The British Labor Party's greatest enemy could be itself

These days it seems the only thing that can stop the Labor Party is the Labor Party.

For more than a year, the leader of Britain's main opposition party, Keir Starmer, has held a double-digit lead over the Conservative Party in the polls. But a pair of embarrassing suspensions of Labor parliamentary candidates over their comments on Israel, a week after a messy U-turn on climate policy, has put Mr Starmer on the defensive, raising questions about his management skills and taking the spotlight away from long-suffering. Conservatives.

“Keir has had a very good, long period, but he is not Man City,” said John McTernan, a political strategist, referring to the Manchester football club, perennial champions of the British Premier League. “The question is: can he come back fighting next week?”

Labor still has a double-digit lead over the Conservatives in the polls. The country could quickly regain the lead on Thursday with victories in two midterm parliamentary elections, both of which it is expected to win. And Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made his share of missteps.

But Labour's setbacks are a reminder that, with a general election at least a few months away, Mr Starmer cannot take anything for granted.

Analysts said the party's decision to mothball its flagship climate initiative was potentially damaging because it plays into a Conservative narrative that Labor stands for nothing. The country withdrew the policy after a lengthy internal debate that leaked to the public because the price tag – 28 billion pounds, or $35 billion a year – seemed unsustainable given the large increase in borrowing costs in Britain since the policy for it was first announced in 2021.

In the case of the candidates, Labor has arguably compounded the problems by moving too slowly. It stuck with one of them, Azhar Ali, for almost two days after a London tabloid, The Mail on Sunday, reported that he had claimed that Israel “allowed” Hamas' attack on October 7, which killed 1,200 civilians and soldiers.

Labor eventually withdrew its support for Ali, even at the cost of losing the seat in the Rochdale constituency, north of Manchester, for which he is still a candidate. But the episode revived accusations of persistent anti-Jewish sentiment in the party's ranks, despite Mr Starmer's concerted – and in most cases successful – campaign to root out systemic anti-Semitism.

The outrage over Mr Ali ensured that when another Labor candidate, Graham Jones, was accused of making anti-Israel comments on Tuesday, the party quickly suspended him. Mr Jones had been selected to stand in the general election for a seat he once held in Lancashire.

“I don't think this symbolizes any major anti-Semitism within the Labor Party,” said Jonathan Powell, who was chief of staff to former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair. Under Mr Starmer, he noted, Labor has maintained a pro-Israel position during the Israel-Gaza war. That would have been unthinkable under his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, when Labor was a hotbed of anti-Israel passion.

Yet Mr Powell said the party could face a recurring problem if the pro-Tory press unearthed and published problematic statements on a variety of issues from other Labor candidates. “If you're going to exclude candidates from seats because they said something foolish in their life,” he said, “then you're not going to have many candidates.”

As successful as Mr Starmer's campaign against anti-Semitism has been, the episode shows how important it is for the party to carry out due diligence on candidates. By the time Labor let go of Mr Ali, it was too late to replace him on the ballot for the by-election, scheduled for February 28. If he does manage to win, he will not sit in parliament as a Labor member. legislator.

In a strange twist, Mr Ali will face two former Labor lawmakers: George Galloway, who was expelled from the party in 2003 over his opposition to the Iraq war and who represents the Labor Party of Britain; and Simon Danczuk, who was suspended by Labor for sending sexually explicit messages to a 17-year-old girl. He is the candidate of the right-wing Reform UK party.

The war between Israel and Gaza has put Labor in an awkward position because – in addition to its support for Israel, which it shares with the Conservative government – it wants to signal to voters in Muslim communities that it has expressed their fear and outrage at the rising death toll among the Muslim communities. Palestinians.

Still, critics argued that the reluctance to abandon Mr. Ali exposed a weakness in Mr. Starmer, a former prosecutor who has not run a national campaign. Some pointed to the similarly slow-moving debate over the future of Labour's green policies, which analysts say became a tug-of-war between Mr Starmer and the party's fiscally conservative shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves.

“There is something about the operation that, when it is put under pressure, seems to break down a little bit,” said Mr McTernan, once an aide to Mr Blair. “That is not a problem now, because Labor is 20 points ahead in the polls. But it is an issue that needs to be resolved now because in a general election these things will happen once an hour, not once a week.”

The drama surrounding green policies allowed the Conservatives to portray Labor as a party of reversals and flip-flops. But Labor allies said this was a reasonable price to pay to avoid being branded fiscally irresponsible. Mr Starmer and Ms Reeves are determined to reassure voters that taxes will not rise under Labor and that the party can be trusted with the public finances.

“There are some very serious considerations about the country's fiscal position, Labour's policy priorities, and how these match what they want to do in government with the realities they're going to face,” said Claire Ainsley, former policy director of the Mr Starmer. .

“I'm not surprised that it took several weeks, if not months, for good conversations to emerge,” said Ms. Ainsley, who now works in Britain for the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based research institute.

Some of Labour's problems, analysts say, are merely a consequence of leading in the polls for so long that the British press now treats the party as a government in waiting. This means, among other things, that journalists subject Labor to closer scrutiny than a normal opposition party.

“A large stable lead for one political party is a very boring story,” said Robert Ford, professor of political science at the University of Manchester, noting that the polls have hardly changed in six months. “Much of this reflects a much higher level of control and a desire for conflict and drama.”