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For the Australian political tendency, see Ferguson Left.

The soft left, also known as the open left, inside left and historically as the Tribunite left, is a faction within the British Labour Party. The term "soft left" was coined to distinguish the mainstream left, represented by former leader Michael Foot, from the hard left, represented by Tony Benn. People belonging to the soft left may be called soft leftists or Tribunites.

Definition

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In the context of the Labour Party, the term "soft left" was coined in 1981, when Neil Kinnock refused to support Tony Benn for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party (see History). It described a faction of the party which disagreed with the conservative tendencies of the Labour right and the radical tendencies of the "Bennite" left, also known as the hard left.[1] In parliament, it was represented by the Tribune Group of MPs and consequently came to be known as the Tribunite left as well.[2][3] The soft left also aligned itself with the Labour Co-ordinating Committee (LCC).[4]

The soft left was initially considered another faction in the Labour left along with the Bennite left, though unlike the Bennite left, it was willing to compromise on some issues to keep the party united and electable.[5] Neil Kinnock, a leader of the soft left, became leader of the Labour Party in 1983.[6] When he moved rightwards in this role, the soft left followed him.[7] As alliances were made between the soft left and the party leadership, the ideological distinctiveness of the LCC and the Tribune Group declined.[4] The soft left formed an alliance with the Labour right to oppose the Bennite left and support Kinnock's leadership.[8][9] During his leadership, the soft left also formed a new moderniser faction with members of the Labour right against the party's traditionalist faction.[10] The soft left was no longer an identifiable faction on the Labour left by the time of the 1992 general election,[4] with the Tribune Group disbanding by the time Tony Blair became Labour leader in 1994.[1] The process whereby the soft left drifted away from the Labour left and pitched itself against the Bennite left is known as the "realignment of the left".[11]

In modern politics, the soft left refers to a faction in the Labour Party which opposed the New Labour project but has avoided the politics of the modern Labour left, also known as the hard left.[12] Ideologically, it is described as centre-left[13] and is typically thought to occupy the space in the party between the Labour left and the Labour right.[14][15][16] While the Labour left is more supportive of socialism, the soft left is more supportive of social democracy.[17] It believes in compromising more traditional socialist policies to make Labour more electable.[18] It is one of the four main factions in the modern Labour Party.[19][20]

The term "soft left" has been said to carry negative connotations which can suggest a less enthusiastic approach to socialism. It has been argued that the term "inside left" should be used instead.[21] The left-leaning magazines New Statesman and Tribune have used the term as well.[22][23] However, unlike the term "hard left", which can be considered pejorative,[24] "soft left" members have used the term as a self-descriptor to distance themselves from the "hard left".[19] Soft left MP Lisa Nandy advocates a "better name" for the faction; she has said the term "sounds a bit like you've sort of collapsed into a jellyfish".[25] Open Labour, the main organisation representing the soft left,[16] has preferred to use the term "open left".[26]

History

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The distinction between hard and soft left became evident during the leadership of Michael Foot (1980–1983), who, along with Tony Benn, was one of the two figureheads of the party left. Supporters of Foot (an anti-communist whose background was in the Tribune group) and Benn (originally on the party's right but by the end of the 1970s to Foot's left and a more uncompromising supporter of unilateral nuclear disarmament) became increasingly polarised.[27][28]

In the election for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party in 1981, left-wingers such as Neil Kinnock abstained from voting for Tony Benn, signaling the emergence of an independent soft left grouping in the party.[29][30] The term came to be used in contrast to hard left, who were more explicitly socialist in rhetoric, remaining associated with Benn.[16] In common with the party right, the soft left was suspicious of the hard left's alliance with Trotskyism (particularly its links with Militant), supported a parliamentary rather than extra-parliamentary road to socialism, retreated from a commitment to widening public ownership of the economy, and tended towards Atlanticist or Europeanist rather than anti-imperialist foreign policy.[31][32]

The parliamentary group which came to be associated with the soft left was the Tribune group. The Tribune group was formed around the newspaper of the same name and had represented the party left as a whole until Benn's allies formed the Socialist Campaign Group. The Labour Co-ordinating Committee grew to become the soft left's main factional organisation in the 1980s, despite having begun its life as a Bennite or "hard left" body.[29][16] The soft left, influenced by the intellectual interventions of Mike Rustin, Geoff Hodgson and Peter Hain, increasingly rejected the socialism from above of Stalinism and social democracy. It stressed pluralism, including multifarious forms of social ownership and widening Labour's electoral coalition.[16] Figures identified with the soft left in the 1980s included MPs David Blunkett, Robin Cook, Bryan Gould and Clare Short.[29]

While Kinnock initially emerged from the soft left, portraying himself as a "media-friendly Michael Foot", he tacked to the right of the Tribune group, although they continued to vote with him in the National Executive Committee.[33] Soft left candidates increasingly gained positions in the party leadership after 1983, but Kinnock and deputy leader Roy Hattersley kept the party to their right. Kinnock's defeat in the 1992 general election signalled an end to the soft left's rise, as they were increasingly marginalised by the modernisation project associated with Tony Blair.[16] The 1980s soft left began to diverge over time; for example, some figures (such as Blunkett) became loyalists to Blair by the end of the 1990s.[29] However, activist figures such as the National Executive Committee member Ann Black and a range of MPs continued to work as part of the 'broad left'.

