Centre-left pressure group Compass has released a report today by a former Ian Lavery aide who makes the case for “progressive pragmatism” being adopted by all those wanting to defeat the Conservatives.
The document was written by James Matthewson, who previously worked for Lavery as a communications manager when the Wansbeck MP was chair of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
Matthewson was a member of Momentum, supported left candidates in internal Labour elections, campaigned for Corbyn during the 2015 leadership election and “more aggressively” so in the 2016 coup.
But the former aide has now described his political activism as “often bull-headed” and in a way that was “to the detriment of unity, cohesion and compromise”. He says he no longer has an “inflexible ideology”.
The paper aims to put forward proposals that would help “eliminate the scourge of factionalism” and “measure our success with achievements instead of the petty wounds we have inflicted on each other”.
“I fear that without realising the errors of our ways and the damaging impact of factionalism we are doomed to a future governed by Conservative representatives,” the report states.
“We have a responsibility to millions of people who want to live in a more progressive world but don’t subscribe to one particular way of thinking.
“The silent majority will decide our future and instead of shouting at them, we must be willing to listen, to compromise and to make the case for progressive politics in a progressive age.”
Commenting on the publication of the report, Matthewson told LabourList: “Following the 2019 general election defeat, like many friends and colleagues, I was reeling.
“I began my own personal assessment of what I had experienced, contributed to and engaged in over the years leading up to two consecutive general election defeats for the Labour Party.
“I had seen the damaging impact of factionalism and the never-ending internal disputes that decimated the public reputation of our party and our movement.”
“I decided to team up with Compass, whose work I have always admired, and I began to write Progressive Pragmatism, a paper that would highlight the importance of ending factionalism, detailing the damaging impact of tribalism and that would seek to promote unity across all progressive causes.”
“When looking back at the successful changes in Westminster I had seen during my time working in parliament, I knew that bipartisanship and clever political partnerships had achieved more than any factional filibustering ever had or ever would.
“After all, the ideas of cooperation, reaching across divides and working through adversity are central to the labour movement and essential to not only its past, but also its present and its future.”
Compass is a pressure group and think tank that has long campaigned for a ‘progressive alliance’ of parties seeking to defeat the Tories, which would see electoral pacts formed between Labour, the Lib Dems and Greens.
The new report argues that the impact of informal arrangements coordinated by Compass in the 2017 general election “could have been so much greater if only there had been more alliances arranged”.
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