Starmer and co are trashing Labour's legacy. We must take back control of our party – before it's too late

The Guardian

28-05-2025

I joined the Labour party 50 years ago. Back then, as a young man, I was proud that I was becoming part of a movement motivated by the highest ideals. I felt I was joining a group of like-minded people who wanted to change the world for the better and that, whatever setbacks might occur, we were on the right side of history.
I devoted my life to securing the election of Labour governments that would transform our society. I was a working-class kid, born in the slums of Liverpool to a father who was a docker and a mother who was a cleaner, and I gained all the benefits of Labour's policies: the security of a Parker Morris-standard council house and the care of the NHS when I was sick. As a trade union branch secretary, my dad and his fellow members exercised their rights and their solidarity to secure the wage levels that lifted the families of workers out of poverty.
No matter how tough it was through the worst of the Thatcher period and especially during the harsh years of Tory austerity, the light of hope still burned in me that eventually Labour would return to power, and we would be able to get back on the righteous path of social advance for everybody.
Keir Starmer was elected leader of the party on the policy platform that Jeremy Corbyn and I developed, and then he promptly dropped virtually every policy promise he made. My concern was that dropping a radical programme and narrative in favour of a mealy mouthed politics meant that the Starmer administration would deliver a timid move forward at best. But even then, I held to the belief that the desperate nature of the Tory inheritance would force him to change course.
I wrote articles and made speeches arguing that there was still hope because by the middle of Labour's term, it was highly likely these mediocre policies would have proved ineffective, with the risk of the administration under Starmer becoming deeply unpopular. At that stage, I thought, the argument for an alternative strategy would be overwhelming. That was when the broad church of the left and progressives in the movement would have a key role to play.
What I didn't appreciate was that once elected, the Starmer government wouldn't just be an administration of timid reform, but would rapidly instigate a series of policies that drove a knife into the heart of what I believed Labour stood for when I joined the party.
Labour was founded to eliminate poverty and secure equality. After the first king's speech, the government didn't just fail to address the major cause of child poverty in Britain at the moment – the Conservatives' two-child benefit cap – but demanded that Labour MPs vote against its abolition. This was the first time the political incompetence and callousness of the new administration's decision-makers were put on display. To then remove the whip from me and six colleagues for voting to scrap the cap showed a remarkable combination of arrogance and lack of judgment.
At the same time, the public got view of the distasteful sight of Labour ministers accepting gifts, tickets and donations from the rich and corporate carpetbaggers. For that scandal to be followed by the government cutting the benefits of the poorest in our society was nauseating for many Labour supporters.
Following this up with the debacle of the changes to the winter fuel allowance and the brutal attack on disabled people's benefits has disillusioned Labour voters on a scale not seen before in the recent history of the party. It has opened the door to the divisive and destructive opportunism of Nigel Farage, who has now said he would scrap the two-child cap.
Justifying this negation of the historic role of Labour by adhering to an anachronistic fiscal rule doesn't just make the government appear tin-eared. It makes it look inflexibly incompetent.
What we are now witnessing is a panicked, half-hearted policy retreat, while the backroom boys – Morgan McSweeney in the leader's office and Nick Parrott in the deputy leader's office – fight between themselves.
All this against a backdrop of defending the export of F-35 fighter jet parts that enable the Israel Defense Forces to continue bombing Gaza and a Labour prime minister echoing the language of Enoch Powell.
Unless party members, affiliated unions and MPs stand up and assert themselves to take back control of Labour, in the next period of its history we may not only lose a government. We could also lose a party.
John McDonnell is the independent MP for Hayes and Harlington. He was shadow chancellor for Labour from 2015 to 2020