Hard thinking under a Labour government

Labour will still give me plenty to write about when elected. Here's how I plan to approach that.

This will be my last post before the election. An election that seems certain to elect a Labour government. Unless that changes in the next week, I will be spending next weekend at a festival celebrating the first Labour government in 14 years so my post-election post will either be written through a haze of sleep on Friday or on Monday.

The above image is from a much bigger meme that went around a few months ago about various different strands of politics. I strongly recommend you click the link as the whole things is both extremely funny and often extremely brutal. But I’m not sure anything is quite as brutal as the ‘Soft Left - exists’ square. Not least because it is brutally true about my underdefined poorly led, unrepresented little corner of politics.

I’m going to tell you a little bit of my story today and how I came to be writing this newsletter. It’s a bit self-indulgent, but, I hope, also useful for understanding where I have come from and where I am coming from.

I became a writer by accident.

In its infancy, LabourList went through a big scandal where it was discovered that one of the people behind it had also tried to set up a Guido Fawkes-style scandal blog at the same time to expose Tory wrongdoing. At the time it was the very end of the Labour government and such a thing, being directed by someone working for Gordon Brown was considered the height of impropriety. What innocent days those seem now.

Anyway, the then LabourList editor - who until the day or so before had just been the junior member of staff - Alex Smith wrote a piece about how LabourList would carry on and I wrote a long comment underneath it about what I - a reader - wanted from the site that I was newly excited by and remain a fan of. Alex liked that comment so much, he turned it into a post and a blogger was born. I launched my own website - now largely defunct - called Scarlet Standard and started writing regularly there and for LabourList where I eventually became Contributing Editor. Sadly, I never became the actual editor despite campaigning for the job in 2016, but I remain supportive of the site and think that Alex and Mark Ferguson with whom I worked most closely there (and who I very much hope to see elected as the MP for Gateshead Central and Whickham) did a great job in establishing the site as the powerhouse it is today. Props should also go to Sienna Rogers who rescued it from near disaster in 2018 and current Editor Tom Belger who has steered it through the election year incredibly well. The site is in a very healthy place now and continues to be an interesting and pluralistic site where all of Labour can and does have a voice. I hope and believe that will remain true even as Labour goes into government.

I launched this newsletter in January 2021 as a new way of channelling my energy and my politics having failed spectacularly to try to do so during the dismal failure that were the wasted Open Labour years. It was a year after my painful ending there and clearly I had a lot of pent-up energy ready to be shared. The first post I wrote set out three principles I thought were important for the soft left:

• Pragmatic radicalism

• Pluralism

• Eyes on the (electoral) prize.

Three and a half years on, while I am less focused on what one section of the Labour Party can do than I am interested in the Labour Party as a whole and its relationship with government and the country it seeks to govern, I still see those as my core guiding principles for the Labour Party and for my analysis of it.

I have never really been a commentator under a Labour government. starting as I did in 2010 Labour were on their way out of power as I was just tentatively finding my voice. I am a better writer and clearer thinker than I was then. I have lived a lot in those 14 years and my life has changed almost beyond recognition. Brutal political realities have shifted my perspective on occasion. The Failures of the Miliband and Corbyn leaderships - the former of which I was a big supporter of - have made me examine what I think works and readjust that on occasion. But I think the core principles outlined above remain with me and are ones I hold then even as my analysis has shifted and my experiences have shaped me.

I try to do two things as someone who is both a member of the Labour Party and a commentator on it.

The first is to be really open about my priors and, in each piece I write, examine what my prejudices are openly and honestly in order to give readers not just my perspective on UK politics, but also a wider and deeper understanding of the journey that brought me to those conclusions.

The second is to act as a supporter but not a cheerleader. I don’t get briefed and even were that to happen I would be unlikely to take a line. It’s not really my style. I may often end up at the same place on policy as the Labour Party, it would be odd if I didn’t because they are the party I agree with enough to campaign for. But I will do so by thinking it through for myself.

I will continue to criticise the party when they get things wrong. Organisationally, politically and in policy decisions. There will be times when I will be angry with the party, angry with Keir Starmer, angry with decisions made. When this happens I will also try to approach that anger with the same openness about my own history and what has brought me to that place.

I can’t wait to get a Labour government. I can’t wait to get rid of the Tories. I can’t wait to see what Labour does with government while being under no illusion that I will get everything I want.

I also can’t wait to write about it all.

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