As leadership speculation mounts among Labour MPs, factional lines are beginning to crystallise. On the soft left, as Ethan Croft revealed in the New Statesman last week, the Tribune group has now gathered the 80 MPs needed to field a leadership candidate. But what of the other Labour left factions?
The Socialist Campaign Group has flown the red flag for the party’s “hard” left ever since it was founded to fuel Tony Benn’s deputy leadership campaign in the early 1980s. Starmer’s leadership of Labour, however, has been less than friendly to the group, with both Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana leaving for greener pastures.
Now, the Pygge hears that the group has suffered another blow. Clive Lewis, the MP for Norwich South, has departed to focus on Mainstream, a new soft left faction founded in September. It is thought to be the policy engine behind a possible future leadership bid from the Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.
Though Lewis still works closely with the SCG, the Pygge understands he is giving Mainstream his full attention. The group has been described by insiders as “the radical left component of the soft left”. Mainstream plans to host seminars in parliament which focus on different policy areas. Their first meeting in December was on the economy and was attended by the economist Daniella Gabor.
Though he is not yet in parliament, Mainstream counts Burnham among its membership as well as Lewis’s former SCG colleague and former deputy leadership candidate Paula Barker, the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, who left the SCG in 2024. Their next meeting will be in February and will cover immigration.
[Further reading: Labour needs to wake up]
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