All Power to the Starmerites: Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party in Leninist perspective
At 13:06 on the 29th of October, the Labour Party released a terse press statement announcing the suspension of its former leader, Jeremy Corbyn.
The statement itself was near-Bolshevik in its laconic style, and it embodied a ruthlessness reminiscent of Lenin himself. But can this parallel between Starmer and Lenin be extended to the theoretic level? Has Starmer adapted Lenin’s theory of revolutionary leadership and political-pedagogy to the modern democratic context (or ought he)?
Since Keir Starmer assumed leadership of the Labour Party in April, he has relentlessly sought to create space between himself and his predecessor. This received symbolic expression in the removal of the whip from Mr Corbyn, which Starmer — in his ‘Clause IV’ moment — knows is likely to cause an exodus amongst Corbyn’s momentum-aligned base. This was replicated in Lenin’s choice in 1903 to induce a split in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (winning the internal party vote, and thus entitling his faction to the title of Bolsheviks, or ‘majoritarians’).
In Leninist theory, party-membership is restricted to ‘those who accept the principles of the Party programme and render the party all possible support’. The second component (‘all possible support’), with its implication of the ‘professional revolutionary’, is conventionally stressed at the expense of the first. Starmer, however, has embraced the former: having observed the corrosive impact party disunity has had on Labour’s electoral fortunes, he is content with a smaller yet more united membership.
Many commentators have diagnosed Starmer’s most pressing political concern as the need to unify the two seemingly disparate constituencies which are central to any successful Labour strategy. These are young progressives and the ‘Red Wall’ of the Northern working-class: groups who are separated by geography, social attitudes, education and age.
Lenin’s theory of political education supplies a compelling and innovative prescription for Starmer’s predicament. In What Is To Be Done?, Lenin eloquently argues the formation of political consciousness requires citizens become aware of all manifestations of oppression in society, rather than just that present in their daily experience; ‘in order to become a Social-Democrat, a working man must have a clear picture in his mind of the economic nature and the social and political features of the landlord, of the priest… of the student and of the tramp’.
The application of this theory to the modern Labour party becomes clear when the issues most salient to their two core constituencies are considered. For ‘Red Wall’ voters, the economic rejuvenation of the North is of primary importance (as is reflected in Boris Johnson’s Damascene conversion on Statism), while younger progressives value most more socially-oriented issues, such as environmentalism, racism and sexual-liberation.
Starmer’s task, therefore, is to explain to both sets of voters why the causes they care about are in reality manifestations of the same issue. Entrenched racism, for example, is a symptom of an economic system which systematically excludes certain groups from accessing prosperity, whether they are the Northern working-class or third-generation immigrants. If Starmer can convince these two groups their struggles are of the same character, he will have both embodied the Leninist ideal and won the keys to Downing Street.
