Propriety and Constitution?

Aaron Bastani writes:

For much of the last decade the lens of vanguardism has been applied to the politics of the British Left. Momentum, we were often told, was the Militant tendency reborn for the age of the iPhone, with several hundred thousand Trotskyists joining Labour to vote for Corbyn in 2015 (no matter that the largest Trotskyist organisation, the SWP, numbered fewer than 1000 members).

You would sometimes hear the same rhetoric against the pro-Brexit Right, although in their case that was a marker often enjoyed by its targets. Regardless of whom it was aimed at, such language was geared to discredit and delegitimise those political forces the establishment didn’t like. Corbynism and Brexit, and individuals such as Dominic Cummings and Seamus Milne, were treated in a different way to “normal” politicians and advisors because they were regarded as an invasive pathogen. This was clearly an anti-democratic impulse from the centre. So, by necessity, those pushing it claimed to be defenders of democracy.

But while the centrist talk show hosts were having daily aneurysms about mandatory reselection and the BBC delivered monologues about advisors who enjoyed no right of reply, a genuinely vanguardist organisation was emerging. Its name? The suitably anodyne “Labour Together”, which in recent days has been at the centre of a Government cronyism spat.

Jess Sargeant, who previously worked at Labour Together, was recently appointed as deputy director in the Cabinet Office’s Propriety and Constitution Group. Unusually, Sargeant was not subject to an independent recruitment process. That would be concerning for any Civil Service role. Yet in this instance it is especially troubling, because the body in question is responsible for the enforcement of Whitehall rules. If you were a secretive, vanguardist organisation that wanted to parachute chosen candidates into roles with outsized influence, the Propriety and Constitution Group is where you would start.

What the Sargeant story reveals is that Labour Together is not only trying to influence individuals and policy, but also capture key parts of the permanent state apparatus. Keir Starmer has been in Number 10 for less than two months, and already we are witnessing a masterclass in anti-democratic politics.

While it started life in 2015, it was only after Starmer’s ascent to the leadership that Labour Together became a political powerhouse. To understand the scale of its ambition, one need only glance at its finances. In March and April this year, Labour Together received more than £1.3 million from hedge fund manager Martin Taylor. Its second biggest donor, Gary Lubner, has donated more than £600,000 since the beginning of 2023.

Trevor Chinn, a director who has also donated more than £175,000, is a senior advisor to one of the world’s largest private equity companies. Ian Laming, Chief Executive of Tristan Capital Partners, had never made a political donation before — but he broke that duck when he parted with £100,000 for the group. Since Starmer won the leadership, Labour Together has raised £4 million, a sum which makes the Right-wing think tanks of Tufton Street, so often the target of criticism from the Left, seem almost trivial by comparison.

Morgan McSweeney was Labour Together’s director between 2017 and 2020. His CV since testifies to how the organisation first parasitised the Labour hierarchy and is now aiming for the British state. After 2020 he went to work for Starmer, who had just become Labour leader and on whose campaign Sweeney had worked. Today, McSweeney is the Government’s head of political strategy and works out of Number 10.

It’s a similar story when considering how a number of individuals associated with Labour Together were parachuted into Parliamentary seats. Josh Simons, who replaced McSweeney as the organisation’s director, is now the MP for Makerfield. Other associates who have since joined the Commons include Hamish Falconer, Chris Curtis, Luke Murphy and Gordon McKee.

More remarkable still is how the organisation gave more than £300,000 in staffing costs and secondments to various members of the then Shadow Cabinet — now Cabinet — including Rachel Reeves, David Lammy and Yvette Cooper. This, alongside the direct funding of candidates, is not something think tanks usually do. Labour Together should thus be viewed instead, in the words of former MP Jon Cruddas, as Labour’s “first super PAC”. Internally, its aim is cementing the grip of the leadership and the party’s Right. But as far as governing the country is concerned, the resources are coming from those who want Labour to remain in hock to financial interests. They would call it “political moderation”, but it essentially means not addressing the country’s many challenges and leaving things as they are.

Momentum — the subject of so much venom from the press — was, for the most part, about ordinary people trying to influence the political process. It was often messy, and poorly organised, but it was immeasurably more democratic than Labour Together. After all, nobody can join the latter and its policy priorities aren’t shaped by a membership.

And yet the organisation is seeking to not only shape the party of government, through both its personnel and policies, but — as the Sargeant story reveals — the contours of the British state too. Who controls it? And whose interests does it serve? The answers to those questions aren’t forthcoming.

Fidel Castro once said of his seizure of power in Cuba in 1959: “I began the revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I would do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.” The remark might have been flippant, but Castro was merely distilling the case for vanguardism. If he were to look at Labour Together, he would no doubt be impressed.