Corbyn-supporting Labour faction stage NEC mass walkout
Margaret Beckett #MargaretBeckett
Leftwing members of Labour’s governing body have staged a mass walkout in protest of the actions of the Labour leadership, including the election of a key ally of Keir Starmer as the body’s chair.
The Guardian understands 13 members of the national executive committee (NEC) – including senior members of the trade unions Unite and the FBU, as well as constituency representatives including the ex-MP Laura Pidcock – staged a pre-planned walkout in protest of the election of MP Margaret Beckett as NEC chair.
A number of leftwing members of the NEC have expressed outrage at Starmer’s decision to withhold the whip from the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after comments he made in the wake of a report by the equalities watchdog into antisemitism in the party.
The Corbyn-supporting bloc on the NEC – which now has a majority supportive of Starmer’s leadership – has been further angered by a decision to allow members to elect a new chair, rather than having a rotating chairmanship. The move allowed Beckett, the former Labour deputy leader, to be elected chair instead of the FBU’s Ian Murray.
Murray was among 14 NEC members who signed a letter to the general secretary, David Evans, which was highly critical of Starmer’s leadership and criticised the “political interference” in the decision to suspend the whip from Corbyn after his suspension from the party was lifted by an NEC disciplinary panel.
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It is understood the walkout, which took place at the Labour NEC away day on Zoom, was coordinated by Pidcock and Unite’s Howard Beckett, the current left favourite to succeed Len McCluskey as the trade union’s general secretary.
Mish Rahman, one of the local constituency representatives on the body, said: “Yet again Starmer is trying to play games with democracy and undermine the role of trade unions within our party. This latest action fits a worrying pattern of control-freakery reminiscent of the New Labour years.
“There can be no party unity until Starmer fully understands the need to work with the Labour movement and the many tens of thousands of grassroots members who can help deliver a Labour government. Our walkout today was to remind him of this, and to send a message that we will not put up with petty and repeated attacks on trade unions and members.”
NEC members described chaos as the bloc walked out, which allowed Margaret Beckett to be elected NEC by a majority of 24 votes. One NEC member said it was “clearly planned in advance … they’ve thrown their toys out of the pram … none of us ever walked out when we didn’t get our way, lost votes!”
Another called it a “full-frontal attack” on the leader by Howard Beckett and Pidcock. The walkout did not go as smoothly as intended. One source described how Beckett had given an angry speech ahead of the walkout but then spent an agonising minute attempting to find the button to leave the virtual meeting.
Corbyn has had the whip suspended for three months – barring him from the parliamentary Labour party – pending an investigation into whether he had broken the PLP code of conduct.
He had been suspended from the Labour party as a whole in late October over comments he made after a report by the equalities watchdog about antisemitism in the party, but his membership was restored after three weeks when he was given a formal warning by the party. The former Labour leader has been asked to formally apologise and withdraw comments in which he said the scale of the problem had been “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by opponents and the media.
