Labour’s Civil Wars: How infighting has kept the left from power (and what can be done about it)

Includes a new chapter on Starmer’s Labour Party and whether the unity of purpose and vision will last until a general election and thereafter.

The biblical adage that ‘if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand’ remains sound theological advice. It is also essential counsel for any political party that aspires to win elections. When a party is riven with division people do not know what it stands for.

Though both major parties have been subject to internal conflict over the years, it is the Labour Party which has been more given to damaging splits. The divide exposed by the Corbyn insurgency is only the most recent example in a century of destructive infighting. Indeed, it has often seemed as though Labour has been more adept at fighting itself than in defeating the Tory party.

This book examines the history of Labour’s civil wars and the underlying causes of the party’s schisms, from the first split of 1931, engineered by Ramsay MacDonald, to the ongoing battle for the future between the incumbent Keir Starmer, and those who fundamentally altered the party’s course under its predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn.

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