Labour Uncut — Inside Labour Politics

UNCUT: Labour is having an emotional spasm

17/05/2026, 11:39:16 AM

by Rob Marchant

“And you call that statesmanship? I call it an emotional spasm.”

Aneurin Bevan to the Labour Party Conference, 1957.

This week has been an extraordinary one, and one for which Nye’s famous line might easily have been written.

A party which still enjoys a majority of 164 in the Commons has, for some reason, collectively decided to lose its mind.

After some dire local election results, it began with a short meeting between the PM and the Health Secretary, followed by the latter’s resignation, and ended with the calling of a by-election, so that a more-popular colleague can return to parliament and challenge for the leadership. A more convoluted script you could not find in The Thick Of It.

Now, if Labour wins that by-election, it may have a route to a new leader. But that route is fraught with unpredictability. There are, as they say, a great number of moving parts.

First, Burnham needs to win in a seat where every one of its eight wards has just been won by Reform, and by a good margin in each case. As Mayor and former MP for nearby Leigh, he has previously enjoyed a good personal vote, yes, but he is betting the entire farm on that fact (for comparison, individual MPs are usually felt to make a difference of plus or minus 3% to the vote garnered by the colour of the rosette). It is as if the turquoise wave of the 7^th of May had never happened.

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UNCUT: Labour has lost the plot

14/05/2026, 01:20:00 PM

In a parallel universe, a Labour government is basking in the publication of a well-balanced legislative programme and getting on with the business of government after a decade-and-a-half in the political wilderness.

Alas, we dwell in the political equivalent of a skip fire. Is Labour still a serious party?

We will doubtless find out over coming days, but it’s worth scanning over yesterday’s King’s Speech to see what might have been.

‘Strengthening our economic security,’ with the nationalisation of the steel industry, a major new rail line connecting our key cities in northern England and a Bill to get closer to the European Union.

Then there’s ‘Ending the opportunity crisis,’ – long overdue reform to the leasehold system and a crackdown on chiselling ticket touts.

And three themes prefixed by the word ‘strengthening’ (a favourite Starmer term) ‘reforming the state,’ ‘energy security,’ and ‘national security.’

This is all decent Labour fayre – practical measures about the people’s priorities – and in less crazy times would be getting a positive write up.

The obvious point is that we are not in normal times, with Labour openly flirting with political obsolescence.

The other point is that which of the potential Starmer replacements would demur from the agenda set out yesterday?

A leadership contest where there are no policy differences of substance is the very definition of the ‘narcissism of small difference.

What a self-indulgent, conceited monster we have become! Barely two years into government Labour’s ages-old pathology towards regicide shows no sign of abating.

Given we may be weeks away from food shortages and fuel rationing, Labour’s timing in plunging itself into a nihilistic fug merely hardens the voters’ impression that we have lost the plot and are incapable of addressing their problems.

In seeking to save their hides, panicking Labour MPs should consider the possibility that they are actually offering them up.

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GRASSROOTS: When Kafka and Long Corbynism collide

11/04/2026, 10:31:24 PM

by James Mendelsohn

Following the official ban on him standing for Labour at the next General Election, Jeremy Corbyn’s direct influence on British politics may be at an end. However, he will leave an enduring impact on our national political discourse. His embittered followers will remain vocal. And, in my case, one of them is pursuing me through the courts.

In a Kafkaesque universe, I am being sued by a Corbyn supporter over nine tweets which I didn’t post. I am one of three defendants in a case against myself, Edward Cantor and the late Dr Pete Newbon. I am being sued for libel, invasion of privacy, and breach of data protection law – even though I didn’t post a single tweet. As if that were not mad enough, I am also being sued for harassment. I sometimes feel as if I am an actor in a film about someone else.

