Labour, intellectuals and progressive politics

Progressive parties are sustained by vision, aspiration, energy, commitment and organisation. But none last long without ideas. Labour, however, is remarkably uncurious about where its ideas come from. As a result, its understanding of change is often non-strategic, short-term, boxed in by immediate pressures, and vulnerable to vested interests.

This blog aims to open a discussion about Labour’s engagement with progressive ideas. It focuses on engagement with the important resources provided by intellectuals in the academy, the commentariat, and culture. While these cannot be the only sources of analysis and creative responses, they are a resource that cannot be neglected.

The extensive literature on Labour’s historic engagement with myriad intellectual groups and individuals reveals a number of recurring themes. Labour’s strategic aims require an  understanding of the world in which it seeks power – the nature of the economy, the social, cultural, demographic, and class structures of the nation, the geo-politics of international tensions, competitions and collaboration. Unless parties understand the forces shaping the world and its people they cannot shape an alternative vision for the future. Without this deeper understanding, short term policies are unlikely to lead towards radical change.

Labour has recently appointed a No 10 advisor to lead engagement with think tanks, academics, and other networks.[i] But, welcome though this is, Labour has never had a consistent strategy for engaging a wider intellectual community. The relationships have always depended on individual and group initiative, facilitated by leading members of the party with feet in both camps. What today we would call technocratic policy – the ability to turn an aspiration into something that would work in the relatively short term– has always been valued more highly than challenges to Labour’s assumptions about its purpose and its worldview. Crucially, advice on challenges defined by the leadership has always been more welcome than questions about Labour’s overall strategy and ambition.

Intellectuals have also shaped Labour through their influence on wider political and cultural movement. At different times at arm’s length, in tension with, or actively opposed to the Party leadership, these movements feed into Labour through its membership and wider electoral influence. (Though nothing about such influence guarantees electoral success!). Nor does intellectual engagement or party policy formation take place in a vacuum. Both are shaped by the global economic, social and political environment which shapes how the defining challenges of the period are understood.

This blog looks at the history of Labour’s engagement with intellectuals inside and outside the Party and identifies the strengths and weaknesses of that relationship. It argues that today’s Labour is not drawing well on the expertise and insight that might be available and outlines a new Mainstream initiative to deepen engagement.

1. Labour’s historic relationship with intellectuals

Before 1945

Organised engagement with intellectuals helped shape Labour’s international policy after the first world war. In the 1930s, prominent individuals and policy groups like the New Fabian Research Bureau, the XYZ Club, and Political and Economic Planning helped both to ground support for Keynesian principles within Labour and to develop the practical policies that could translate aspirations for common ownership into a programme for post-war nationalisation. This work took place against the background of the rise of fascism across Europe, and popular mobilisation against poverty and unemployment.

Intellectual political activity was organised by the Left Book Club, which brought together active members of Labour, Liberals, and Communists. The Communist influence was problematic for the Labour leadership, but at local level ideas were shared across progressive activists and influenced the grass roots of the party. Mass Observation brought public attitudes into political debate.[ii] At times, left intellectuals had a deep commitment to working class education through the WEA, Labour colleges, adult education and other vehicles. More than a liberal desire to share the benefits of education,  it was assumed that  working people would need to build the better society for themselves.  Education would make them agents in shaping their own future.

The policy forming process often occluded fundamental debates about Labour’s purpose. Was nationalisation, for example, a necessary measure of technocratic intervention in a failing private economy, or a step towards a society with new social and economic relationships? This lack of clarity was not helped by Labour’s perennial problem of having no particular conception of what sort of society it was hoping to create.

(It’s worth noting that debates about Labour’s role in managing, mitigating or transforming a market society have been a constant present in Labour and the wider left. Labour’s current consensus on the need for an active state that was embodied in Rachel Reeves ‘securonomics’ and now Andy Burnham’s ‘public control’ conceals the same tension between economic reconstruction and a transformational ‘common good’ politics. Was ‘securonomics’ a rehashing of Third Way’s protection of those who lose out from market changes, or did it aim to place the ‘everyday economy’ at the decision-making as Reeves once advocated?[iii] Is ‘public control’ the attempt to wrest back power and profit-taking from private providers, or is it a building block for a society in which communitarian social ownership plays a key role?)

