This is an extract of Neal Lawson’s essay which appears in ‘The Starmer Symptom’, edited by Mark Perryman.

Other contributors include Clive Lewis, Danny Dorling, Emma Burnell, Gargi Bhattacharyya, James Meadway, Hilary Wainwright, Jeremy Gilbert, Phil Burton-Cartledge, and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Special Offer for Compass Members and Supporters: ‘The Starmer Symptom’ for JUST £11.89 (usual price £16.99). Use coupon code ‘STARMER30’ at Pluto Press here.

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For those of us veterans of the 1980s soft left and others new to identifying as pragmatic radicals we need to ask ourselves two questions. 

First, can a post-2024 General Election soft left renew and reinvent itself in ways that are meaningful?

Second, where and how does this impact on Starmer, or any successor as leader, and the Labour Party itself?

Let’s presume the answer to the first question is yes and that there is enough here, in the the soft-left ecosystem of academics, think tanks, publications, campaign organisations, grassroots members and progressive alliance allies for its renewal. That Compass, the softening of the hard left via Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome, increasingly critical soft left Labour figures such as Andy Burnham, Louise Haigh and Stella Creasy, Tribune magazine, Momentum, Open Labour, the social democratic journal Renewal and more can build an effective base, then what? 

The downside of whatever Starmerism is, is its fluidity and detachment from any ideology. But at one and the same time the upside is precisely its fluidity and detachment from ideology. Starmer has been a Corbynite, represented Corbynism without Corbyn, an anti-Corbynite, and even a fan of Mrs. Thatcher. If he can change, then he can change again. We know in his casting off of key members of staff that he’s ruthless. He came to full time politics late in the day, he was only elected a Labour MP in 2015 with little previous experience as a Labour activist. Within just five years he was Labour leader, within nine Prime Minister. Yet he has a strong emotional attachment to Labour. One can disagree with the outcomes and consequences, but he has worked relentlessly to win back the party rather than set up a rival party as the Blairites were planning to do and has a commitment to the working class and the role of the state to be deployed on its behalf. The platform Starmer stood on to win the Labour leadership in 2020 wasn’t far off what is needed now, it embraced necessary social, economic and environmental policies, decisively ditched any hint of antisemitism and looked to professionalise the party. Somewhere this is still all part of Starmer’s DNA if he, and we, can only rediscover it. Finally, the belief in the centrality of human rights runs right through him and could come to define his Premiership, if he’ll let it.  

OK, a progressive Starmer pivot to reach out to the soft left is unlikely, but it can’t be ruled out.  Things now move fast and far.  While the soft left looks on the surface to be weak, the kind of policy package it favours – most obviously the nationalisation of the water boards – is just what the country needs for its transformation and for Labour to stand any chance of re-election. There are now a record number of progressive MPs in the House of Commons. They were put there by a progressive alliance in the country that voted for the candidate best placed to beat the Tory incumbent. It is this ‘soft’ bloc which is now learning that not being the Tories is not enough, instead there is a growing demand for more radical solutions. Furthermore, there is a loose network in the country that could be open to the search for a new political direction; the more forward-thinking trade unions, community organisers and activists, social entrepreneurs, a growing ethical and transformational business culture, public sector workers and the care economy, progressive NGOs and campaign organisations, not least those working to stop climate chaos, and those angry and desperate for a lasting and just peace for Palestine.

Across this entire spectrum there is an emergent ‘systems consciousness’. The idea that meaningful change will only come about via the structural and cultural transformation of our key social, democratic and economic institutions, and not just a wish list of isolated demands. So called ‘non-reformist reforms’ are both necessary and could command widespread support for what I have called a ‘pragmatic radicalism’.

Here the left needs to take a leaf out of Thatcher’s playbook when she said “the economy is the means; the goal is to change the soul.”  The left should look to build institutions and incentives which reward and grow the groups and behaviours which reflect the values of solidarity, equality and cooperation.  

Historically the soft left has always been committed to extra-parliamentary activity, but given the increasing limits of parliamentary-led change that commitment must be deepened. This must co-exist alongside a parliamentary road to socialism.  In more recent times this combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary activity has been called 45° Change, the diagonal meeting point of emerging horizontal forces and the more established vertical institutions of the state. Here it is helpful to quote a leading intellectual of the soft left, Colin Crouch, who wrote in his seminal book Post-Democracy, that left strategy must: 

“First, stay alert to the potentialities of new movements which may at first seem difficult to understand, because they may be the bearers of democracy’s future vitality. 

Second, work through the lobbies of established and new cause organisations, because post-democratic politics works through lobbies. Even if the causes supported by egalitarians are always weaker there than those of the large corporations, they are weaker still if they stay out of the lobby. 

Third, work, critically and conditionally, through parties, because none of their post-democratic substitutes can replace their potential capacity for carrying through egalitarian policies.”

Thus, a fundamental issue of strategy and values can’t be ducked by the wider soft left, namely the question of cross-party or progressive alliances. Back in 2011 Compass, the think-tank and campaigning organisation which grew out of the soft left LCC, made the decision to operate beyond just Labour and welcomed people from other parties who shared its ‘good society’ vision. The decision was both moral and strategic. How in good faith could Compass include those in Labour not committed to a future that was much more equal, sustainable and democratic, while excluding those in other parties that were? And it foresaw a future of political fragmentation and the breakdown of the two-party system, which would demand cross-party working. Of course, Labour now holds a huge parliamentary majority, but only with 34% of the vote and the two main parties tend to poll less than 50% combined.  This in a system designed explicitly to prop up the dominance of two parties.  

The conversion of the Labour Party membership and trade unions to proportional representation is key here, as it implies an acceptance of democratic justice and therefore cross-party pluralism. Any soft left ecosystem which sees Greens, Liberal Democrats, the emergent independent left party, and Scottish and Welsh nationalists as enemies and not people that can be worked with, will be electorally, politically and morally weaker than it could be and needs to be.

John Denham wrote in a Renewal essay that “Labour’s soft left is now more obvious in its absence than its presence.” And on a Compass podcast, ITV Deputy Political Editor Anushka Asthana, speaking about her book Taken as Red, stated that one telling critique of the soft left is that it “backs whoever the leader is” Brown, Miliband, Corbyn and now Starmer. This speaks to the historic strength and weakness of the soft left, willingly playing a necessary interface but subservient role between the hard left and the right of the party. This sense of pluralism mitigates against its own interests in reconfiguring the balance of inner-party power, but it has helped stop the factional destruction of the party. Or at least it has to date. The onslaught of the hard right that Starmerism has unleashed against both the hard and soft left could see Labour trying to fly with just one wing. 

But the culture of pluralism is the only method by which the Democratic Socialist left and Social Democrats can have any have influence on a future that can no longer be controlled, only negotiated. 

Whether the soft left can revive itself, first intellectually and strategically, and then organisationally remains to be seen. Ending the historic but now unnecessary division between the hard and soft left is one important starting point. Whether Starmer or his successor are meaningful influenced by such a renewal remains unknown. But one thing is certain, a future for a country that is not built around the goals of equality and sustainability, via cultures and structures of deep democracy and pluralism, will be a future that belongs to the populist right.

Neal Lawson is the Director of Compass.