This started when Pete Newbon campaigned against antisemitism in the UK Labour Party and got into a typical Twitter spat with an account called @per_incuriam – a legal term which, ironically, means a legal decision made in ignorance of legal authority. This was the Twitter handle for a non-practising solicitor, law lecturer and Corbyn supporter named James Wilson. Wilson and I were once colleagues in a university law department, and it is fair to say that we did not get on.

When Pete Newbon indicated that he was at loggerheads with someone, I sent him a private message making him aware that, if his opponent was James Wilson, this was a person who got into unpleasant arguments. This was shown by a Facebook post written by a mother with whom Wilson had quarrelled about parking near a school. I thought nothing more of it, but, a few weeks later, Pete Newbon used a screenshot of that post in a Twitter thread which Wilson saw.

Wilson went apoplectic, threatening to sue me and Pete. Edward Cantor tweeted one further copy of the Facebook post. Edward’s tweet was not retweeted and was ‘liked’ only once. I never tweeted at all – but Wilson says I am responsible for Pete Newbon’s actions. Pete’s tweets themselves had very few republications, and were all deleted within 24 hours.

Wilson said that the Facebook post was a factual statement which meant that he was a paedophile. In a preliminary trial last year, a High Court judge said otherwise and rejected Wilson’s argument. The judge ruled that the words used were an expression of an opinion that Wilson is a weirdo who harasses people. Still Wilson carried on, and now we face a full trial.

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UNCUT: Starmer is doing the right thing on Iran, if imperfectly

09/03/2026, 09:06:05 PM

by Rob Marchant

First, let’s get one thing clear. Those who, in the last couple of weeks, have crowed that Starmer is a bureaucrat standing on ceremony, he is weak, he has broken the Special Relationship, or a hundred other criticisms on Iran, could do with a bit of calm reflection.

The Special Relationship, such as it ever was, was broken when Trump made loud plans to annex part of another NATO state and insultingly pretended that our troops had been gun-shy in joint theatres of war. It was certainly broken when he made it abundantly clear at Munich, that Europe needed to plough its own furrow when it came to mutual defence, indeed, that Europe was the enemy, not an ally.

The US has plunged itself, and the world, into an economically-destabilising conflict in Iran, apparently with very little anticipation of impacts. While we can all be delighted with the decapitation strategy and the just desserts meted out to evil men, if a decent endgame is not identified sharpish, it will have been an entirely Pyrrhic victory”.

If the Allies were poorly-prepared for the aftermath of Iraq, then this is a hundred times worse. There appears to be no plan for more than a few days ahead: financial markets go crazy; insurers and suppliers claim force majeure; all the while, thousands of expats are stranded in danger-zones in the Middle East.

Worst of all, one suspects that, even though a key ally is disabled, on balance, Vladimir Putin is secretly delighted at the chaos being created in the West. Especially now oil sanctions on his klepto-state have at least partially been lifted. This alone is enough to indicate the level of bad which is likely to follow.

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UNCUT: It’s close in Denton and Gorton, but Labour’s still in the game

23/02/2026, 04:37:06 PM

by Kevin Meagher

Is Labour going to win on Thursday? I spent a big chunk of Sunday canvassing in the Denton and Gorton by-election. Hand on heart, it feels eminently winnable. Canvassers report the surge for Reform they noticed in the Runcorn and Helsby by-election last year – where Farage’s gang won by just six votes – is absent this time. The talk is of a genuine three-way split, with the Greens also in contention.

But Labour is still in the game. This is the party’s sixth-safest seat, encompassing south Manchester and the westernmost wards of Tameside, bifurcated by the Denton island roundabout on the M60. In appearance, both areas are similar: long roads of red-brick semis, interspersed with new builds. Family homes. Owner occupiers, in the main. Nice cars. Respectable people. Pride in place. Labour’s upper-working-class base.

On the ground, Reform and the Greens are throwing everything at it and no doubt meeting with a fair degree of success, but there is no sense of either pulling miles ahead. Only the main parties have put the years into developing their ground game. In such a short campaign, enthusiasm and money aren’t as important as know-how. Reform and the Greens are newer at it – and it shows.

