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[L]ast week, the Socialist Campaign Group, the caucus of left-wing MPs set up by [Tony] Benn to keep alive the flame of his 1981 bid for the deputy leadership, was ready to relaunch itself into relevance in this new era of Labour hegemony. Partly inspired by The Squad of radical Democrats on Capitol Hill, what’s left of the parliamentary left had designs on a much closer relationship with the trade unions — and a programme of vigorous campaigns on the policies disavowed by Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves, but supported by the wider labour movement and (in their hearts and minds, if not their tweets and press releases) a lot of Labour MPs. Top of the list: the two-child benefit cap.

There goes another best-laid plan for Corbynite revival, crushed beneath the prime minister’s ploughshare. What he did to the Labour left this week is pretty much unprecedented. Seven MPs have lost the whip for at least six months and I would be surprised if all of them got it back. Indeed, the comrades they left behind are not so confident either. No other leader of the Labour Party has suspended so many MPs at once after a disagreement on domestic policy. […]

So, booting out so many MPs for supporting an opposition party’s amendment to a King’s Speech is an extreme example of party discipline. That’s not “extreme” as a pejorative, by the way. It’s a fact cabinet ministers readily acknowledge. Trade union leaders had urged Starmer to abolish the two-child cap when they met at Downing Street on Tuesday, and still he ploughed on. A leader with deeper roots in the institutional ecosystem of the left might have blinked for fear of upsetting such important stakeholders. But not Starmer. […]

[…] Last week [John] McDonnell predicted (probably rightly) that a majority of Labour MPs wanted the two-child limit abolished and (wrongly) suggested there would be many more rebels than just seven.

There were contributing factors to the smallness of that number: new MPs giving a new prime minister the benefit of the doubt, convenient absences, strategic patience, conciliatory noises from the cabinet on a child poverty strategy. Much more decisive was fear. As their comrades outside the Commons often complain privately, the left of the parliamentary Labour Party is scared. Don’t mistake radicalism in rhetoric for strength of resolve. Like Benn and even the Jeremy Corbyn of old, they are deeply sentimental about their party and their place as the socialists in it. Few want to give that up — and it takes a lot to defy whipping as heavy as that deployed on Tuesday. Apsana Begum, the newly independent MP for Poplar and Limehouse, says she was reminded that her party had supported her through domestic abuse and expected loyalty in return.
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Yet beneath [the Left] the ground of parliamentary politics is shifting. Luke Akehurst and Gurinder Josan, two new backbenchers who spent the past four years purging the Corbynites from their seats on the party’s ruling national executive committee, have already recruited 150 like-minded MPs into a WhatsApp group and are mulling a new parliamentary caucus of their own, a counterweight to the Campaign Group and soft-left Tribunites that will delight strategists in No 10. Clive Efford, the chairman of the Tribune group, could muster only 70 votes when he stood against Jess Morden, Downing Street’s handpicked and successful candidate, for the chairmanship of the PLP this month.

Starmer’s Commons is a cold house for the hard left. They now whisper of building their own. After Corbyn’s suspension in 2020, his advisers began to discuss the idea of a new party and concluded the election of a Labour government like this one would give them their opportunity. After their unexpected success at the ballot box, they are ready to seize it. Here’s the argument as made by an influential trade unionist: “I wouldn’t be sitting there so giddy with 33.7 per cent of the vote when a left coalition of Greens, independents and trade unionists could easily get 20 per cent or more in five years.” From a cabinet source comes an unconscious echo: “We could have kicked them out over Nato rather than poor kids, banked a bounce in the polls and avoided this. I’m fretting about winnable and defendable seats with Green splitters.” Get ready for another party with socialists in it.