Extracted from Richard Price’s article on Labour Hub

Seven months ago, Morgan McSweeney was hailed as an electoral genius. The Party is currently polling lower than it has at any general election since 1918.

Depending on the source, the Starmer government’s loss in popularity in its first six months is the steepest or second steepest of any incoming government since the Second World War. What’s worse, this doesn’t feel like a temporary blip of the kind that previous Labour governments bounced back from, but already a long-term trend.

While the leadership might think of councillors as its soldiers, there are 6,500 of them and, outside of the small number of identifiable left councillors, there is a much larger group with centrist politics but who aren’t joined at the hip with McSweeney’s project. Councillors have been at the sharp end of public anger not only over the Party’s lamentable performance on Gaza but also with winter fuel payments, the two-child limit, ‘trousergate’, retreats on green policies and recent Reform-chasing announcements on asylum and immigration.

Since October 7th 2024, something like 150 councillors have resigned from the party, some in ones and twos, others in groups. Nor has it been wholly about Gaza. In January this year, 20 councillors in Broxtowe, Nottinghamshire, resigned the Labour whip, citing not only Gaza but also the two-child limit, winter fuel payments and the treatment of WASPI women.

On top of that, many Labour councillors are staring down the barrel of losing their seats in May’s local elections. Councils face a huge funding gap – £2.3bn in English councils alone. Large-scale cuts will inevitably rebound on Labour councils, no matter how much their problems are blamed on the Tories. If the present trend of opinion polls continues, splits are bound to open up within the ruling bloc, and that will include a significant body of councillor opinion, in the same way that elected mayors and the Scottish leadership have put some distance between themselves and High Command.

Other leaders facing sharp polling reversals would circle the wagons and appeal for Party unity. But Morgan McSweeney is determined to root out not only genuine opponents but even potential opposition. This is demonstrably destroying the Party on the ground. The vast majority of members won’t campaign for candidates that they have not been able to choose democratically. Silencing opposition won’t alter that fundamental truth. On the contrary, it will compound it.

The right to choose local government candidates from an adequately-sized panel isn’t a left issue as such, but one shared by many members in other wings of the party and in affiliated unions. The hour is already late, but what we need is a genuinely broad-based campaign to restore local Labour democracy.