“Labour must have the courage, to defend progressive choices on tax, public ownership, climate and rights even when the editorial pages howl.”
By Brian Leisman MP
Angela Rayner’s resignation has triggered Labour’s first in‑government deputy leadership election since 2007 – a contest that will help decide whether the party levels with its members or continues the now familiar dance of warm pledges followed by cooler practice.
The National Executive Committee have set the timetable, with manoeuvring by senior figures and early runners emerging last week.
Whatever the personalities, the question is character – will the next deputy leader set a culture of saying what they mean and meaning what they say?
This matters because Labour’s recent political story begins with a promise of continuity that never materialised.
In 2020, Keir Starmer presented himself as the standard‑bearer for Labour’s radical values in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s anti‑austerity projects – explicitly committing to maintain the party’s “moral case for socialism” and to a platform of 10 pledges that reassured members there would be no lurch to managerialism.
That was not an eccentric gloss by critics – it was the text of the campaign itself, later publicly reaffirmed as Starmer’s “priorities”.
The pledges included increasing income tax on the top five per cent, reversing Tory corporation‑tax cuts, clamping down on avoidance, a Green New Deal, common ownership of rail, mail, energy and water, abolition of tuition fees, defending migrants’ rights and strengthening trade unions.
Members voted on that offer.
Much of it has not survived contact with political reality as defined by the leadership. The party has stepped back from explicit income‑tax rises on top earners, arguing instead for growth and stability, while the tuition fees pledge has been dropped outright.
The commitment to common ownership has been reframed as “pragmatism” and tougher regulation, with partial exceptions such as the proposal for Great British Energy and a gradual return of rail to public control as private contracts lapse.
The £28 billion‑a‑year green investment figure has been watered down and then abandoned, a retreat that climate‑policy analysts argue weakens both economic and environmental credibility.
To compound the sense of drift, the campaign webpage setting out the original pledges was later removed, handing critics an easy exhibit.
On migration, the contrast is especially stark. In 2020, the pledge set out a defence of migrants’ rights, including free movement to the EU and an end to indefinite detention – along with a system based on “compassion and dignity”.
In 2025, the Government’s Immigration White Paper promised to “take back control” and significantly reduce net migration – a rhetorical and policy shift that even sympathetic media read as a conscious hardening.
Whatever your view of the substance, the distance from the original leadership election pitch is undeniable and goes to the heart of the trust question in this deputy leadership contest.
The leadership response is that the economic context has changed, fiscal headroom is narrow, and responsible governance requires flexibility.
There is truth in that politics is not a wish list but honesty requires naming the trade‑offs rather than insisting that everything still “stands”.
When a party wins on one platform and governs on another, the gap is paid by members’ morale and voters’ trust.
That is not a moral sermon, it is an electoral calculation.
The arithmetic after the 2024 election is unforgiving. Labour won a large majority on just 34 per cent of the national vote – the lowest share for any post‑war majority government.
At the same election, the Green Party recorded its best performance, taking four MPs and roughly 6.7 per cent of the UK vote, signalling a larger and more credible destination for disgruntled progressives than in recent cycles.
Subsequent polling suggests Labour is now losing more 2024 supporters to the Greens and the Liberal Democrats than to Reform UK – while there has also been a visible current towards left‑leaning independents, including several pro‑Gaza victories and Jeremy Corbyn holding Islington North.
A party that spends all of its strategic energy guarding against losses to the right, while haemorrhaging to its left and to abstention, is gambling with its coalition.
This is why the deputy leadership contest cannot be yet another exercise in vibes.
Members deserve clarity on ends and means. If the party leadership believes that higher‑earner tax rises are off the table in this Parliament, say so and defend it.
If common ownership has been replaced by regulated markets and targeted public enterprise, be explicit and justify the choice.
If the Green New Deal has been scaled back, level with the movement about the consequences for jobs, industry and Britain’s climate credibility.
If migration policy is now anchored in reductions and enforcement, explain the safeguards for rights and the economic implications.
Do not pretend that nothing has changed. That insult to intelligence is more costly than any single policy pivot.
And there is another political reality to face.
The membership that rallied to Starmer’s 10 pledges in 2020 did so because they represented an explicit anti‑austerity, redistributionary and internationalist path – an inheritance of the Corbyn years that many wanted to refine, not reverse.
Critics have accused the leadership of winning on the left and governing from the right – supporters answer that circumstances changed and that competence requires course correction.
Whichever side you take, the deputy leadership election is the opportunity to end semantic games.
The next deputy must tell members plainly where the party now stands and what will be delivered in government.
That is the only route to building a durable coalition that includes not only centrist swing voters, but the millions who crave economic justice, social security, climate action and human rights with substance.
A socialist voice is not a niche in British politics, it is a tradition that runs from the fight for the weekend to the creation of the NHS.
It asks for candour and courage.
Candour, to admit when pledges have been dropped and to explain why.
Courage, to defend progressive choices on tax, public ownership, climate and rights even when the editorial pages howl.
The deputy leadership contest will tell us whether Labour intends to govern with the movement – or merely to campaign with it.
Members should demand the former, because a politics that tells the truth is not only more honourable – it is more effective.
The alternative is a bait‑and‑switch that may win a news cycle but lose a decade.
- Brian Leishman is the MP for Alloa and Grangemouth
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