Luke Hurst and Neal Lawson explain how Mainstream aims to help Labour open up and rediscover its values and thirst for radical change
When a party runs out of ideas, it ends up running on autopilot. That, sadly, is where Labour finds itself today. The country has changed government but not direction, and people can see it. We have lost the habits that once gave our politics meaning and drive. A culture of insularity, exclusion and hyper-factionalism is at the root of this.
Too often, Labour now treats politics as management rather than mission. It prizes competence but forgets conviction. A government without a clear sense of what it’s trying to change soon becomes trapped by the assumptions of those it’s meant to replace – assumptions about the supremacy of markets, the limits of the possible, and the supposed trade-off between fairness and credibility. It ends up governing in the language of its opponents, mistaking caution for realism.
That’s why early initiatives – on energy, transport and workers’ rights – feel disconnected from any bigger story about what Britain could become or plan to take us there. Meanwhile, the injustices shaping people’s lives remain largely untouched. The government’s awful welfare reforms, its inaction on Gaza, and its hesitation to end the two-child benefit limit have all carried a political cost. Each showed what happens when Labour governs in isolation from its movement and the wider public: it loses both moral clarity and popular trust.
For democratic socialists, this moment demands more than frustration. Labour needs to rebuild the link between thinking, organising and governing. That means recovering the habits of debate, education and strategy that once made our party a laboratory of ideas as well as a vehicle for power.
That is why Labour members of Compass and Open Labour launched Mainstream. We’re a network of Labour members from across the party who want to help Labour recover its sense of purpose and direction. The energy to renew our politics is already here, spread throughout the movement. But it’s too often shut out of the conversation. Our job is to connect it and make it count.
We start from two convictions. First, Labour needs a clear moral and political compass and a democratic socialism fit for the 21st century, built on equality, democracy and sustainability. Second, Labour won’t find that compass from the top down. It can only be rediscovered by drawing on the wisdom, experience and creativity of the whole movement, by Labour listening to its MPs, councillors, trade unionists, and members who see daily where change is needed.
That’s why we’re calling for an end to the hyper-factionalism and insularity that have taken hold at the top of the party. Too often, a narrow political class treats Labour like a private possession rather than a common project. Debate is treated as disloyalty; pluralism as threat. But our tradition has never thrived on conformity. It has thrived on the creative exchange between socialists, co-operators and radicals who, together, pushed Labour beyond what the establishment thought possible.
As Bevan taught, Labour’s purpose is not simply to hold office but to make power purposeful. He warned against those who “know the price of everything and the value of nothing”. That warning feels painfully current. Bevan’s socialism was moral and imaginative. It united the language of justice with the machinery of achievement. That balance, between conviction and competence, is what Labour must recover.
Mainstream exists to help make that happen. We’re creating spaces for members to think and plan together, not just about policies but about how to build robust and long-term power. We’re connecting members and supporters from all traditions in and around Labour who know that things must change. And we’re pressing for a more open and democratic party, because one that doesn’t trust its members can’t expect the country to trust it.
In all this, you will rightly sense strong echoes of Chartist and its long endeavour to build an ethical and pragmatic route to a socialist society. Mainstream is proud to be a new vehicle for that historic goal.
Mainstream’s task is to help Labour find its voice again: confident, outward-looking and grounded in the movement’s collective strength. The challenge is real. It means spending political capital and believing again in the public’s appetite for change. But that is how every great Labour advance began. The NHS, civil rights, and comprehensive education; none came from playing safe. They came from a movement that knew what it stood for and had the courage to act.
Mainstream was created to help Labour remember that spirit, and to organise the people who can bring it back. Britain is ready for change. Labour can lead it, but only if it opens itself up to the full breadth and imagination of its own movement.
Neal Lawson is Director of Compass. Luke Hurst is coordinator of Mainstream
Chartist is a founding signatory of Mainstream.