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.
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