A personal perspective from Ken Spours.
Factionalism, division and failure
Political factionalism invariably leads to failure. Even when you think you’ve won the political party you are losing the political battle. And this is particularly the case with the Labour Party, whose recent history has been characterised by ‘machine capture’ politics of internal factions, both Right and Left. The Starmer Project, a gambit of the Labour Right, has never really won the hearts of Labour Party as a whole, and only makes sense when seen as a reaction to the political and electoral failures of the Corbyn Left Turn. One faction followed another. However, the ironically named ‘Labour Together’ – and its prince of darkness Morgan McSweeney – have taken political sectarianism to a new level with a hyper-factionalism that seeks to eliminate all internal opposition.
A pyrrhic internal victory has been followed by political failure. Starmer’s shallow election victory of 2024 – a massive parliamentary majority but only 34 per cent of the vote – has been revealed as politically and culturally threadbare. The Labour vote has now collapsed to 22 per cent, unprecedented for a government so early into a new parliament, with the rise of Reform accounted for mainly by Labour voter defection. The prospect of a Farage government presently looks very real.
The Labour Right project is feeding Reform
Dogged by the technocratic theology of ‘delivery’ that stubbornly refuses to deliver, Starmer’s Government is floundering. With policy straight out of the New Labour playbook (which was itself factional), an insipid and constraining election manifesto has been followed by a political agenda unequal to the times in which we live. Economic orthodoxy is restricting growth and instead inflicts cruelty on the most vulnerable sections of the population. Starmer’s Government has become fixated with political authoritarianism in the mistaken belief that occupying Reform’s ideological territory will win back votes from the far right.
The shift to the right has become a substitute for a convincing progressive political story about the real problems of the nation and how they can be overcome. Instead, Starmer has opted for a strategy of ‘Farage Lite’. This has not only failed to move the political dial; it is destroying the Labour Party from within. All that he (or more precisely his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney) has done is to legitimate Reform, further disperse Labour’s vote, demoralise its membership, anger the unions and confuse even Starmer loyalist MPs. The Labour Right project, with a leader who reacts but without any seeming conviction, is becoming a slow-motion political car crash.
Enter Mainstream – radical realism to unite the Party and country
Enter Mainstream – a Compass-inspired political network born in late 2025 – that seeks to transcend factional politics and their failures and forge a new, unifying path for the Labour Party. Described as ‘the home for Labour’s radical realists,’ Mainstream aims to combine a vision of a ‘democratic socialist future’ with a practical and popular approach to achieving it. This is not a new faction but a ‘broad-church’ for the Party’s progressive left, bringing together elements from the traditional Labour left, the Corbyn Left, the soft left, blue Labour and the more progressive parts of New Labour. The founding members reflect this broad alliance, including figures like Andy Burnham, Jon Lansman of Momentum, Blue Labour’s Jon Cruddas, and previous New Labour ministers Clare Short and John Denham. This alliance is a direct response to Labour’s ‘clear drift to the right’ under Starmer, which they believe is ‘wildly out of step with the majority in the Labour Party’ and is failing to prevent the rise of right-wing populism.
The core argument of Mainstream is that the only way to save the Labour Party from its historic decline and the rise of authoritarian populism is to unite around a radical but realistic programme. Mainstream’s platform is based on the conviction, supported by survey data, that the vast majority of Labour members seek a more radical offer including – a wealth tax, lifting the two-child benefit cap, and the nationalization of key public industries. Mainstream believes this vision, which puts ‘equity and justice at the heart of everything Labour does,’ is not only what its members truly want; it would also offer a convincing message to a weary and disillusioned electorate who seek meaningful change.
The meaning of Mainstream
The Spirit of 1945 in 2025 – while Mainstream marks a break with Labour’s factional recent past, it can be seen to invoke the most totemic moment in Labour’s history – the Spirit of ’45. This saw a Labour Government rise out of the ashes of a world war to establish the NHS and a welfare state. While eroded by decades of neoliberalism, this public realm still represents the best of progressive governance. Mainstream seeks to invoke a new spirit of democracy and justice attuned to our times.
An alliance-based mentality – to do this means thinking and acting relationally – to develop an alliance-based mentality and promote collaboration as the key activity for renewal. The alliance mind-set has to begin within Labour itself, highlighting the importance of coalition building between mainstream social democracy, democratic socialism, blue labour communitarianism and the progressive end of new labour. By bringing together activists and leaders from a variety of progressive political traditions, Mainstream aims to create a party of ‘all the talents and all the views,’ thereby strengthening the party’s internal cohesion and political project.