From 1945 to the 1970s

The post-war period saw something of a bifurcation between those who invested their energy in producing practical policies to fulfil Labour aspirations, and those who insisted that a more radical reassessment of Labour’s purpose was needed.[iv] As Labour began limiting its ambitions, some intellectuals – including Michael Young, author of the1945 and 1951 manifestos – moved into academia and the exploration of a politics that emphasised mutualistic, cooperative practice based on a (claimed) authentic working-class culture in contrast to the hierarchical tendencies of the post war capitalist welfare state. The debate between those who thought Keynesianism, state activism, and managerialism had tamed the capitalist system, and those who insisted that it continued to dominate both economically and culturally, fostered the New Left – an intellectual movement largely hostile to Labour.[v]

The 1964 government engaged significantly with policy experts around Wilson’s productivist and social policy agenda but failed to develop a strategic response to Britain’s growing problems.[vi] Productive and influential debates developed outside of Labour and its official structures. The New Left encouraged a critique of the limits of traditional labourism and helped foster the women’s movement, anti-racist action, the anti-nuclear movement, and international solidarity movements. These all originated largely outside the party but influenced Labour’s own membership. The boundaries between the party, the wider movement, and intellectual ideas were permeable.

The economic difficulties of the 1970s enabled the Alternative Economic Strategy – both a serious attempt to respond to multinational companies and an emotional reassertion of the case for socialism – to become totemic for Labour’s left.[vii] Renewed union activism fostered the shop stewards’ movement and demands for working class education and power. There was a market for ideas – around the CPGB’s Marxism Today, a proliferation of pamphleteering, and Labour’s own New Socialist.[viii] Activist groups such as Clause Four, the Rank-and-File Moblising Committee, and the Labour Coordinating Committee organised intellectually as well as politically.[ix] However, as already noted, intellectual engagement is no guarantor of success. Labour lost in 1979 and in 1983.

From 1980s to New Labour

The Policy Review launched by Neil Kinnock in the aftermath of the 1987 defeat was the most extensive formal engagement with external political ideas in Labour’s history. The ‘modernising’ Policy Review of the 1980s initially embraced supply side reformers (who were ultimately triumphant)’  neo-Keynesians, and radicals who wanted greater workplace democracy to replace old state nationalisation. The electoral imperative was seen to back an aspirational market economy over an older collectivism. The international context was the growing self-confidence of European social democracy and the articulation of an EU which could combine economic strength and social welfare.[x]

New Labour offered more continuity with the Policy Review than a break from it.[xi] Prior to 1997 there was significant outreach to the academy and a new generation of  think-tanks such as IPPR was fostered. There was space for some new ideas: a curious coalition of constitutional reformers, national devolutionists, human rights activists and Labour’s liberal legal establishment gained support for the raft of constitutional reforms enacted after 1997 for example.

In government, Labour engaged with those think-tanks that reflected New Labour thinking, but any open policy making process was sharply constrained.[xii] A new Policy Forum replaced conference as the key – if admittedly wildly unpredictable – policy making body. Members now had little effective voice. Short-term political calculations created what a former Policy Unit chief described as a shift from evidence-based policy making to policy-based evidence making.[xiii] New Labour emphasised ‘stakeholder management – the engagement with important but essentially vested interests – over broader political or social interests. The agenda of stakeholder management is inevitably narrower than the biggest challenges of the day.

New Labour was not a ‘stupid’ government, of course. It could draw on significant  intellectual resources both from its own leading ministers and advisers, key sections of the civil service, and some external advisors including high-profile and influential academics. Yet, as in previous Labour governments, the scope of intellectual enquiry was limited. The absence of industrial policy and over-reliance on a deregulated banking system were two strategic issues that were beyond the pale for discussion. Many in Labour resisted the further marketisation of public service provision, but there was little attempt to reverse privatisation and financialisation.

