Morgan Jones and David Klemperer
In the latest issue of Renewal, former Labour cabinet minister and academic John Denham asks ‘whither the soft left?’. Denham explores the faction’s historical roots in the 1980s, its distinctive perspectives on capitalism, the state and political pluralism – and its organisational weakness. He concludes: ‘Unless Labour’s soft left can overcome its aversion to political and intellectual organisation it is likely to remain marginalised in future debates.’ On the Renewal blog, we will be publishing a number of responses over the coming weeks.
The nature of the soft left is the subject of interminable dispute, recrimination and argument. That John Denham’s recent Renewal essay is a genuinely useful contribution to this otherwise tired debate is a testament to the clarity of his analysis. In the piece, Denham explores the recent history of the soft left (in part through his own experience) and uses it to trace the contours of its distinguishing features. For Denham, the soft left combines an evolving critique of capitalism with a nuanced attitude to the state, and an awareness of electoral constraints with an ambition to actively shape opinion. In style it is pluralist, and revisionist rather than dogmatic when it comes to its own precepts. Within the contemporary Labour Party, that makes the soft left those who, while critical of the Corbyn years, are disappointed by the cautious, transactional approach taken by Starmer, discomforted by aspects of his party management, and who wish that he would use the credibility he has built up with the electorate to make the case for more fundamental changes.
Denham’s framework is a useful one, and its attention to both continuity and change allows us to make sense of both the soft left’s historical malleability, and where it sits in the party today. His emphasis on the soft left’s critique of markets reveals the golden thread running through Ed Miliband’s “predistribution”, soft left enthusiasm for John McDonnell’s “alternative forms of ownership”, and contemporary soft left interest in Bidenomics, “securonomics” and the modern supply side agenda. Likewise, his identification of the state as a consistent point of interest clarifies why it is amongst Labour’s soft left that there is most enthusiasm for constitutional reform. Finally, his observations about the soft left’s pluralism, along with its belief in “positive and transformative engagement with voters” can help explain why the soft left is at once both Labour’s most liberal tendency, and the one most interested in communitarian ideas.
The question remains, however: why, for all its intellectual richness, is the soft left apparently so unable to advocate and organise for its own politics? Certainly, the contemporary soft left begins at a stark disadvantage. Labour’s right and hard left both have influential networks across both the party and the unions, in addition to slick think tanks, prominent media outlets, and well-organised internal campaign groups. The soft left has Compass, Open Labour, and, indeed, Renewal, along with a degree of presence and ideological sympathy in think tanks like IPPR, Common Wealth and the New Economic Foundation. As a cross-party organisation, Compass is not capable of acting as a factional vehicle within Labour. Open Labour is limited to a small grassroots operation that, from a point of reasonable relevancy in the Corbyn years, has latterly become moribund, irrelevant and ideologically confused. Unlike Progressive Britain, Labour First, or (previously) Momentum, no one seriously believes that involvement in Compass or Open Labour can help you win a selection, or get you hired by the party as an advisor. Renewal has more ideas than it does subscribers, and the think tanks mentioned are organisations adjacent to, rather than of, the soft left, and they are neither capable nor desirous of faction fighting within the party.
Of course, the lack of pre-existing infrastructure does not have to be a fatal obstacle: amongst the party’s newer pressure groups, the soft right Labour Together offers an excellent example of how rapidly a powerful factional organisation can be created from scratch. With parliamentary patronage, research output that can shape conversations (how many times have we heard the phrase “Stevenage woman” in the last year?), and decent media purchase, it is possible to relatively quickly build a very respectable degree of influence within the Labour Party, and get one’s policy and people to the fore. While these things are not axiomatically beyond the reach of the soft left of the party, there are practical and ideological reasons that make the creation of an equivalent vehicle unlikely.
A key problem is money. British politics may be cheap by international standards, but to run an efficient and respectable organisation, you need money (Labour Together, for instance, has received £1.8 million in donations since April 2020). The soft left’s critiques of capitalism mean it struggles to attract the kind of individual and business donations that fuel the Labour right, while it lacks (and this is perhaps more to its discredit) the union connections that are vital to Labour’s hard-er left. Without funding of the kind enjoyed by Labour Together, Progressive Britain, or even Momentum, it is hard to see any putative soft left organisation being able to hire the staff and build the networks necessary to establish itself as a meaningful power broker. Substantive research output, good press officers, organisers to wrangle internal election slates: these things all cost money the soft left does not have.
An additional problem is dispositional: soft leftists are inclined to see their role not as to seize control of the party from the “other side”, but to foster discussion and debate across the factions, and to drive forward policy thinking. While intellectually admirable, this is not an outlook that suits one for ruthless factioneering: the bruiserish but necessary internal politicking of the left and right sit ill with the pluralism inherent to the soft left (as Denham correctly notes, the soft left’s biggest point of departure with the Labour left more broadly is often in practice, not policy). Unfortunately, this daintiness about getting one’s programme across is one of the things contributing to the fact that, as Denham puts it, “the soft left has been midwife to political and policy changes it did not wish to see”. This is, seen either through Starmer’s contemporary Labour Party or a longer historical frame, undeniably the case.
How would one maintain discipline without losing an inclination to pluralism? Can you betray your practices without betraying your instincts? And how would one preserve a distinctive ideological position while being responsive to the changing positions of the leadership? Keeping a fixed sensibility is difficult, especially if you do actually manage to acquire a degree of influence and become worth influencing yourself. It is pertinent to note here that the successful faction-from-scratch mentioned earlier – Labour Together, founded in 2016 as Labour for the Common Good – started life as an outfit of, loosely, the soft left.
Moreover, hypothetical practical and organisational questions aside, while Denham usefully draws out some unifying concerns and themes in soft left thinking, it is not clear that the existing soft left eco-system is actually coherent enough to be federated into a factional grouping: would such an organisation be pro or anti Starmer? Would it support traditional public ownership or economic decentralisation? Where would it stand on free education? Could it meaningfully surmount such divisions while remaining true to its pluralist ethos? Who, furthermore, would be its parliamentary standard-bearers – and would they be able to represent a common front rather than a set of individual preoccupations?
Ultimately, the future of the soft left is likely to lie not in a ruthlessly organised new faction (unless someone wishes to give John Denham an enormous amount of money) or in a federation of existing organisations, but in a more decentralised and (dare we say it) pluralist effort.
Rather than boxing themselves into a single grouping, those on the soft left should act within and across the different organisations and institutions that make up the world of the Labour Party. This means having the confidence to advocate for our politics wherever we find the opportunity, alongside whoever is best suited to advance them in that instance (environmental groups for the defence of Labour’s green investment plans, trade unions on the New Deal for Working People, the organised hard left when it comes to internal pluralism, or existing think tanks when it comes to broader economic strategy). In asserting and progressing the causes they believe in, those on the soft left might find an honest, useful way through the Starmer years, and perhaps even put to bed – for the time being – the existential and definitional questions that dog the tendency.
Morgan Jones is a journalist and writer, and a contributing editor for Renewal. She has previously worked in various roles in Labour politics.
David Klemperer is a PhD candidate in History at Queen Mary University of London and a contributing editor for Renewal. He previously worked for the Institute for Government and the Constitution Society.