The following article was published by Cllr. Jumbo Chan (Harlesden and Kensal Green ward and outgoing chair of Brent Audit and Standards Committee) on the Labour Hub website. As this article will be of interest to Brent readers I received permission from Labour Hub to republish. The original article can be found HERE.
Labour Councillor Jumbo Chan, blocked by the Labour Party apparatus from being on the ballot today, explains what has gone wrong
with his Party.
Amidst the heavy damage done to Labour by the
now-departed, disgraced Peter Mandelson, perhaps one of the most consequential,
yet underdiscussed blowbacks of the hyper-factionalism driven by him, his
protégé Morgan McSweeney and other key allies surrounding Starmer is the
potential of what I would term the NPCification of Labour.
Originally a video game term, non-player characters (NPCs) are AI entities that
operate via pre-programmed scripts to give some semblance of life to the
virtual worlds which they populate. It is now entering into everyday speech as
a colloquialism to describe people who seemingly lack independence and
assertiveness, wandering around robotically, repeating fixed, predictable
lines. Before sketching a brief picture of the NPC politician and the risk they
would pose to Labour, it is important to first discuss how they may end up
dominating the party.
Along with the targeting of Sam Tarry, Faiza
Shaheen and many other perceived enemies before the 2024 general election,
perhaps the most prominent example of the intense factionalism underscoring the
present leadership was the blocking of Andy Burnham. Shielded by less public
limelight, the clique orbiting Starmer has also purged swathes of local Labour
representatives, including in upcoming battlegrounds such as Hackney, Lambeth
and Brent. In the latter, all candidates were centrally handpicked.
A decade-long Labour councillor, I was also blocked
for supposedly “contradict[ing] agreed Labour positions” by co-authoring a pro-trade union open letter, and coordinating
hundreds of Labour colleagues to urge an equivocating Starmer to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. I will never
retract my public support for trade unions and innocent children, but the
intense factionalism goes far beyond the immediacy of any purges. By stabbing
at Labour’s historically rich pluralism, Starmer’s allies have, as the party
stares into the abyss, damaged its best chance to course correct.
With the constant threat of alleged secret spreadsheets, voting rigging, private surveillance and the punishment of dissent looming over Labour
members, potential candidates, councillors and MPs, the Party’s famous broad
church is a shadow of its former self. If this intimidatory culture, where
silence and compliance are the name of the game, were to become ingrained in
the party’s DNA, there is a profound danger of Labour transmuting into an
institution dominated by what I would call the NPC politician.
Docile and vacuous, the NPC politician would lack
the political depth which an otherwise open political culture would select for.
Indeed, they would be able to get ahead precisely because of their political
emptiness. And unlike either Tony Benn’s principled signposts or even the more
opportunistic weathercocks, they would not see their role as remaking the
country, let alone, shaping history. Instead, politics for the NPC politician
would simply be another choice of career in which they are just trying to get
by or climb up, executing instructions as scripted by the top.
Because of their inability to offer their own
political vision to the public, personality politics would be the default
terrain for the NPC politician: “I am the son of a takeaway owner and an
immigrant cleaner; I was born here and I love food; and I am a nice guy who
organises litter picks” not only serves to hide a dearth of politics, but
also functions as the most substantive marker to differentiate one NPC
politician from another. An NPCified Labour would not so much regress to
political monoculturalism as to political sterility.
All this lies in stark contrast to outspoken
outsiders such as Green victor in the Gorton and Denton by-election Hannah
Spencer (whose victory speech could have been delivered by
a Labour socialist) and, further afield, New York mayor Zohran Mamdani. Their
fresh, bold socialist perspectives have clearly resonated with the public. But
under the present leadership — whose clique would reportedly “rather
burn Downing Street down” than give an inch to perceived opponents —
these avowedly non-NPC politicians would have likely been blocked from even
offering their views to Labour members.
The NPC traits of silence and compliance fostered
by the current climate of fear might explain why, despite Britain’s dislike of a prime minister who is seen
“as a cross between a jellyfish and doormat”, and
with Labour facing great peril as forewarned by Burnham, the Party seems unable to do anything
except to plough on as before. Therefore, a Britain being rocked by multiple
crises and hungry for an radical change to society will only continue to
look elsewhere for its politics.
The Labour Party was founded as the political wing
of the labour movement, and cannot fulfil this historic role and, thus, regain
public confidence, until ideas and people are allowed to flourish in the party.
This must necessitate a restoration of Labour’s pluralistic, democratic
tradition, best typified by Restore Labour Democracy and Reset Labour.
After all, Labour’s founders foresaw over a century ago that the then-new Party
would only succeed if it reflected the broadest traditions of British socialism
and the working class. If Labour cannot expunge the poisonous
hyper-factionalism and restore its historic broad church, it is unlikely that
history will grant it another century.
Jumbo Chan is a Labour Councillor in the London Borough of Brent.
Published and promoted by James Paton on behalf of Brent Green Party c/o 23 Saltcroft Close, Wembley, HA9 9JJ.