Miliband to Starmer

Labour’s soft left made muted complaints but undertook little serious re-evaluation of Labour strategy. Ed Miliband was a ‘soft left’ leader lacking a clearly defined soft left project that was both internally consistent and potentially electorally popular. The influence of radical ‘soft left’ social democratic groups like Renewal and Compass was limited. A further policy review did produce radical ideas around devolution, empowerment, and community. But though reflected in the 2015 manifesto, these ideas had little prominence or influence on the narrow, conservative, and ultimately unsuccessful electoral campaign.

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership created space for a significant group of left economists and policy experts who had been excluded by previous Labour leaderships. There was creativity on issues such as common ownership, anti-austerity and the Green New Deal. Corbynism also fostered a lively if shallow activist movement around ‘The World Transformed’. However, the ability to engage radical voices that had been marginalised was not matched by outreach to the wider academic community. That broadly progressive community might have had much to offer, although it would also have raised challenges to the core Corbynite assumptions. For much of Labour’s history, leaderships have been reluctant to engage with intellectual critics from their left. Corbynism is an example of a radical leadership not anxious to reach out beyond its own base of support.

Ultimately, Corbynism was not able to forge a coherent left political project. Although exceeding expectations in the 2017 General Election, it was not electorally popular, and the differences between the classically social-democratic  2017 manifesto and the heavily statist 2019 manifesto revealed a lack of consistency.[xiv] Labour’s incoherent response to Brexit showed a party both unable to engage with public sentiment and fundamentally confused about Britain’s place in international politics and economics.

Finally, Keir – ‘there is no such things as Starmerism’- Starmer quickly became notorious for his closed policy-making process and lack of interest in ideas. (He might list soundbites from academia such as ‘mission-driven government’ but without understanding or implementing the ideas behind them.)

Burnham’s challenge

The need for Labour to be clear about its strategic purpose and to construct the appropriate  practical policies is no less important today than in the past. Andy Burnham’s identifies neo-liberalism as the cause of Britain’s current malaise, but today’s world is far from the neo-liberal globalisation of the 1980s and 1990s. The world economy remains globalised, but is now riven by geo-political disputes, the breakdown of shared conventions, new alliances between states and capitalism, and the rise of new tech concentrated in the hands of a small number of firms and state bureaucracies. Labour’s strategic response to this world – either in Britain or internationally – is not yet clear.

Burnham’s reported abandonment of aspirations to bring Thames Water into social ownership – seen by many as one of the low-hanging fruits of ‘public control’ – suggests that numerous calls for action have not produced the serious policy work needed to overcome Treasury and sectoral resistance. Calls for higher taxes on wealth may also fall down the gap between rhetoric, detail and politics.

The need for a story about the society the party is trying to create, and for  policies that can attract voters, be delivered in government and provide stepping stones towards their strategic ambitions. It is time to create a pro-active strategy for engaging a wider intellectual community.

2. Labour and intellectual engagement

At first sight there is no shortage of intellectual engagement with Labour. Countless ‘Why Burnham should do what I say’ blogs have been published. There is ever more output on Substack, other blogging sites, and traditional publications. Political podcasts attract large audiences.  Many respected academics contribute to public debate about Labour policy and strategy in the media, in collaboration with think tanks and, less frequently, by direct engagement with party or government.

But much of this output reads more like detached (if informed) commentary than committed engagement.[xv]All the activity generates little sense of a collective project in which key issues are identified and explored in increasing depth and sophistication. The competition for audience incentives distinctiveness and difference over collaboration. Much seems to be produced with little idea of how it might influence the strategy and actions of a Labour government. (Beyond, perhaps, a hoped-for process of intellectual osmosis which for, the avoidance of doubt, does not exist.)

