There were many occasions, during the leaderships of Neil Kinnock, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband, when the Socialist Campaign Group of MPs broke publicly from the party’s policies, usually on international affairs and defence. Normally, a friendly wagging of a whip’s finger was the highest price rebel Labour MPs had to pay whenever they attended and spoke at rallies condemning Nato or the latest military action by the US or Britain. 

So when 11 Labour MPs (plus Jeremy Corbyn) put their names to a Stop The War letter blaming Nato for provoking the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it just felt like business as usual. Labour, we were reminded, is a broad church, encompassing the social democratic Right of the party all the way over to the anti-West, statist hard Left. Naturally, each wing of the party will state its case whenever it feels the need.

But Starmer wasn’t taking any prisoners this time; at least, he was taking prisoners, but only after they had abjectly surrendered and promised to behave. The Labour whips contacted those 11 MPs who were happier to associate themselves with a ragbag collection of Trotskyists, anarchists and Islamists, rather than with the western alliance that is the foundation of our national defence, and told them they would be suspended from the whip unless they withdrew their names from the Stop The War letter.

This was unprecedented. To be honest, I expected a battle royal. How dare the leader of the party impose any policy on his MPs at the threat of suspensions and – if the precedent of Corbyn is to be followed – deselection before the next election?

Given the known hostility to Starmer’s leadership from that section of the party and their decades-long freedom to say exactly what they believed and to side with whoever they liked, it was unthinkable that they would cave to Starmer’s demands without an epic fight.

And yet that’s exactly what they did. Within an hour of the whip’s ultimatum, all 11 had agreed to withdraw their names. However you look at this incident, it marked a remarkable victory for Starmer and his supporters over a group that has never reconciled itself to his leadership of their party, especially after the tenure of Corbyn, when it was the moderate majority that had most to complain about.

Now, the rather obvious elephant in the sitting room is the fact that not one of those 11 MPs can reasonably be judged to have had a genuine change of heart over the role Nato plays, and Britain’s role in it. Their decision to withdraw their names was made entirely to enable them to maintain their membership of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) and to allow them to be reselected as Labour candidate before the next election. No doubt this capitulation for self-interested reasons will produce the latest existential crisis on the British Left, with all the usual accusations of treachery and cowardice. Such is life in the Labour Party.

But the end result is that Starmer still has to deal with at least 11 parliamentary colleagues whose views on Nato are exactly as stated in that Stop The War letter, even if they might have publicly recanted. He can hardly go ahead and suspend them from the whip anyway, since he would be justifiably accused of bad faith, because the initial request was simply to withdraw their names, which they have done.

Instead, Starmer has been presented with a unique opportunity to institute the kind of disciplinary regime that has never been known in the PLP. If to write publicly against Nato and Britain’s membership of the alliance is to invite suspension from the whip, the next logical step is to decree that voting along those lines in the Commons will incur identical consequences. That means that signing Early Day Motions either excusing Russia from its territorial aggression or condemning Nato will carry similar punishments.

The logic goes further: speaking publicly in support of Stop The War or in condemnation of Nato must surely mean suspension. And next time there need be no friendly phone call inviting the culprit to retract or face the consequences: the rules are now clear, the guidelines set. No Labour MP has the excuse of not knowing what the rules are.

Could it be that Starmer now has within his grasp the kind of orderly, disciplined, functional parliamentary party of which his predecessors could only dream? Imagine a future Labour government where every back bencher risked their career and their seat in the House every time they chose to vote against the government they were put there to support. 

There’s a cruel but funny gag that asks the question, how many French troops does it take to defend Paris? No one knows – it’s never been tried.

Until this week, that was the same answer to the question of what would happen if the Labour Party started cracking the whip and brining its hard Left into line. Well, it’s happened now, and Starmer has everything to gain and nothing to lose from his new hard man stance. Makes you wonder why none of his predecessors thought of it.