Starmer’s ‘miraculous’ leadership compares to Clement Attlee, says top Labour MP
Interview
John Cryer, chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, compares Sir Keir Starmer to Clement Attlee in the way he has made Labour an electoral force after defeat under Jeremy Corbyn
John Cryer, who has been the MP for Leyton and Wanstead since 2010, has the job of telling Sir Keir Starmer what his MPs really think of the Labour leader and his policies (Photo: Charlie Forgham-Bailey)
Keir Starmer doesn’t have to listen to many people but every week the Labour leader is obliged to sit down and hear from John Cryer.
As chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP), Cryer is one of the few MPs whose influence is much greater than his profile.
Those meetings, usually held after Prime Minister’s Questions on a Wednesday, are the moment Starmer hears directly what his MPs really think from their shop steward.
It’s a job he has had for almost nine years – a record – but while many will have heard of Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee (the body that represents Tory MPs), the Labour equivalent has largely kept out of the news. In a rare interview Cryer tells about his fights with Jeremy Corbyn, MPs trading punches and why Starmer’s critics should read up on their history.
“There’s a strong pastoral element to the role,” he says. “But you’ve got to be prepared to put concerns in the PLP to the leader,” he says of his role.
Cryer insists he is willing to tell Starmer when he thinks he’s getting it wrong but won’t be drawn on whether he did so over the Labour leader’s controversial initial refusal to back a ceasefire in Gaza. He does, however, say that some MPs are under “enormous pressure” over the issue and that there are increasing worries over threats to their safety.
Cryer’s Labour credentials are impeccable – his father Bob Cryer represented Keighley until his death in a car crash in 1994. His mother, Ann Cryer, was the town’s MP from 1997. His wife Ellie Reeves is Labour’s deputy campaign head, and his sister in law, Rachel Reeves, shadow chancellor.
Although steeped in its history he admits he resented politics as a child. Labour’s fragile grip on power in the 1970s meant his father was needed in the Commons and so away from home while he and his sister, Jane, were brought up in Keighley.
The story of how John Cryer ended up as an extra in The Railway Children shows his father’s deft political skills.
John Cryer as extra on The Railway Children
Bob Cryer managed to persuade the film’s production team to use Keighley and Worth Valley Railway line, the line he had helped save from the axe.
The entrepreneurial MP then got himself a small role as a train guard and his family hired as extras on the classic 1970 movie.
“I know people don’t believe this but with every parliament behaviour gets better,” he says.
“The drinking is far less than it was in the 1970s. Fights were not uncommon [then]. It was par for the course that people would end up trying to hit each other – sometimes in the chamber – because it was before cameras, and even microphones didn’t come until 1975 or so. You know, there were incidents where people [were] beating the crap out of each other in the chamber and in the voting lobbies. I’ve never witnessed anything like that.”
Cryer too has mellowed. As a member of the Socialist Campaign Group (fellow members, Corbyn, John McDonnell and Dianne Abbot) the young Cryer voted against the Blair government 84 times in his first stint as an MP (for Hornchurch) from 1997 to 2005.
He returned to parliament in 2010 a more amiable soul but after being elected PLP chair unopposed in February 2015 found himself in the eye of the storm when Corbyn’s refusal to acknowledge antisemitism almost split the party.
“If Jeremy was speaking at the PLP on a Monday evening it got to the stage where I had to go and see the sergeant at arms [in charge of parliament’s security] to have doorkeepers outside all three entrances to keep a path clear so that people could get in because journalists would form a scrum outside and people couldn’t get in.”
Cryer says he came to the awful realisation that not only was it true Labour was attracting antisemites, Corbyn was taking no meaningful action to throw them out.
“As time went on it became clear there was a really serious problem. And then you discover nothing’s been done. I would be giving examples of people who were clearly racist, they were clearly antisemitic. And nothing was being done about them.”
“I think he bitterly resented even being questioned about it, that’s the impression I got. And so he would never make any attempt to answer me. And I questioned him again and again and again about it.”
The MP for Leyton and Wanstead says he never thought Labour would split and credits its ties with the trade union movement for providing the ballast to steady the ship through the storm. Starmer’s achievement of putting Labour on the brink of victory just four years after their record defeat is “nothing short of miraculous”. He has no time for those who criticise the Labour leader for failing to inspire. “They said all the same things about Clem Attlee as they say about Keir.”
“I get frustrated with this idea that the leader of the Labour Party has a magic wand and he or she will just fix everything overnight. Well, it’s never happened. It’s not possible.”
“He’s going to take a while. It’s not going to be overnight. It never is. But we’ll make it but we’ll start improving people’s living conditions, we will start rebuilding the NHS, we will start to bring growth back to the economy. That’s inspiring.”