Think tanks

Think tanks are a ubiquitous part of the policy environment, but the left is more likely to look enviously at the way the IEA, CPS, and Policy Network have set the right’s agenda than consider its own relationship with progressive think tanks.[xvi] Outside high spending corporate lobbyists, those seeking policy influence see little choice but to work through think-tanks  (something not missed by their own funders).

Think tanks can rightly claim a fleetness of foot, innovation and a creativity often lacking in the state. But they also have weaknesses. The need to remain relevant to government and party ties them to shadowy Overton window of acceptable thought which enables them to  distil policy choices, but only within a limited range. They are largely staffed by a progressive policy elite of similar social and educational backgrounds owing little accountability to social movements. Many transition seamlessly between government, ministerial office, parliament, their think tanks, the commentariat and other political parties.

The academy

Nothing and no one are more useless than academics who suspend their objectivity to advocate a political cause. They damage their own credibility, undermine the integrity of their institutions and, ultimately, weaken the very cause they want to advance. Our aim must be to draw on the academy’s research informed knowledge, not to seek cheerleaders from universities.

Much of the expertise Labour needs lies outside party activists, think tanks and politically committed academics and practitioners. Yet it’s not always clear that how those experts can contribute. Governments are dominated by short-term objectives and engage primarily with those academics who advise on them. Think tanks present as gatekeepers to the policy process. Left culture sometimes demands prior political  endorsement before giving challenging views weight.

The pressure to publish and achieve peer approval on younger researchers is intense. Demands for  academic ‘impact’ has perversely prioritised an emphasis on demonstrating incremental tweaks to government policy rather than contributing to the shaping of alternative perspectives on change. Many academics never develop the skills needed to bring their research to bear on public policy.

While polls suggest today’s academy leans heavily towards a liberal-left politics, this says more about the shared cultural assumptions found in universities than any sense of political movement. What political activity there is may be inward looking and self-referential.

Wider engagement

The wider environment is no more encouraging. Public opinion puts climate concern as high as ever, yet it is striking how public campaigning on Net Zero and sustainability has diminished even as the impact of climate change has accelerated. Perhaps the activity has moved on-line, but if so, it has done so without generating any of the solidarity, creativity or public visibility of popular cultural and political campaigns. It is no surprise that the only active ‘mass movement’ is in response to Gaza, where an issue touches a part of society that enjoys a strong communal sense of political identity. This broad de-politicisation and de-mobilisation weakens one of the other processes through which new ideas may fertilise Labour’s own discussion. It also leaves the left unable to respond popularly or politically to the increasingly effective and threatening mobilisation by the far right.

Intellectual engagement with the wider community is sparse compared with earlier periods. Adult education has long declined, and the network of organisations for wider working-class education has atrophied. In part a result of funding changes in HE and FE, it’s also the case the today’s left more frequently sees working class voters as the subjects of political change, not its agents. (There is an important challenge to reimagine those relationships, though that  lies beyond this blog.)

3. Reviving intellectual engagement – a modest initiative

We need to find ways of rekindling a fertile relationship between Labour and the wider world of progressive ideas. One element would be to build a symbiotic relationship between sections of the Labour Party and academics who – whether partisan aligned or not – feel they have something to contribute to Labour’s long-term aims. This requires new initiatives to demonstrate openness from within Labour, and the development of networks of likeminded intellectuals. While such engagement cannot on its own ensure electoral success, it would enable Labour to make clearer choices about its policy and strategy objectives.

Mainstream have initiated just such an engagement project. It is not run or controlled by Mainstream, nor restricted to those with a current Labour affiliation. The hope is to generate a  collective culture of outwards engagement amongst academics (much as the populist right are doing in a number of universities) that can in turn enrich both Labour and wider progressive debates.

It is good to see the Labour government appoint an advisor to engage with the academic and broader communities. But given the pressures to focus on immediate government challenges, there is a value in fostering a broader debate about purpose, strategy and policy. A first step would be to generate a debate that helps shape broad consensus about the long-term strategic challenges facing Labour. At this stage, the aim should be to seek the widest agreement on the questions we should collectively be asking, not to rush to produce yet another dusty policy document. As we do this, we can then find those who want to dig more deeply into particular areas of interest. Over time this process of engagement would identify:

• Long term strategic challenges and possible responses
• Identifiable milestones
• Practical policy that enables Labour in government to move along that journey.

