Can Keir Starmer’s Labour Party be a broad church?

The leader of the opposition may appear to be a control freak, but what he is trying to do makes sense, writes Marie Le Conte

If the Labour Party manages to win the next election, its intake will be remarkably uniform (PA)

Is Keir Starmer’s Labour Party a broad church? The leader ran as an open-minded and unifying candidate in 2020, but those days are seemingly long gone. Most of his advisers either worked for Blair and Brown or obviously wish they did, and the shadow cabinet doesn’t even pretend to have a left flank.

Perhaps more importantly, party discipline has become noticeably stricter. Take Nadia Whittome, who tweeted last month that Rishi Sunak wasn’t “a win for Asian representation". She wrote: “He’s a multi-millionaire who, as chancellor, cut taxes on bank profits while overseeing the biggest drop in living standards since 1956. Black, white or Asian: if you work for a living, he is not on your side.”

The Nottingham East MP was told to delete the post by the party. It was an eyebrow-raising move; after all, Whittome is Asian herself, and never alleged that Sunak wasn’t a “real” minority, as others controversially did.