The Rundown Podcast: Inside Labour's New Tribes

4 min read29 May

As disquiet brews within Labour over cuts to welfare, and a perceived failure to pursue a progressive enough agenda, this week The Rundown looks inside the governing party as a host of new caucuses and organised campaign groups have sprung up, and asks, who are the new tribes within Labour?

From the Labour Growth Group, to rural and coastal MPs, a record number from the Co-Operative party, a growing number of Christian socialists, a resurgent Blue Labour, a diminished Socialist Campaign Group, trade unionists and a host of others, the panel look at what their aims are, why so many have sprung up, what is says about Keir Starmer’s leadership, and how dangerous could they be as he faces his first major rebellion since winning office with a huge majority last year.

Joining host Alain Tolhurst are three of the finest Labour Kremlinologists in Westminster; firstly Sienna Rogers, deputy editor of The House, as well as Morgan Jones, journalist, author and former editor of LabourList, along with Stephen Bush, associate editor of The Financial Times.

Bush explains part of the reason there are so many is because with more than 400 MPs, those who aren’t ministers and are unlikely to become one, “like to have projects”.

He also said “some of these groups are creations of bits of the government”, explaining: “One of the things that this government loves to do is communicate via open letters to itself, this kind of weird phenomena where 52 MPs call for the government to do something it’s likely to do in a fortnight's time.”

Jones agrees part of their role is to help find backbenchers a purpose, saying: “You can't have 400-odd MPs sitting on their hands, and so a lot of these groupings, one does think, did you just need something to do?

“But that doesn't also mean that they don't answer a specific problem or cause.”

She said that in Labour factionalism “doesn't die, but it changes shape”, adding: “It's closer to the surface or further from the surface at different points, and so these organised groupings and organisations, partly it's factionalism and use of unspent intellectual energy, and partly it’s sort of, what do I do with myself?”

Rogers also points out that “there are increasing tensions between the loyalists in the PLP [Parliamentary Labour Party] and the critics of government”, which has led to more formalised groupings of MPs to campaign on various issues.

But Bush argues part of the reason is that Downing Street is “currently doing this kind of search for meaning of its own”, by bringing in think tanks and outside bodies to ask them: “Maybe you can provide us with a philosophical underpinning that we visibly can't discover for ourselves?”

He said this explains why Blue Labour, a group that had been on the fringes of the party for several years, had returned to prominence in recent months, though the panel agreed it was unlikely to hold sway over policy long-term.

Rogers argued that it was likely another group, those representing the so-called ’Red Wall’ seats in the Midlands and the North of England, who were set to be the most influential during this Parliament.

“If you accept the premise that Keir, Starmer isn't particularly ideological as a politician, he rejects there's a such a thing as ‘Starmerism.’, and basically he just wants to hold on to some kind of a majority and keep Labour in government so that it can be at least a two-term government then it's the Red Wall caucus and the stuff they come out with that will that will be most dominant throughout this term,” she explained.

The Rundown is presented by Alain Tolhurst, produced by Nick Hilton and edited by Ewan Cameron for Podot