Labour’s battle between right and left causes Starmer to stumble

These arguments are happening in public at deafening volume because we are in a general election campaign, when Labour wants to be seen above all else as a sensible, credible force, and when many of the public will be taking a proper look at Keir Starmer for the first time.

The worst possible time to indulge in a big, fat – and avoidable – row. The plight of Diane Abbott could have been decided many months ago. The indecision looks like “the boys have treated her shabbily” says one party source.

A member of the shadow cabinet tells me only a few voters so far have brought the subject up on the doorstep, although they warn, “you have to be careful how this looks.”

One focus group conducted by the polling group More in Common on Thursday night reported the issue was raised unprompted by members of the public thinking about who to choose.

One voter switching from Conservative to Labour said: “I worry if I was going to change from one party to another, would I trust somebody that’s basically stabbing their own party member in the back?”

The group of voters it might concern the most, identified as the “progressive activist” by More In Common, makes up about 12% of the voting public, the most left-wing portion.

Two thirds of them, by their calculation, chose Labour, under Jeremy Corbyn, in 2019. That figure has already slid to a 60%, with evidence of many shifting across to the Greens.

The local election results already demonstrated there’s been a cost from Labour’s position on Gaza, in terms of lost seats, and there’s been disappointment among some environmental activists at the party shifting on its plans, although Keir Starmer would deny their ambitions have been watered down.

The relief for Labour is that most of the voters who the so-called “purge” might upset live in big cities and student towns where they already rack up chunky majorities.

So perhaps discontent over candidate selection will not make much of a difference on polling day. There is an argument too, still made by the most enthusiastic advocates of Starmer’s efforts to distance himself from Jeremy Corbyn, that having a massive public barney with one of Mr Corbyn’s friends is evidence of how much the party has moved on.

But this argument may be too clever by half, in the context of a campaign where every vote matters.

“Never buy into the idea that it’s a masterplan,” says another Labour source, “no one ever wants any public messiness – it doesn’t help”.

And, as one senior Labour MP suggested to me, the risk is the public will not come away with the impression that Starmer is different to Corbyn, they will just see a big, nasty row. Not ideal when Keir Starmer wants also to attack the Tories for fighting amongst themselves.