Keir Starmer cannot believe his luck as his opponents purge themselves

Seven Labour frontbenchers resigned yesterday because they refused to abstain as instructed by their leader in the vote on the “spy crimes” bill. Two of them were shadow ministers, Dan Carden and Margaret Greenwood, and the rest were parliamentary private secretaries, the first rung on the ladder of office.

So it wasn’t a high-level rebellion. Carden and Greenwood had been members of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet: Starmer demoted them and they accepted shadow ministerial posts below shadow-cabinet level. But the numbers made it look like a challenge to Keir Starmer’s authority.

In fact, it was the opposite. The Labour leader must be scarcely able to believe his luck. The people who were close to Corbyn, and who might have posed a threat to Starmer’s authority, are purging themselves. Before Corbyn became leader it used to be one of the complaints of those around him that the party leadership was conducting a “witch-hunt” against them. Now they are ducking and burning themselves.

Starmer’s grip on the party is strong. When he ran for the leadership on a Corbynite policy platform and a promise to unite the party, Blairites feared that he would be a prisoner of Momentum and its parliamentary wing, the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs. But the speed with which the former leadership has marginalised itself has been astonishing. Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott reverted almost immediately to the way they were before they ran the party: voting against the party whip in defence of what they regard as socialist principle.

This was despite McDonnell himself warning their supporters that they must not go into internal exile again. He told them they were strong and could force Starmer to stick to the policies for which they had fought. But yesterday, McDonnell, Corbyn and Abbott voted against the bill and seven MPs gave up their front-bench positions to join them.

Altogether 34 Labour MPs voted against the bill. Not all of them were members of  the Socialist Campaign Group – Sarah Owen, Tahir Ali, Geraint Davies, Barry Gardiner and Tony Lloyd also voted against.

In some ways, what makes it even better for Starmer is that the Socialist Campaign Group was divided. As Sienna Rodgers of LabourList points out, several of its members did what McDonnell said rather than what he did, and abstained as instructed, keeping their shadow ministerial posts: Marsha de Cordova, Imran Hussein, Rachael Maskell and Cat Smith.

That means that not only will the Campaign Group have less influence in Starmer’s shadow government, but that it is split and will no doubt spend much of its energy on internal recrimination.

Carden and his fellow resigners believe that they acted on principle – and Carden’s letter offering his resignation was well written (note that he “offered” his resignation, perhaps in the forlorn hope that Starmer would refuse it) – but Conor McGinn, the shadow security minister, put the pragmatic case for abstaining that convinced the vast majority of Labour MPs.

McGinn said that the Covert Human Intelligence Sources Bill was “imperfect”, but that it was better than no bill at all – in the absence of legislation the security services could continue to operate “in the shadows”, able to break the law without oversight. He and Starmer tried to persuade the rebels that they would do what they could to improve the bill in the House of Lords, but insisted it would be wrong to vote against it.

No doubt they also made the crude political argument that the Conservatives would try to use the bill to portray Labour as weak on national security – which was confirmed moments after last night’s vote when Priti Patel, the home secretary, put out a statement saying: “Labour has refused to stand up for those who protect our country and keep us all safe. Their leader may have changed, but Labour still can’t be trusted on national security.”

Never mind what you think of the principle of the bill, the effect of yesterday’s rebellion is to weaken the Corbynites and to strengthen Starmer.