By John Pickard, Brentwood and Ongar Labour member
The right wing of the Labour Party is pretty clueless when it comes to bringing forward policies that mean anything to working class people. But you cannot fault them for effort when it comes to creating new factional organisations to fight their corner.
Their latest creation is an organisation laughingly called Renaissance, and its stated aim is to help the party “make a serious effort to reconnect” with voters the party has lost, rather than to “retreat into its comfort zone”.
The leading lights of this organisation – and ‘organisation’ it is, since it asks people to ‘join’ – are MPs Stephen Kinnock, Yvette Cooper, Justin Madders, Carolyn Harris and Ruth Smeeth, as well as a number of councillors, trade union officers and at least one Labour NEC member. We know exactly where these characters lie on the spectrum of opinion in the party. It has an ‘advisory board’ with Kinnock as chair, although there are no indications as to how this board was elected, if indeed it ever was.
Kinnock, of course, we should really address as the ‘Right Honourable’ since he is the son of a baron, namely Lord Neil Kinnock, former Labour leader, a man who managed to lose two general elections he ought to have won easily. Kinnock the son was one of those MPs who never reconciled himself to the members’ choice of leadership – and by a large majority – when they elected Jeremy Corbyn in 2015. The following year, before Corbyn was re-elected with a bigger majority, he was one of those calling on Corbyn to ‘consider his position’.
The organisers of Renaissance don’t explain why it is necessary to found a new organisation to win back voters, and the clear implication is that they do not trust the membership and the normal structures of the party itself to campaign and to win elections by winning back voters. Perhaps a left Labour Party free from the sabotage and constant sniping from the likes of Kinnock might have won in 2017. And without the dedicated efforts of Starmer and Co to push the Labour Party into an ambiguous position on Brexit, we might have also won in 2019.
Renaissance, as they all do, claims to be unique, “because we are dedicated to re-connecting Labour with those everyday values held by people of all backgrounds that have historically been at the heart of Labour.”
We would be interested in hearing what the “everyday values” of Renaissance are. As is usual with right-wing pressure groups, they are careful not to outline any policies other than the usual platitudes about making them ‘relevant’. In a thinly disguised dig at Corbynism, their website says, “re-deploying the politics of previous Labour leaders will not work. We’ll be proposing bold and credible solutions to the major economic challenges that Britain faces in the years following the pandemic.”
Who is backing Renaissance is a mystery for now, but we can be sure than it will find ready backers among the business infiltrators of the party and it will not be short of a bob or two. “Renaissance” the website says, “is currently privately funded by Labour members.” Mmm…we’ll see.
We have a party conference that ought to decide Party policies, but that is never enough for the right-wing. On the website section called ‘Nationwide conversations’ Renaissance lists a number of questions and issues, pointing readers in the direction of speeches and publications by right-wing Labour MPs and organisations. As is often the case with right-wing groups, this is a semblance of ‘consultation’, but the ‘conversation’ is in reality pretty meaningless, only being there to provide a cover for a raft of policies that would shift the Labour Party dramatically to the right.
We are fast losing count of the number of different right-wing organisations in the Labour Party. We have had Blue Labour, Compass, Progress (then Progressive Britain), Labour Together, Labour Future, the Policy Network and, of course, all the old favourites like the Fabian Society. The bottom line, of course, is what policies will they offer and argue for?
We can be certain that Renaissance will not support the policies of the 2019 election manifesto, although they are still supported by a majority of Party members. Fortunately, like all similar organisations, they will get little echo among party members and supporters. It is not so much a Renaissance they seek in policy terms, as a return to Dark Ages.
