On behalf of Compass I had the huge pleasure of going to Labour’s conference in Liverpool and speaking at about 10 different events – mostly on proportional representation (PR) and the idea of a progressive alliance (PA). On the last night, I talked about basic income at an event we hosted with the Christians of the Left.

So what did I find out? Primarily that huge numbers of people want to engage in these debates. Last year, there where about 15 people in the audience for the ‘big’ PR event. This year there where 15 people on the platform, 200 in the main audience and another 100 in an over flow room. Speakers from  left and right of the party queued up to talk about the virtue of fair votes.

The big increase in support for PR – reflected in the unions too – is of course in part built on a fear that Labour cannot win on its own and tips into the electoral need for a progressive alliance. But there is much more than a coalition of the losers going on here.

The Labour Party is being transformed in ways some of its leaders seem to barely understand.  The most revealing event I took part in was at the World Transformed – the Momentum inspired conference that took place not just a few streets from the main conference – but another planet away.   Here there was deep and serious and friendly debate about big ideas – joyously it felt  much like a Compass event with Greens rubbing shoulders with people who had voted for Owen Smith and no animosity at all.

One of the biggest and most anticipated sessions was a debate about whether Labour should back PR and a PA – it was between Caroline Lucas and Clive Lewis on the pluralism side (only Clive couldn’t show up because of the Trident kerfuffle and so I switched between being a very neutral chair to speaking up for pluralism) and Jon Lansman the long term organizer of Bennite politics in Labour and from Scotland Rhea Wolfson.

Jon and Rhea made the case articulately for a class politics based on trade unions and the only party the trade unions created – Labour.  PR would end the dream of majority Labour control and no other party could be trusted to represent the interests of the working class.  Caroline and I suggested that this ship may have sailed and the world has moved on to a more complex and even interesting place. Of course Caroline in particular was brilliant and made the case for the environment, democracy and alliances.  But that wasn’t the point. The point was that the vast majority of a room packed beyond capacity that many couldn’t get into – totally got this politics.  The people who have joined Labour and Momentum are overwhelming not tribal.

When you think about it, its hardly a surprise.  Many of them joined from the Greens or had voted Liberal Democrat in the past.  They see in the surge in membership of the SNP the same culture of politics that they want.  More than that they are part of a Facebook world of joining, unjoining and having multiple and fluid identities.  They are red, green and liberal.  They want a new politics and PR and PA define it. These new members are not defined by the old rules of the factory and all the command and control politics that comes with it – they carry their values heavily and their allegiances lightly.

The Corbyn strategy understandably is based on recruiting a million members to the party  to counter the influence of the mainstream media that will tear apart any attempt at a radical programme that treats the interests of the establishment.  But if Jeremy, Jon and co. think that this is an army to be drilled and disciplined  – a mass membership of days of yore – then they are mistaken. Then the surge, like the ice bucket challenge, will go almost as quickly as it came.

My last speaking event was on basic income. We think its the first dedicated BI event at the Labour conference – and there must have been 200 people in the room.  Compass has said its an idea whose time has come.  Like PR enthusiasts argue, we need to start to make big leaps to a different future. But an idea as big as BI can’t just be Labour’s. Indeed it’s not.  The Greens and the SNP already back it, and it will take a social movement to make it happen – another of many progressive alliances.   The world is opening up to the kind of politics we have long been espousing.

Here on my conference pass you can see what it says – Complex – the world we want to help govern is complex and you can only govern complexity with complexity.  Labour will become plural and transform itself or it will grip onto the 20th century and die, and a new vehicle of this century will be created to replace it. The fault lines, like the future, are there for all to see.