Labour Party supporters were shocked and angered at reports in the Guardian of 6 February about a Facebook group called UK Migration Updates that claims it is run by Yorkshire and Humber Labour Party but was using Reform colours and linking to right-wing content from GB News and the Telegraph.

On the other side, we have new pressure from Lord Maurice Glasman’s “Blue Labour”. Glasman accepted a personal invite from Donald Trump for Trump’s inauguration, and was the only Labour figure there. In an interview with currently-out-of-favour Trumpist Steve Bannon Glasman hailed the inauguration as ‘an incredibly important day”, called “progressive” thinking “woke capitalism, and denounced it as a cancer in the Labour Party. Glasman says that “the only place to build a house now is on the left side of MAGA square”.

Glasman is not in Starmer’s inner circle – he denounces Rachel Reeves – but he claims that Starmer’s Chief of Staff, Morgan McSweeney “is one of ours, we love him”. Dan Carden, a formerly Corbynite Labour MP who resigned from the front bench to back a ceasefire in Gaza, has started a Blue Labour group of MPs.

Glasman started Blue Labour in 2009, but retreated after outcry over his 2011 call for English Defence League people to be drawn into the Labour Party.
Only through inactivity by the “progressive” majority can screwball racists take hold of sections of the Labour Party.

We need to campaign for democracy in the labour movement. For the removal of the Labour whip from Glasman (he sits in the House of Lords). And for unions to campaign on the policies of supporting refugees which most of them have.