Contemporary soft left

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In 2015, Neal Lawson, the chair of the think tank Compass, identified the organisation as a successor to the soft left.[29] Compass disaffiliated from Labour in 2011 in order to open up their membership to people belonging to other political parties.[34] The activist group Open Labour was launched in 2015 with the aim of developing a new forum for the soft left political tradition within the party, which it hopes to recast as the "Open Left".[35][36][16] In the 2017 general election, several Open Labour activists were elected to Parliament including Open Labour Treasurer Alex Sobel, Emma Hardy, and Rosie Duffield.

In the aftermath of the party leadership (2015–20) of Jeremy Corbyn, who has been identified as a hard left MP, the term was generally used to mean "the space between Corbynite remnants on the left, and Progress and Labour First on the right".[16] Keir Starmer, the current leader of the Labour Party, and Angela Rayner, the current deputy leader, have both been described as soft left.[16][37][38]

Labour politicians on the soft left

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People belonging to the soft left may be called soft leftists[39] or Tribunites.[40] The following Labour politicians are often considered to have been on the soft left of the party for at least some of their careers, but may not identify themselves as such:

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b Fielding, Steven (22 January 2020). "Keir Starmer is Labour's 'continuity Miliband' contender". The Spectator. Retrieved 20 May 2023.
  2. ^ Hosken, Andrew (2008). Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone. Arcadia. p. 9. ISBN 978-1-905147-72-4.
  3. ^ Paterson, William E.; Thomas, Alastair H. (1986). The Future of Social Democracy: Problems and Prospects of Social Democratic Parties in Western Europe. Clarendon Press. p. 84. ISBN 978-0-19-876168-6.
  4. ^ a b c Young, Ross (2001). "The Labour Party and the Labour Left: Party Transformation and the Decline of Factionalism 1979–97" (PDF). Oxford University Press. pp. 40–41. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  5. ^ "The British Labor Party: Caught Between Ideology and Reality" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. May 1983. p. 11.
  6. ^ Williams, Ben; Hickson, Kevin (16 June 2022). "Keir Starmer: what Labour leader could learn from Neil Kinnock to capitalise on Boris Johnson's woes". The Conversation. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  7. ^ Childs, Peter; Storry, Michael (13 May 2013). Encyclopedia of Contemporary British Culture. Routledge. p. 213. ISBN 978-1-134-75555-4. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  8. ^ Hassan, Gerry; Shaw, Eric (7 May 2019). The People's Flag and the Union Jack: An Alternative History of Britain and the Labour Party. Biteback Publishing. p. 89. ISBN 978-1-78590-387-8. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  9. ^ Wilsford, David (1995). Political Leaders of Contemporary Western Europe: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 241. ISBN 978-0-313-28623-0. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  10. ^ Davis, Jon; Rentoul, John (2019). Heroes Or Villains?: The Blair Government Reconsidered. Oxford University Press. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-19-960885-0. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  11. ^ "Left or rightward shift?". New Socialist. No. 23–33. Labour Party. May 1985. p. 47. Retrieved 25 July 2023.
  12. ^ Self, Josh (4 January 2023). "A quiet psychodrama: The story of how Keir Starmer transformed Labour in 1000 days". Politics.co.uk. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  13. ^ Payne, Sebastian; Pickard, Jim; Kao, Joanna S; Nevitt, Caroline (3 September 2019). "Jeremy Corbyn's inner circles". Financial Times. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  14. ^ Lapsley, Steve (9 May 2020). "In defence of 'soft left'". Open Labour. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  15. ^ Shaw, Eric (April 2020). "British Labour's Safe Pair of Hands". Inroads – The Canadian Journal of Opinion. No. 47. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g h i Thompson, Paul; Pitts, Frederick Harry; Ingold, Jo (2020-11-30). "A Strategic Left? Starmerism, Pluralism and the Soft Left". The Political Quarterly. 92 (1). Wiley: 32–39. doi:10.1111/1467-923x.12940. hdl:10536/DRO/DU:30146456. ISSN 0032-3179. S2CID 229426961.
