When outsiders and their money drive policy and choose staff…
…. you don’t have a political party; you have a company department
I may have left the Labour Party but it continues to fascinate — a bit like watching a driverless train heading quickly towards the buffers at a deserted station.
What has become clear over the last few days is that the party’s funds seem to be in parlous shape. This has forced Sir Keith Strimmer to abandon any struggle to manage the optics around bowing to the wishes of prospective donors.
To be fair to the man, he can afford the gamble at the moment because the media are occupied with other matters and they already know that Labour under the garden gnome is not going to be a party that threatens the status quo. No attacks on inequality, poverty, and militarism are on the cards.
But with the exodus of many thousands of left-wing members of Labour both at the election of Starmer as leader and then after, when his purge of socialists began, money is now increasingly tight at Labour H.Q. Luckily, a Labour Party now shorn of left-wing policies can go cap in hand to some of the old centrist donors. These are the rich with consciences, the equivalent of the Victorian philanthropists who saved fallen women or set up foundations for foundlings and orphans.
