‘Is factionalism for losers or is pluralism for wimps?’

I have seen no greater pleasure etched on a man’s face than the one on a staffer who has just landed a decisive blow on his internal party enemies.

We joke about it and hacks get mortgage downpayments writing about our pain, but it is true that where the Tories have regicide, Labour has faction wars.  

I was born and raised in Greece, so never imprinted on a faction myself. When I arrived in the UK for university after high school, I ran against a guy who used ‘Militant’ for his campaigning, but that was a foreign word to me (and I won). I understand that for many in our party, the grooming starts early on.

A mentoring figure will take them under their wing and poison their mind with biases and intellectual rigidity, implicitly promising that their loud loyalty to the faction will be rewarded with a plum safe seat. Never mind how fast the world changes, and that what sounded nice 20 years ago is self-harm in 2025. The human animal needs group attachment to survive. 

‘We all claim to be the party’s ‘moderates’ now’

Hilariously, we all claim to be the party’s ‘moderates’ now. I’d guess that if you focus-grouped voters, the word ‘moderate’ would have negative connotations for many: status quo bias, indecisiveness, careerism, elitism, detachment. For Labour insiders, it is code for “I want to win power more than I want to win Student Union clout”.

It has been inauthentically adopted by both the right and left flanks of the party because, now that Labour is in power, MPs want frontbench positions, and civilian members want Labour-adjacent jobs, and we have glorified factional loyalty over and above talent, intellect, experience and popularity.

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In these times of inflammatory political dialogue, that attitude keeps us back. A pulse is no longer enough; voters want bulging veins. 

At conference, I was on a panel with John McDonnell, and one of my arch Blairite friends texted me ‘clever man’, in reference to his ideological enemy. How civilised, I thought.

How much further could we go as a party if we appreciate the legacies of every faction? the pragmatism of Wilson, the idealism of Foot, the resilience of Kinnock, the integrity of Smith, the charisma of Blair, the compassion of Brown, the earnestness of Miliband, the authenticity of Corbyn, the discipline of Starmer. 

My pleas will fall on deaf ears among those at the top of the party entrenched in factionalism. Ministers, SpAds and staffers have too much to lose and too much to gain. The humiliation of defeat blinds the Blairites, the pain of political cruelty blinds the Corbynites, and the fear of confrontation paralyses the soft left.

But down at the trenches of the party, our post-CLP drinks, our Young Fabian boat parties, our picket lines and Committee room panels, we can afford to be civil. 

‘Factional warfare ultimately damages the party’

I flinch whenever someone dismisses the talent or character of someone because of the faction they are aligned with. We give the benefit of the doubt to our voters, that good people come to the wrong conclusions all the time, that one’s politics are the result of the life they lived, and had you lived the same, you could well be parrotting the same lines.

Why not do the same for our own comrades? 

Much has been written about the ‘purge’ of the left, as discussed in Maguire and Pogrunts’ book, Get In, and in the upcoming Paul Holden book, The Fraud. Read both and you could come out thinking that the people involved are either heroes or sociopaths, depending on your own position. 

The horseshoe theory suggests that the extreme positions on either side of the spectrum, rather than being opposites, resemble the two ends of a horseshoe -diverging from the centre but curving toward each other in style or behaviour.

Luke Akehurst, MP for Durham, and I are where the horseshoe meets in terms of our stance on factionalism. Akehurt is extremely loyal to his faction. I am the mother of Labour Wets©.

But we are both adamant that naked factionalism repels normal people (and my God does Labour need them), so you will hear him advising members not to demonise people who express sympathy for radical figures as often as you will hear me admonishing MPs and staffers for playing fantasy football with our factions. 

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Imagine showing up for your first CLP meeting and you find two people fighting over Labour’s immigration policy. Rather than a policy debate, you find one person shouting that Labour has abandoned its working-class roots because of the left, the other that Labour is racist because of the right.

Regardless of your politics, you will assume we are all sickos and make a beeline for the exit. Factional warfare ultimately damages the party, because who wants to join a party that people told them is both classist and racist? 

I can hear the cynics scoffing at my industrial levels of naivety. I know you can’t govern a party or a country without discipline. Idealists like me need ruthless people around them to do the dirty work while our images remain blemish-free, ready to be romanticised by voters and hacks alike.

But if you are not touched by a bleeding heart who dreams of peace around the family table, I will employ the other tool in my social pressure armoury: you sound like losers when you bicker about your fantasy political teams. 

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