Diane Abbott won her trial of strength with Sir Keir Starmer with the help of hard-Left activists who talk to each other using bird-based codenames.
That is the claim being made by allies of the Labour leader, who are blaming the mysterious Socialist Action group for helping to create such a storm of protest over Ms Abbott’s alleged treatment that Starmer was eventually forced to let the veteran MP stand for election again.
The Trotskyist group, which has praised hardline communist states, was formed in the 1980s when the Hackney MP was starting her rise to power: as an ‘entryist’ outfit, members would work within other organisations without revealing their true affiliation. A website is the only visible sign of its existence.
‘They are so weird,’ said a senior Starmer ally. ‘They meet in pubs using codenames based on birds, calling themselves things like ‘green kingfisher’ and ‘song thrush’ and idolise awful places such as North Korea. We are sure they were whipping up all the outrage and confusion over whether Diane would be allowed to stand again.’
The row erupted over Labour HQ’s very public agonising over whether Abbott should be allowed to run despite a year-long suspension for suggesting that Jewish and Irish people did not experience racism ‘all their lives’. It has exposed deep rifts behind the outwardly smooth Starmer operation.
In a conspicuously unambiguous report on the front page of The Times last Wednesday, readers were told that although Abbott would have the party whip restored, ‘the Labour leadership has concluded that there are no circumstances in which she will stand under its banner on July 4’. She would be ‘allowed’ to retire ‘with dignity’, it said. Two days later, Starmer announced that Abbott, 70, could stand as a Labour candidate again.
Momentum, the Left-wing campaign group which propelled Jeremy Corbyn to the Labour leadership in 2015, responded to the botched hit-job on Abbott by saying: ‘You come at the queen, you better not miss. Diane Abbott has been bullied and abused her whole career. Starmer tried to force her out. She held firm – and won.’
The Times briefing sparked a fierce ‘whodunnit’ debate, with insiders convinced that the authoritative tone of the report pointed to the source being Morgan McSweeney, Starmer’s feared campaign chief. For more than two years, it is claimed, the 47-year-old from County Cork has been working tirelessy to parachute favoured Right-wing candidates into safe seats, working in close concert with Matt Pound, the former secretary of the Starmerite pressure group ‘Labour To Win’, and Matt Faulding, the Parliamentary Labour Party Secretary.
A number of Labour MPs believe that these ‘boys’ – as they have been nicknamed to the fury of Starmer – effectively run internal party management processes, with the party leader himself reduced to a rubber-stamping role.
And they say that the ‘boys’ have been fighting a turf war with Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, the formidable ex-civil servant now trying to exert her own control over the party.
It soon became clear that Abbott had no plans to retire – or be dignified. Her return to the fold was secured when deputy leader Angela Rayner – looking noticably relieved after Manchester police concluded that her infamously complex living arrangements did not give rise to criminal liability – declared: ‘I don’t see any reason why Diane Abbott can’t stand as a Labour MP going forward.
‘I am saying that as the deputy leader of the Labour Party.’
Starmer is described as being ‘furious’ about the entire imbroglio, with the muscle-flexing by the left reviving fears that the ghost of former leader Jeremy Corbyn – who is banned from standing as a Labour candidate – is yet to be fully exorcised by Sir Keir’s new model army of voter-friendly moderates. When Mr Corbyn was party leader, a number of his allies, including his chief of staff Simon Fletcher, were linked to Socialist Action.
The Starmer ally fumed: ‘Diane’s had a long association with that Socialist Action lot. They might be strange, but annoyingly they are also very capable’.
The clash between the two flanks of the party is exemplified in Islington North, where Corbyn is standing in the seat he has represented since 1983 as an independent against the official Labour candidate, Praful Nargund – a wealthy Starmerite. Nargund, a local councillor, is a multi-millionaire behind a chain of family-owned IVF clinics.
The Bradford-born private healthcare entrepreneur, who was educated at the now £25,000-per-year King’s College School in Wimbledon, holds more than £9.4million worth of shares in his family’s holding company.
The ‘purge’ of the party’s hard-Left has also swept away Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who was MP for Brighton Kemptown, who was suspended, and Faiza Shaheen, the candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green, who was not endorsed. Ms Shaheen was blocked for liking a series of social media posts that allegedly downplayed anti-Semitism accusations; Mr Russell-Moyle said that he was treated as a ‘sacrificial lamb’ by the party after he was blocked from standing because of what he called a ‘vexatious’ complaint about his conduct.
Nancy Platts, a former Jeremy Corbyn aide, said she had put herself forward to replace Mr Russell-Moyle, but during her interview it was tweeted that Chris Ward, a former Starmer aide, would be the candidate.
Abbott has described it as an ‘appalling cull’ of the Left.
Starmer is also struggling to keep a lid on splits in the party over another Corbyn-Abbott grievance: his perceived pro-Israeli stance.
Imams across Britain are issuing ‘fatwas’ to their flocks to vote for independent candidates against Labour incumbents.
The clerics are using the pulpits of their mosques and their social media channels to instruct followers to vote only for candidates that support the Palestinian cause, and condemning Starmer’s party as ‘Zionist’.
The Muslim Vote, which was set up earlier this year, is urging the country’s 3.9m Muslims to kick out all MPs who voted against a ceasefire in Gaza, or abstained.
As Wes Streeting reveals in his MoS interview today, the issue is so inflammatory that, as a Starmer loyalist, he has had stop using public transport because of the risk to his safety.
Even if he wins the thumping majority predicted by the polls, Starmer will struggle to contain these widening fissures in his party.
Election team: Glen Owen, Brendan Carlin, Anna Mikhailova, Dan Hodges, Abul Taher and Daisy Graham-Brown