Adam Harmsworth, Coventry Socialist Party
Labour’s transport minister Louise Haigh has resigned, effectively sacked after being told to quit by Number Ten, after a fraud conviction from 2014 reached the news. What was her heinous crime that warrants being pushed out of office a decade later? She misplaced a company phone after reporting it stolen to the police.
In reality, Haigh probably isn’t being forced out over that. Bluntly this is a political sacking, a public spectacle demonstrating the rightward and tightly controlled direction of the pro-capitalist Labour Party.
Haigh is no left-winger and has stood loyally with Keir Starmer amidst his attacks on workers and on left-wing Labour MPs who have voted against some of these attacks. But even her limited words and actions marginally to the left of Starmer’s leadership put “a target on her back”, in the words of The Times newspaper.
LBC News quoted a former Labour official saying: “Somebody who thinks that her policy of public ownership for the railways is too left wing, or something like that, is trying to get rid of her”. In October she also named P&O Ferries a “rogue operator” and called for a boycott after their 2022 illegal sacking of hundreds of workers, an instance of fire-and-rehire practices that the Labour Party has pledged to ban. Starmer publicly rebuked her and tried to patch up relations with P&O parent company DP World, all so he could lord it over a £1 billion private-sector port investment.
Haigh’s very moderate stances on railway nationalisation and criticism of companies breaking the law were enough to irritate the Labour leadership. She has now been replaced by Heidi Alexander, who proved her loyalty to the capitalist system when she was first to resign in the right-wing orchestrated ‘chicken coup’ against Jeremy Corbyn in 2016. (See ‘Stand firm and organise against the Blairite coup’ on socialistparty.org.uk).
Haigh might count herself lucky to not become the eighth suspended Labour MP. But loyalty to the Labour Party won’t give any Labour MP the authority to do anything for the benefit of the working class outside of Starmer’s increasingly tight iron grip over the party.