Yes, there are garden stakes – split fairly evenly between the parties – with Labour just edging it on my count. Window posters too. But Reform’s were simply unfolded election leaflets with a small picture of their candidate, Matt Goodwin, while the Greens posters were generic ‘Vote Green.’ It felt like no-one had enjoyed a head start.

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UNCUT: Anas Sarwar must go

10/02/2026, 09:33:39 PM

by Kevin Meagher

What was he thinking? Anas Sarwar’s ‘Captain Oates/taking one for the team’ moment yesterday must surely come with consequences. The Scottish Labour Leader’s decision to shank Keir Starmer, only for the PM to look remarkably unscathed by the close of day, should now lead to Sarwar’s resignation.

As he damned the Prime Minister with faint praise (he was a ‘decent man’), Sarwar complained that the ‘situation in Downing Street’ was ‘not good enough’ with ‘too many mistakes’ under Starmer’s leadership. (A change in tune from his conference speech last year, when Sarwar lavished praise on him as a PM ‘that understands Scotland’).

How on earth can Sarwar continue in his role? He seemed to think, or was led to believe, that other resignations would follow his pre-emptive strike, with chatter that Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan would do likewise, presumably triggering a slew of cabinet resignations, thus precipitating Starmer’s own.

Only it didn’t work out like that. At all. Feverish television news coverage up until Sarwar’s speech – given solemnly in front of an unfeasibly gigantic Scottish Saltaire backdrop – deflated over the course of the afternoon, as minister after minister tweeted their abiding allegiance to the current occupant of Number Ten.

The coup, such as it was, was over in half a news cycle – with embarrassed political journalists hurriedly reducing their hyperbole from DEFCON 1 when it became clear the Prime Minister would survive. All of which left Sarwar looking like the overexuberant uncle at a family wedding leading a solo conga.

The only realistic course is for him to immediately quit as Scottish leader. Its moot whether or not he can do any more harm to Labour’s position north of the border. The party is languishing in a poor third place already, just weeks away from all-out Scottish parliamentary elections – behind the rejuvenated SNP and Reform. Sarwar doesn’t add anything to the ticket. Not after yesterday.

His relationship with Scottish Secretary, Douglas Alexander – a Starmer loyalist and co-leader of the Scottish campaign – is now hopelessly compromised. The media will love stoking divisions between the two men until election day.

I’m sure we can expect Kemi Badenoch to recite chunks of his speech tomorrow at Prime Minister’s Questions (if she doesn’t opt to read Wes Streeting’s chummy texts with Peter Mandelson).

Whatever confederates Sarwar thought he was in league with quickly abandoned him. His putsch failed. He is cast as Holyrood’s Lee Harvey Oswald. The price for recklessness and bad timing is generally the same in politics. The exit door. Anas Sarwar should now walk through it.

Kevin Meagher is associate editor of Labour Uncut

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UNCUT: Starmer should go. But not now

08/02/2026, 11:11:05 PM

by Kevin Meagher

I can only assume the plan was for Morgan McSweeney to stay in his role until the morning after the disastrous May elections, acting as a human flak jacket for the Prime Minister.

Or perhaps until the loss of the Gorton and Denton by-election (which I rather think Labour should hold). But the departure earlier today of Keir Starmer’s most senior and trusted aide over the Peter Mandelson imbroglio serves to underscore the sheer precariousness of the Prime Minister’s position.

Number Ten is on fire and Keir Starmer’s position is terminal. But here’s the thing – so are the fortunes of every PM. There is a beginning, middle and end for every career. And if to govern is to choose it is also to become unpopular for those choices. His critics would say Starmer’s tenure is in the final act, but what if it isn’t?

