Compass began life in 2003, as a grouping of Labour figures discontented with the direction of the government under then Prime Minister Tony Blair. They were somewhat grandiosely described in the Guardian at the time as a “roll call of the intellectual heartland of New Labour”. For the next eight years, the organisation grew but continued to concern itself primarily with the Labour Party, backing candidates for internal elections (among their successful picks was future MP Sam Tarry, elected chair of Young Labour with their endorsement in 2009) and becoming a significant hub for the soft left.
In 2011, shortly after Ed Miliband unexpectedly won the race to lead the party in opposition, Compass made the decision to broaden its focus, becoming a cross-party, rather than Labour specific, organisation. This call followed a vote of members, but despite that mandate was the subject of great discontent. Miliband was Compass’s pick to be leader, and many felt the organisation was junking its opportunity to wield meaningful internal heft. A significant proportion of the organisation’s youth wing resigned in protest, led by its chair now-MP Cat Smith. Another name on the list of resignees was Ben Folley – who would become the Corbynite PLP secretary later in the decade. The resignees subsequently set up the fairly short lived organisation “Next generation Labour”.
Neal Lawson, who has been at Compass’s helm since the beginning, put out a statement at the time saying the organisation remained “committed to transforming Labour and knows that is more likely if we are helping to lead a broader progressive alliance”. Compass and Lawson defend the opening up decision to this day, arguing that they foresaw the breakdown of the two-party system and positioned the organisation accordingly; the call, however, has been enduringly controversial, with one soft left activist terming it “an infuriatingly counterproductive decision that vacated the space and deprived the soft left of vital organisational resource within the party”. While Compass wasn’t entirely absent from the internal Labour scene in the decade and a half that followed, its energies were largely elsewhere, focusing on cross-party campaigns on issues such as proportional representation and UBI. Particularly controversial within Labour was its decision to advocate for a progressive alliance.
Open Labour, founded in 2015, took up some of the space it had left, building a membership and a mailing list (data, in such things, is of course key). The organisation’s complicated, often antagonistic relationship with Corbynism, however, put it somewhere to the right of where Compass had been, while the likes of Tarry (who was director of Corbyn’s 2016 leadership campaign) and Smith (a former Corbyn aide and, as an MP, a long serving member of his shadow cabinet) immersed themselves in the left’s leadership. Even at its Corbyn-era height, Open Labour, however, never had the organisational capacities in terms of staffing and resource that Compass did, and has been notably quieter in recent years, not having held an in-person conference since 2020.
The internal climate of Starmerism has been chilly for both the left and the soft left and is often compared, unfavourably, to the more permissive attitude taken by the New Labour government, and indeed the party in opposition before 1997. In this atmosphere – of tightly controlled selections and a tightly controlled whip, of low approval ratings and pursuance of policies like the two-child cap which are near universally detested by Labour members – the soft left and the left are moving closer together. One Open Labour figure I speak to stresses that the differences between their organisation’s policy paper and the policies Momentum puts out have, in recent years, often been fairly minimal, while a Momentum figure discusses working with the soft left as a necessity, not a luxury, in this internal economy.
Neither organisation, however, is particularly well placed to facilitate joint working: Open Labour can’t offer much in the way of organisational capacity, and while Momentum has greater staffing and resource capacity, for some terming themselves soft left – who perhaps remember left-backed candidates pushing long term NEC member Ann Black off the executive, among other Corbyn-era skirmishes with the then ascendent grouping – Momentum’s brand is tainted.
The Momentum that exists now, however, is quite different. Despite some efforts to change its constitution in this regard, it remains a Labour aligned grouping (you must be a party member to join it), and after Sultana’s announcement of a new party its co-chairs sent a mass mail to members urging them to stay Labour. In essence, almost everyone who was going to go has gone already, either out of the party in directionless dissatisfaction with Starmer, or into the ranks of the Polanski-hopeful Greens or, now, to the new Corbyn Sultana party. Those who remain – after what is generally described as a difficult few years – are likely more committed Labourists than the average Momentum member was when Starmer became leader.
The ideal organisation to form a hub for such work is, some think, Compass, which began as the soft left hub in the 00s but has long maintained links with figures like former Momentum national coordinator Laura Parker and the SCG MP Clive Lewis (who shares a staffer with Compass). Following the suspension of four rebellious MPs just before the summer recess, Compass, Open Labour and Momentum released a joint petition condemning the decision. It is but one part of a noticeable re-orientation towards Labour that Compass has undertaken in recent months. Its conference, which took place in London in May, showcased both its renewed commitment to the party, and the stalls of various Labour figures – notably Andy Burnham and Louise Haigh – who have been criticising the government from the left. Lawson and other Compass representatives have been out speaking to CLPs about their work and taking in members’ concerns.
Not everyone agrees that Compass is particularly well placed, or even welcome, to work in this space again. One soft left operative described themselves as “far from convinced that Compass has either the political reach within a now very large PLP or the established reputation within the wider labour movement” that meaningful organising requires. “Loyalty is gold dust for the movement”, they added, “and many will have a long memory for Compass’ wilderness years”. Another person in the space struck a similar note, saying they wouldn’t seek to deal with Compass as, given its history, it isn’t an organisation they feel they can trust.
Beyond, likely, more statements like the one put out post-suspensions, what Compass’s pivot back towards the party will specifically involve is unclear. As its recent statements in support of electoral pacts at the next election show, the organisation is in no way abandoning its progressive alliance tendencies. They will be setting up some kind of ringfenced Labour grouping, to allow its cross party work to continue without getting on the wrong side of membership rules (something they are no doubt particularly acutely conscious of following the investigation of Lawson’s membership, for tweeting in support of other party’s candidates), but what form that will take is as of yet unclear.
No one I spoke to in either Compass or Momentum would rule out a joint slate or some other form of cooperation (the groups are co-sponsoring two motions to conference in September, on public ownership of water and tackling child poverty), but responses range from a somewhat coy insistence that it’s too early to think about it (elections to the NEC run on two year cycles and were last held in 2024; internal youth elections are also expected to go ahead next year) to coyer still assertions that nothing is off the table. Whatever its relationships with other organisations ultimately end up being, it is clear is that some fourteen years after Compass turned from internal Labour politics, it is keen to turn back.
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