Today was meant to be a big day for the NHS for Labour. You see, the party of the health service is once again trying to save the health service. With waiting lists approaching a record 7.54 million, Labour has a point to make. Unfortunately, not many people are going to listen to them.
Instead, the shadow health secretary, West Streeting, was forced to debate Diane Abbott, the long-serving MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, on the media circuit. Abbott stood down as Leader in April 2023 after writing a letter to the Observer saying that Jews, Irish and Travellers would not be subject to racism “for the rest of their lives” in the same way as black people.
Abbott has “fully and unreservedly” apologised for his comments but has been suspended pending an independent investigation commissioned by the Labour party. BBC Newsnight later reported that Labour's national executive committee wrote to Abbott in December to tell her it had completed an investigation into his comments. And on Tuesday she was reinstated as the party's leader.
At the same time, information appeared to have been leaked to The Times that Mr Abbott would still be barred from standing in the July 4 election, but Keir Starmer said today that this was not the case and that no decision had yet been made.
I'll be honest, my ability to binge watch the internal Labour battles isn't what it used to be, but it seems clear that the outcome the leadership team was hoping for was for Abbott, a veteran leftist and Britain's first black woman MP, to regain her position as Labour leader and retire quietly from politics until a loyal replacement could be found. That doesn't appear to be going according to plan.
These events not only rob Labour of the positive policy story it wants to tell (reducing NHS waiting lists), but also highlight a wider problem. The party's big pitch is that they want to “stop the chaos”, which sounds plausible and has been thoroughly focus-group analysed. But there's one problem: have you met the Labour Party?
Labour's policy divisions may not be on the same level as the Conservatives', but the party's leadership has made great efforts to ensure that its candidate in the next election has a Starmer-like outlook. But what has held Labour together recently is a shared determination to win power, and opinion polls that suggest that is the most likely outcome. What if the party tires of the discipline of power, or its polling lead disappears while in power?
The Abbott affair is a distraction for now – perhaps not a big deal given the Conservatives' shaky start to the election campaign – but it contains a warning for the future: Starmer's government will face a number of internal crises that it will need to be better prepared to deal with, whether or not Abbott returns as a Labour MP.
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