As in earlier periods of Labour’s history, success will be measured by the extent to which intellectuals engage with the same issues, deepen their response to the same challenges, and produce proposals of greater sophistication and practicality. Its influence will be measured through the numerous channels in which intellectual engagement can help shape the left.

Helping to Shape the Future of Labour

An invitation to develop a new political agenda: July 2026

The UK is about to get a new Prime Minister. At the time of writing there is much heady anticipation about what an Andy Burnham premiership will mean. The new Labour administration deserves our support and good will in tackling the many challenges that it faces. But many of us would also acknowledge that long-term success in re-shaping the nation will depend on a deep understanding of the economic, political and social changes that are reshaping Britain and the wider world. That understanding is still a work in progress and needs many to participate in its development.

Mainstream was established as a home for the broad tradition of Labour that is sometimes described as radical realist, soft left or simply mainstream Labour. While Mainstream will develop its own membership and policy, we also believe there is a wider community of academics, researchers, commentators and practitioners who recognise the need for a serious intellectual renewal of Labour politics.

This paper is intended as an invitation to help shape that renewal.

It is not a programme or manifesto. It is an attempt to identify the major questions that Labour needs to answer if it is to develop a coherent governing philosophy for the coming decade.

The purpose of Labour

Any analysis of the challenges facing Labour governments must start from some fundamental questions:

• What is the purpose of the Labour government in twenty-first century Britain?
• What is its understanding of modern justice; its vision of how society should be organised in the twenty first century?
• How should Labour address questions of equality and prosperity, liberty and democratic citizenship, security and belonging, and human flourishing?
• What values should shape the relationship between the economy, the state and society?

The defining political challenge

Britain faces slower growth, increasing geopolitical instability, climate pressures, demographic change, technological disruption and declining public trust. At the same time, democratic politics is increasingly challenged by concentrations of wealth, media ownership, technological power and new forms of national populism.

• How should Labour understand the drivers of these changes?
• What are the defining political conflicts of our age?
• What democratic coalition is capable of responding to them?

The questions we raise below cover many cross-cutting issues and are intended to provoke, not define, the areas of interest.

The Economy

• How should we understand Britain's current economic model and its persistent problems of low investment, low productivity, entrenched wealth inequality and economic extraction?
• Which long-term pressures are likely to intensify?
• What should be the respective roles of markets, regulation, public ownership, social ownership and the active state?
• What are the limits of national economic action?
• How should Labour think about redistribution and fairness in an era of fiscal and environmental constraint?
• What difficult trade-offs will accompany economic renewal?
• Who should bear the costs of transition?
• How should artificial intelligence reshape Britain's economy?

The State

• How can Britain rebuild the capacity of the state?
• How should taxation and public spending be reformed?
• How should responsibilities be shared between national government, local government, markets and civil society?
• How should devolution reduce rather than reinforce geographical inequalities?
• How can trust in public institutions be rebuilt?
• What constitutional and institutional reforms are required?
• How should the state regulate concentrations of technological, financial and media power?
• How can local institutions be strengthened alongside national renewal?

Democracy, Citizens and Society

• What role should citizens play in shaping society beyond elections?
• How should rights and responsibilities be understood?
• How should workplace democracy and community participation develop?
• How can poverty and inequality be tackled in ways widely regarded as fair?
• How should Labour respond to inequalities while maintaining broad public support?
• How do we create strong, inclusive national identities?
• How can civic organisations, trade unions and voluntary organisations be strengthened?
• How should democracy respond to the growing influence of wealth, social media and AI?
• How can citizens' assemblies complement representative democracy?
• How can consent be maintained for defence, climate and security policies?

