again. 14/14