In Westminster, meanwhile, another grouping of Labour MPs has emerged this week. The Common Endeavour group has launched with a Fabian Society pamphlet of ideas on areas including climate, foreign policy, cost of living and defence. The MPs involved have identified it as a project of the “broad centre” – unusually they seem to be locating that “broad centre” not within the context of the Labour party but of the country.
Since Labour came into government, every self-designated caucus/grouping of Labour MPs has quickly been jumped on by us journalists as a way to subdivide Labour MPs for the purposes of political analysis and identifying potential plotting against the leadership (see the coverage of the relaunched Tribune group, the revived Blue Labour group and the more recently established Mainstream group).
Common Endeavour seems to have headed off that possibility. In an article today launching their pamphlet, five of the MPs leading this effort – Liam Byrne, Anna Gelderd, Andrew Lewin, Luke Murphy and Jeevun Sandher – stated unflinchingly: “We are proud of this government and our Prime Minister.”
They go on to define what they are against: “These are values that our opponents stand against with their embrace of ethnocratic division and plutocratic Thatcherism. Their values will make us weaker by dividing us ever further. They would have us draw away from like-minded allies in Europe and leave us more dependent on mad fossil fuel-obsessed dictators from abroad. And they’d indiscriminately deport our friends, neighbours, and those that sit by our relatives’ bedsides as they suffer. They’d make our nation weaker, because they do not think we achieve more together than we achieve alone.”
Mad fossil-fuel dictators, mass deportations and Thatcherism. While divisions in Labour seem greater than ever, they have quite neatly defined what everyone in the party is against, and the basis on which it is most likely to fight a Reform UK campaign at the next general election. Is this the launch of Labour’s anti-faction faction?
This piece first appeared in the Morning Call newsletter; receive it every morning by subscribing on Substack here
[Further reading: How to laugh at the lanyard class]
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