Britain in the World

• How should Britain understand a fragmenting international order?
• What role should Britain play in Europe?
• What should Europe's future security and economic architecture look like?
• How should Britain balance national interests with international cooperation?
• How should immigration and asylum policy combine fairness, humanity and public confidence?
• How should Britain respond to the geopolitical power of global technology companies?
• What should development, international solidarity and climate cooperation look like?

The politics of transition

Any long-term vision must confront the politics of transition:

• How should the transition be financed?
• How can difficult reforms command public consent?
• How should the costs and benefits of change be shared?
• How can short-term political decisions reinforce rather than undermine long-term goal? 
• How should the politics of progressive alliances and ‘blockist’ voting patterns be negotiated?

[i] ‘UCL academic and Director of UCL Policy Lab appointed special advisor to the Prime Minister’, UCL News, 7 September 2026.

[ii] Alexandre Campsie, ‘Mass-Observation, Left Intellectuals and the Politics of Everyday Life’, The English Historical Review, 131/548, February 2016, pp92–121.

[iii] Christine Berry, ‘Labour's ‘Everyday Economy’: Why, How, and for Whom?’, www.politicalquarterly.org.uk, 15 February 2023.

[iv] Anna Olsson Rost and Marc Collinson, ‘DEVELOPING THE LABOUR PARTY’S COMPREHENSIVE SECONDARY EDUCATION POLICY, 1950-1965: PARTY ACTIVISTS AS PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS AND POLICY ENTREPRENEURS’, British Journal of Educational Studies, 70/5, 2022, pp609–625.

[v] Freddy Foks, ‘THE SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION OF THE BRITISH NEW LEFT: “CULTURE” AND THE “MANAGERIAL SOCIETY” C.1956–1962’, Modern Intellectual History, 15/3, 2018, pp801-820.

[vi] Peter Sloman, ‘Harold Wilson, ‘Selsdon Man’, and the defence of social democracy in 1970s Britain’, Twentieth Century British History, 33/1, March 2022, pp80–102.

[vii] Richard Jobson, ‘A New Hope for an Old Britain? Nostalgia and the British Labour Party’s Alternative Economic Strategy, 1970–1983’, Journal of Policy History, 27/4, 2015, pp670-694.

[viii] Colm Murphy, ‘The Forgotten Rival of Marxism Today: The British Labour Party’s New Socialist and the Business of Political Culture in the Late Twentieth Century’, The English Historical Review, 138/593, August 2023, pp871–897.

[ix] Full disclosure: the author was at different times Organising Secretary of Clause Four and Chair of the LCC

[x] Colm Murphy, Futures of Socialism: ‘Modernisation', the Labour Party, and the British Left, 1973–1997, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

[xi] Mark Bevir, ‘The Remaking of Labour, 1987-1997’, Observatoire de la société britannique, 7, 2009.

[xii] Hartwig Pautz, ‘New Labour in government: Think-tanks and social policy reform, 1997–2001’, British Politics, 6, 2011, pp187-209; Stephen Ball and Sonia Exley, ‘Making policy with ‘good ideas’: policy networks and the ‘intellectuals’ of New Labour’, Journal of Education Policy, 25/2, 2010, pp151–69.

[xiii] Peter Wells, ‘New Labour and evidence based policy making: 1997-2007’, People, Place and Policy, 1/1, 2007, pp22-29; Alex Stevens, ‘Telling Policy Stories: An Ethnographic Study of the Use of Evidence in Policy-making in the UK’, Journal of Social Policy, 40/2, 2011, 237-255.

[xiv] Nicolas Jara-Joly, ‘“The Party as a Terrain of Struggle”: The Corbyn Programme and the Horizons of the British Left in the Twenty First Century’, Revue française de civilisation britannique, 2025.

[xv] Geoff Mulgan, The Progressive Puzzle, Compass, 2026.

[xvi] Chaminda Jayanetti, ‘The new wonkocracy: Who are the think tanks shaping Labour policy’, Civil Service World, 26 September 2023.