What if rather than chucking him out, panicking Labour MPs got a grip of themselves and thought strategically, rather than tactically for once – allowing the prime minister to make the necessary reforms to his Downing Street operation and to get on with it. For a while at least.

Labour still has two abiding and substantial advantages. The first is time. We are only a third of the way through this parliament with no need for a general election until summer 2029. Things as the New Labour anthem used to have it, can only get better.

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UNCUT: The NEC’s 8-1 vote to block Andy Burnham suggests his team hadn’t prepared properly

25/01/2026, 08:48:07 PM

by Atul Hatwal

The headlines about the NEC blocking Andy Burnham’s candidacy for Gorton and Denton are about a ruthless, factional hit. That it was. But it didn’t have to be this way. Losing by 8 votes to 1 tells a tale of an quixotic leadership effort that had not done the essential prework required to secure the support of the only voters that mattered: the NEC officer group.

Three votes went against Andy Burnham that he could reasonably have expected to win, regardless of how Labour leadership representatives voted.

NEC Vice Chair, Peter Wheeler is a councillor in the Northwest (Cheshire West) and is well known to Andy Burnham, personally and professionally. In several putative vote tallies on Friday, he was viewed as a potential Burnham backer.

The GMB and Usdaw representatives were subject to strenuous lobbying from both sides, within and without their unions. Once again, having ready answers for inevitable questions on the Manchester Mayoral election and finance, as well as some explicit commitments for what a Burnham leadership would have offered these unions, could have won them over.

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UNCUT: The Uncuts: 2025 awards (pt III)

04/01/2026, 09:58:38 PM

Breakthrough of the year: The Peripheralocracy

Let’s hear it for The Peripherals.

Has our Red/Blue political system ever looked weaker or more irrelevant? A rhetorical question, you understand, with the obvious response being an emphatic ‘No.’

Still, as Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai famously responded when Henry Kissinger asked what he thought about the French Revolution, perhaps it’s too early to tell?

Yet blip or paradigm shift, it’s abundantly clear that all the energy in British politics has drained to the periphery over the past year. A combination of the campaigning brio and easy platitudes of Nigel Farage on the right and Zack Polanski on the left.

Managerial, Red/Blue centrist dad political doesn’t have much appeal when nothing works and everyone’s poor and cheesed off. This was vividly brought home in a YouGov poll the other day looking at where the various parties started 2025 in terms of their polling and where they finished up.

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UNCUT: Sir Patrick Duffy obituary

03/01/2026, 08:28:29 PM

‘The morphine syringe wouldn’t go in his frozen arm, so they had to stab it in’

by Kevin Meagher

Stoicism is often said to be the defining characteristic of the wartime generation. Their lives were enveloped in destruction and uncertainty, with death and privation ever-present. So, they just learned to get on with it.

I was reminded of that yesterday, learning of the sad death of my old friend, Sir Patrick Duffy, after a short illness. Amid the towering achievements of his life was his sheer longevity. At 105 years of age, Patrick was hitherto the oldest living former Member of Parliament.

But he was so much more than a footnote, personifying that very stoicism. He served in Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War, surviving a terrible crash at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. His injuries were so severe that he underwent experimental plastic surgery, with regular follow-up treatments even as a centenarian.

Quite matter-of-factly he recalled medics finding him on the mountainside, unconscious in the wreckage of his plane after a day spent freezing to death. The morphine syringe wouldn’t go in his frozen arm, so they had to stab it in.

At just 23, he received the last rites twice from a priest. With the upmost stoicism he flew again and was perilously close to being sent to Singapore in 1945, mercifully accruing a long-overdue piece of good luck as the war ended. The recipient of a military pension since the 1940s, I joked with him that he was personally responsible for the state of the public finances!

Patrick never complained and stayed focused on what Bill Clinton once referred to as the future business. I assisted him with his second book, which was published in 2024 (incidentally making him the second-oldest published author in the world). His acute observations about the post-war world were accompanied with chapters on Brexit and Boris.

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