  17. ^ Manwaring, Rob; Kennedy, Paul (2018). Why the Left Loses: The Decline of the Centre-Left in Comparative Perspective. Policy Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-1-4473-3266-4. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  18. ^ Craddock, Isabella (23 July 2020). "The Commons: The Rise of Keir Starmer". Modern Treatise. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  19. ^ a b Gilbert, Jeremy (March 2016). "Corbynism and Its Futures" (PDF). Near Futures Online: Europe at a Crossroads. 1. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  20. ^ Davies, Luke John (March 2020). "The role of youth and student wings in shaping Social Democratic Parliamentarians in Germany and Great Britain" (PDF). Aston University. pp. 116, 173. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  21. ^ Crines, Andrew Scott (12 July 2011). "Michael Foot and the Labour Leadership". Cambridge Scholars Publishing. p. 161. ISBN 9781443832397. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  22. ^ Reeves, Richard (14 July 2003). "The public intellectual". New Statesman. Vol. 132, no. 4645–4648. p. 23. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  23. ^ "Energy: principled". Tribune. Vol. 71. 18 May 2007. p. 17. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  24. ^ Stone, Jon (5 January 2016). "Labour's left wing 'can't tolerate dissent', Labour MP Chris Leslie claims". The Independent. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  25. ^ Sodha, Sonia; Helm, Toby (29 February 2020). "Lisa Nandy: 'If Labour got things broadly right, how did we lose so badly?'". The Observer. Retrieved 31 May 2023.
  26. ^ Rodgers, Sienna (26 September 2022). "Labour Party Jargon Buster: Use our glossary of terms at Conference '22". PoliticsHome. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
  27. ^ Seyd, Patrick (1987). "Left Disintegration and Decline". The Rise and Fall of the Labour Left. London: Macmillan Education UK. pp. 159–171. doi:10.1007/978-1-349-18923-6_7. ISBN 978-0-333-44748-2.
  28. ^ "Kinnock v Benn: Labour's Final Battle of the 1980s – TIDES OF HISTORY". TIDES OF HISTORY – Commentary on Labour History, British Politics and Working Class Culture. 2020-03-31. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  29. ^ a b c d e Hutchinson, Nicky (2021-06-13). "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, or: How the 1980s Soft Left Is Making a Comeback". New Socialist. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  30. ^ Kellner, Peter (2015-07-23). "I'm holding out for my Labour Party hero—Neil Kinnock". Prospect Magazine. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  31. ^ Lloyd, John (2021-07-07). "From the NS Archive: Tony Benn and a Labour leadership challenge [1988]". New Statesman. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  32. ^ ""I'll tell you and you'll listen": the Neil Kinnock speech that lives on – Anthony Broxton". The Critic Magazine. October 2020. Retrieved 2021-10-05.
  33. ^ Heffernan, Richard (2000). New labour and Thatcherism : political change in Britain. New York, N.Y.: St. Martin's Press. pp. 73–77. ISBN 0-333-73897-7.
  34. ^ Lawson, Neal (24 July 2015). "Without the soft left, Labour is doomed to splinter". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2015.
  35. ^ Wintour, Patrick (9 December 2015). "Labour activists launch new group on party's left". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 October 2016.
  36. ^ Azim, Jade (9 December 2015). "More than just an interim".
  37. ^ Williams, Zoe (21 January 2020). "Keir Starmer's soft-left approach is the unifying force that Labour needs". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 August 2020.
  38. ^ a b Moss, Stephen (28 July 2017). "Labour's Angela Rayner: 'Ideology never put food on my table'". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  39. ^ Shaw, Eric (22 January 2002). The Labour Party Since 1979: Crisis and Transformation. Routledge. p. 163. ISBN 978-1-134-93545-1.
  40. ^ Derbyshire, J. Denis; Derbyshire, Ian (1988). Politics in Britain: From Callaghan to Thatcher. Vol. 2. Chambers. p. 187. ISBN 978-0-550-20742-5.
  41. ^ Ganesh, Janan (3 August 2015). "The soft left is the real threat to Labour". FT.com. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  42. ^ Rampen, Julia (28 September 2016). "Andy Burnham quits shadow cabinet: "Let's end divisive talk of deselections"". New Statesman. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  43. ^ Fisher, Trevor (15 August 2018). "Blair's legacy is toxic. That's why we need a soft left revival". LabourList. Retrieved 2 June 2020.
  44. ^ Wintour, Patrick (19 March 2003). "Home Office minister leads handful of government resignations". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 January 2023.
  45. ^ "New Shadow Chancellor Anneliese Dodds tasked with taking on Rishi Sunak". The Daily Telegraph. 7 April 2020.
  46. ^ Pickard, Jim (11 July 2016). "Angela Eagle carries the hopes of Labour's soft left". Financial Times. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  47. ^ "Keir Starmer keeps his friends close and his enemies closer in astute first reshuffle". New Statesman. 5 April 2020.
  48. ^ a b Cowley, Philip (2018). The British General Election of 2017. Springer. p. 84.
  49. ^ "Corbyn gives Labour defence brief to anti-Trident MP". Financial Times. 6 October 2016.
  50. ^ Hill, Dave (1 February 2016). "A Sadiq Khan win in London would expose the failings of Jeremy Corbyn". The Guardian. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  51. ^ Stone, Jon (26 September 2016). "Labour leadership contest abuse 'reminded me of far right', MP Lisa Nandy says". The Independent. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  52. ^ "'Labour is coming back in Scotland': party predicts revival as Corbyn heads north". The Guardian. 23 August 2017. Retrieved 3 November 2020.

Further reading

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