Starmer, Spy Cops, and the Cost of Strategic Puritanism
On Monday, it was announced that Labour leader Keir Starmer would whip his party into abstaining on a key amendment to the controversial ‘Spy Cops’ bill, which hopes to remove the immunity the Tory-backed bill intends to give to all undercover police officers. In effect, this is a signal from the Labour leadership that they do not intend to in any way critically analyse the ways that police have conducted undercover work, which is controversial, to say the least.
From targeting anti-racism groups and the family of Stephen Lawrence, to stealing the identities of dead children and tricking women into romantic relationships it must seem obvious to most that the use of undercover police officers in social movements needs serious overhaul, and much stricter monitoring. Instead, the proposed bill would do the opposite, giving immunity to officers whose actions led to some feeling “raped by the state.” The amendment, proposed by Shami Chakrabati, does not even intend to stop the use of long-term undercover officers, but simply to ensure that they do not endanger human rights. Pretty low bar, right?
Despite this, Starmer has refused to support it, and by whipping his party, forces all other Labour MPs to chose between their moral compass and their career. There seems to have been a lot of that recently, considering that despite some saw him as Mr Remain, he recent also whipped his party to support the disasterous Brexit bill.
Now of course, there are arguments for both of these decisions — the first is that the British public gave an overwhelming mandate to Johnson to ‘Get Brexit Done’, and that Starmer had to support the bill or further distance Labour from the Red Wall seats. Likewise, there is a fairly high chance that by asking for basic legal restrictions be placed on undercover officers, the right-wing tabloids will smear him as anti-’Law and Order’, to the glee of Priti Patel.
(It’s a bit ironic that asking police officers to follow the law is against law and order, isn’t it?)
Whichever way you stand on his decision regarding Brexit, Starmer’s most recent decision seems to contradict basically all values I would associate with the Labour party: accountabiltiy, equality before the law, and human rights, such as the right to protest, the right to privacy, and the right to not be chucked in prison for being part of a peaceful protest which undercover officers escalated into a riot to allow their friends to get their batons dirty.
Of course, Starmer doesn’t just need to have values, he also needs to get elected. This is what I’ve heard from just about every Starmer apologist. And I can understand that reasoning. But to win, Starmer is going to need the support of the Labour grassroots who are on the whole, I would guess, pro-human rights. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the question of whether these decisions would continue to be made once Starmer was elected to office. At what point will this strategic puritanism simply become a policy of centrism?
In a campaign, the important thing is to impress through promises — in office, this is done through policy. If Blair’s term in office is anything to go by, and considering the parallels I think it is, then a Starmer government is going to lead to uncomfortably little truly progressive policy, and yet another generation disillusioned with a political system in which the left is all but non-existent.