A 21st Century Popular Front – internal alliance-building, though crucial, will not be sufficient to overcome far right national populism. What is needed are ‘external alliances’ – most pressingly a 21st Century Popular Front – to confront emerging fascism. Mainstream rightly believes that authoritarian populism can only be defeated by a national community that ‘truly belongs to all of its people and delivers for all of its people’. This will necessarily involve building an anti-fascist alliance, campaigning on economic, social, democratic, and environmental issues that can defeat authoritarian populism in the community, workplace, at the ballot box and win hearts and minds for long-term transformation. Mainstream’s internal broad-church approach and its explicit goal of forging cross-class alliances needs to reach out ‘externally’ to work with other democratic forces in society to build an anti-fascist coalition.
Activisms reawakened – Labour’s grassroots activism has been suffocated by the dead hand of the Starmer Government. This social democratic/democratic socialist internal alliance can reawaken Labour’s soul because political participation is a precondition for a successful political project and united front to present to a weary public. The radical realist philosophy of Mainstream, which emphasises making big change ‘both practical and popular,’ aligns with the idea of connecting national policy with grassroots, on-the-ground efforts in local communities. By building a grassroots campaign for ‘bold but practical reforms’, Mainstream aims to bridge the gap between local and national politics.
Building on civic innovation – while the Starmer’s national Government is failing, Labour has had much more success in regional government. As Manchester, London and other city regions show, Labour’s civic innovation can change urban landscapes and lives for the better. The politics of radical realism needs to build on Labour’s local and regional politics of regeneration that constructs from the middle tier of governance as another way of bridging national and local politics. The degeneration of town centres under the impact of out-of-town shopping and the internet, has come to symbolise national decline. Rebuilding these urban spaces and providing decent jobs in the process must be a top priority and it is at the municipal level that policy and action can capture the imagination.
Reform, even though it now heads numerous local councils, thrives on grievance not solutions. It has no plausible answers to pressing material issues, but Labour needs to be bold to be convincing. As part of a programme of renewal, this will mean devolving more powers ‘as widely and deeply as possible,’ supported by meaningful national strategic investment. Devolution must not be associated with devolving austerity.
An alliance-based voting system – our voting system is unfair and dysfunctional. ‘First-past-the-post’ empowers small sections of the electorate and produces outcomes unreflective of voting choices, breeding political cynicism ‘that they are all the same’; a disenchantment that falls prey to the ‘anti-politics’ of the far right. Proportional representation is not only fair; it also begets an alliance-based politics where Labour, Greens, Liberal Democrats, Your Party and progressive nationalists in the other countries of the UK can both agree and democratically compete. Even in the present pit of political disillusionment and reactive populism, the progressive vote is still estimated to be 55 per cent. Just a year ago it was as high as 65 per cent. While Mainstream is not yet committed to voting system reform, it is a logical next step to develop an alliance-based voting system to reflect this ‘progressive settled will’ as well as to properly represent oppositional voices. Even at the most politically pragmatic level, the Labour Party now needs PR. It is most unlikely to progress beyond the low 30s as proportion of the vote and while it could possibly cling to power at the next election, at very best the Starmer project would be seen as just staggering on.
A progressive narrative to build cross-class alliances – the strong alignment of social classes in a two-party system appears to be broken. The Conservatives have all but lost their natural constituencies and Labour similarly. All is in flux. While these disaffiliations present great danger, they also offer opportunity. The radical realist and alliance-based Mainstream platform provides the possibility of remaking cross-class alliances to unite north and south, countryside and town, small nations and the large nation, epitomised by the slogan – ‘unity in diversity’.
A new leadership – this new Labour network and movement points to new leadership. While not naming an individual, Mainstream have been clear about the necessary qualities of a new leader – the ability to unify the party, support a radical realist programme, have proven political competence, project a democratic, radical, collaborative and outgoing political style with wide appeal, and be able to marshal the coalition to confront the far right. A tall order but not impossible. Moreover, there are promising candidates!
The challenging issue of immigration – Antonio Gramsci, the father of Marxist political theory, stated ‘attack your enemy at its weakest point politically and its strongest point ideologically’. This suggests that a new leadership will have to engage in straight, coherent and progressive talking about immigration rather than imitating Farage. Managed immigration helps society; we have a humanitarian duty to offer sanctuary to the most vulnerable; irregular migration must be tackled efficiently and safe passages opened; and a progressive migration policy would work together with a strategy to upskill the existing workforce. What is needed is to tell these truths with conviction and to show that they can support unity not new societal divisions.
Humility and boldness – not half measures
The Starmer leadership, represented by No. 10, are very much alive to the Mainstream challenge. It will be no surprise to see the odd nod to the left, whether it be Bridget Philipson’s deputy leadership bid highlighting the need to remove the two-child benefit limit or more talk of devolution. The problem is that the Party and the electorate are beyond being convinced by half measures from a factional leadership whose political heart and mind are known to be elsewhere.
Amidst the febrile mood there is, nevertheless, a popular appetite for honesty, boldness and humility. Mainstream can harness this political sentiment enabling the Labour Party to finally move beyond its historical problems and chart a course for a new, democratic socialist future.
Ken Spours is an Emeritus Professor of Post-Compulsory Education at the UCL Institute of Education and an Associate of Compass.