THE continuing collapse of the Starmer-led Labour government was on public display on Wednesday when in a pathetic attempt to reassert his absolute control, four Labour MPs had the whip removed and are now forced to sit as Independents.
A further three lost their positions as trade envoys.
The ‘crime’ committed by all seven was to vote a fortnight ago against Starmer’s welfare bill that would have destroyed the Personal Independence Payments (PIP) that 1.2 million disabled people and their families depend upon just to keep from starving.
127 Labour MPs, one in four, signed up to an amendment that would have blocked these brutal cuts, forcing Starmer into a humiliating climb down.
This begs the question why hasn’t Starmer disciplined all 127 of these Labour MPs who defied his authority and instead picked out four for what one commentator described as a ‘punishment beating’.
The answer of course is simple, taking the whip from 127 MPs would have reduced the Labour government’s majority bringing on its collapse.
Instead, Starmer has waited for two weeks, just before Parliament goes into recess, to pick on the four MPs, now described as ‘serial’ offenders.
Of the four, (Rachel Maskell, Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchcliff) three were newly elected in 2024, only Maskell was an existing Labour MP.
Of course, this wasn’t supposed to happen when Starmer insisted prior to last year’s general election that he had changed the Labour Party beyond recognition, driving out all those believed to be anything other than faithful followers of his pro-business government.
A vicious authoritarian regime was imposed to vet prospective Labour candidates and weed out any suspected of socialist principles.
The shock to Starmer is that this new intake were at the heart of the rebellion that crashed his authority and has shattered the Labour Party and his government.
These are not the first Labour MPs to be suspended or even expelled from the party but none of these punishments has had the desired effect of instilling blind loyalty amongst the ranks.
The rebellion by 127 Labour MPs was a result of the great mass of workers and young people turning away from a Labour government that is prepared to inflict savage attacks on vulnerable pensioners and the disabled in order to satisfy the demands of the bankers and bosses.
While Starmer was preparing to kick MPs out for voting against his class war on workers his Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, was this week prostrating herself before the financial bosses pledging to release them from any regulations that inhibits them from engaging in the debt fuelled speculations that crashed the capitalist banking system in 2008.
Meanwhile, in a further development in the continuing economic collapse of British capitalism, figures were released showing a sharp increase in unemployment.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that Britain’s employment rate has reached its highest level since June 2021, the height of the Covid pandemic, while workers have also faced ‘a significant slowdown’ in wage growth.
41,000 jobs have gone in the last month alone in what is being described as a ‘jobs recession’.
The plunge into economic recession has completely torn apart the old parliamentary political set up.
With the Tories already busted apart, and Starmer losing control of Labour MPs, the Labour government is reduced to thrashing around in search of alliances that will keep it from collapse.
Even cosying up to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is not off the agenda for Starmer. Indeed, his ministers have increasingly adopted policies aimed at ‘winning over’ Reform voters by attacking migrant workers and the unemployed, claiming that they bear responsibility for the economic crisis engulfing the UK.
The working class has the power to put an end to Starmer’s collapsing Labour government by forcing the TUC to immediately call an indefinite general strike to bring them down and go forward to a workers government that will expropriate the bosses and bankers to build a socialist planned economy.
The urgent task today is to build up the WRP and Young Socialists to provide the leadership required for the working class to take power through the victory of the British Socialist Revolution.
