When Jeremy Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, socialist filmmaker Ken Loach was given pride of place — and a prominent seat on the conference floor, after rejoining the party he had left years earlier in disgust at Tony Blair. The Palme d’Or–winning filmmaker’s position drew the ire of Blairites like former MP Mike Gapes, who still today resent being “banished to the balcony” under the left-wing leadership.

But today, right-wingers are cheering, after the I, Daniel Blake director was expelled from the party last week. Loach, whose films are considered landmarks of social realism, said he was kicked out after he refused an order to renounce left-wing friends and comrades who had been ejected, along with the now-banned groupings of which they were members.

Announcing his removal via Twitter, Loach was defiant — declaring that “Starmer and his clique will never lead a party of the people” and insisting “We are many, they are few.” Speaking to Jacobin in his first interview since his expulsion, the filmmaker paints a bleak picture of life inside the party for the Left. He told Mattha Busby that recent events suggest Labour is no longer interested in listening to its members — and that it is retreating to the staid, right-wing politics of Blair’s era, in the hope of coddling the Tory press.