Defence debate

Dear Emma

Today’s piece on LabourList is one of the most important for ages. Your piece on defence echoes my own views and feelings and John Healey tells it like it is – gently reading the riot act! I hope my MP has read it.

Stella’s piece was also to the point.

So thank you for all of this, even though I wish the admittedly weak Assisted Dying Bill had passed

Best wishes.

Nina Smith
Hebden Bridge

*****

Emma,

A very good and sensitively written intro to John Healey’s article.

Linda Gilroy

*****

I was Labour MP for Broxtowe 1997-2010, not especially left-wing. Until recently I was CLP chair. But I don’t see the point of priority for increased defence spending when there is so much to be done in making our society better. We aren’t under threat of occupation, nor are any of our NATO allies. It’s possible, perhaps, to imagine that we might be in 20 or 40 years’ time, but by that time generations of weaponry will have rusted away.

If there is ever a potential threat to Britain, I’ve no doubt that people will rally round increases in defence spending. But for now, it just doesn’t seem a priority.

Nick Palmer

In other matters

This email represents my views only, though it is likely that what is expressed would find resonance with many, many others.

The idea of a return to Labour values is enormously interesting and the return to what used to be my Party was an incredibly joyful prospect.

But the reported view of Andy Burnham, if true, that trans women should be able to use women’s toilet facilities is disappointing.

As a woman and a Socialist I fought for women’s and human rights, seeking to protect the weak and create a better future. But that future will not respect or keep safe women, will it?

The reductionist view of what a woman is (which underlies this behaviour) leads to wonderment. I never disrespected Labour, but I have daughters, granddaughters, great grandchildren, and this version of Labour will disrespect me and mine.

So Labour – it’s not for me. It’s probably  not for any of us who, without discussion, without consent have been objectified – again. We who are endangered and who are being given no choice.

Heartbroken. Betrayed.

Revived labour? What’s the point?

Margaret Aitken

The post Letters to the Editor – week ending 24 May 2026 appeared first on LabourList.

Often considered a dry run for other internal party elections, Young Labour heralded positive results, with the left and centre going from 1 position in 2024 to 6 regional and national representatives under the Renew Young Labour banner. Despite claims from the Labour to Win backed ‘Organise!’, these results show remarkable progress for the left as members see our party becoming increasingly divided. Young Labour, once a body which focused on training the next generation of activists while allowing for political exploration within Labour’s traditions, has been perceived by some to push members out.

The youth and student wings now occupy a largely ceremonial role with 2025’s ‘Youth and Student Congress’ possessing no democratic function – the last one to do so being under a left majority in 2023. While the focus of media speculation may now centre on No.10 hopefuls, it is these committees which occupy a key role in shaping party culture.

READ MORE: ‘What is the Soft Left?’

The atmosphere of hostility and focus on factional points scoring, as we have seen recently during the local election short campaign, will only push away our activists at the time they are needed most. Sadly, the Green Party, now with the largest youth section in the UK, is increasingly filling this void. Labour Students, where the right won a clear majority, has been diminished such that peer nominations for candidates struggled to break triple digits, only doing so for nationally elected positions – a sad position for a movement which has benefitted our party.

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For many, politics in the Labour Party can require a maturity that other progressive parties do not. We recognise that in order to avoid alienating voters we must be strategic in how we sell socialist politics. But this approach is a difficult balancing act. When leadership focuses on preserving the party image over allowing others to express their view, members feel they are not being listened to.

Mainstream can learn from this by doing what Renew did, leaning into why people become passionate about left politics in the first place by striving for equality and solidarity. Indeed, it is the range of Young Labour candidates elected as part of the Renew campaign which represents the strength of our movement. Renew did not begin by running regional candidates or an Under 18s Representative, instead allowing for local candidates rooted in their regions to emerge.

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With the upcoming NEC and NPF elections members must feel valued and allowed to express their wants to a Labour Party which listens. This means the Party working to reclaim this ‘lost generation’ of young members, by providing a serious and disciplined progressive alternative to the Greens which does not water-down our policy agenda. This is what Mainstream will be campaigning on throughout the summer.

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The government is in the process of rolling out the largest upgrade to worker and trade union rights in a generation, but the likely alternative represents an existential threat to trade unions and rights at work. It is increasingly clear that a government of the Right, whether Reform or Conservative or some combination of the two, would launch an all-out assault on workers and unions. They would not stop at repealing the Employment Rights Act 2025 (ERA), but go much further, attacking core union rights like facility time, and dismantling hard-won pension rights for public sector workers. No union can contemplate this outcome without a determination that it must not happen. This is the prism through which we view the outcome of the local and devolved elections and subsequent debates about leadership. Any time lost now implementing the ERA benefits only employers intent on avoiding union access and worker voice.

The irony is that the prospect of a Reform assault on working people is only possible because Labour is losing the support of the very workers who powered its election victory. A survey of Prospect members conducted just before the recent elections found that support for Labour has more than halved in two years, from 44% just before the 2024 general election, to 16% now. These are people who, in many ways, are the exact voters you would expect a Labour government to appeal to. They are highly educated and work in specialist functions across the public and private sectors, often in industries the government is championing such as clean energy and defence. They are broadly progressive, overwhelmingly voted Remain, and are union members at a time when the government is more pro-union than any in recent history.

READ MORE: ‘Those who aspire to lead Labour must be clear about the party’s responsibilities to working people’

Labour is not predominantly losing Prospect members to the right. Our survey found 11% of members support Reform, only up marginally from 2024. Instead, the Labour vote has fractured in multiple directions. Some going to Plaid and the SNP, some to the Lib Dems, but by far the largest groups are those that have gone to the Greens and to Don’t Know. In fact, more of our members who voted for this government in 2024 said they were intending to vote for the Greens than Labour, with a similar number on the fence. These two groups are the people Labour, and whoever leads them into the next election, needs to win over. Business as usual is not enough, it is clear a fundamental change in approach is needed. 

There are five things I think Labour could practically do to win back Prospect members over the coming years, and if it does come to a leadership election these are some of the things we would want to hear from anyone seeking to lead the country.

First up is the cost of living and inflation which are the biggest priorities for our members, as they are for voters in general. Some of that is out of the government’s control due to international events, but there are some levers it can pull. They can give fair pay rises to public sector workers and make the principled argument for doing this even when it implies some other tough choices. Targeted support on energy bills would also help the lowest paid and dampen some of the inflationary impact of the energy price spike.

Second, they must make more of the genuinely transformational impact of the ERA and of the dividing line on rights at work. We are currently in an awkward period where the Act has passed but its effects have not been felt by anyone yet. We know these measures are popular in theory, but they will not move voters unless they are seen and felt. It is essential that the government not only delivers the remaining measures on time, but that they do so loudly and unapologetically. They are facing opponents who are committed to rolling back rights and have derided the idea of work-life balance. This agenda is an obvious cornerstone of the Labour message. Moreover extension of collective bargaining is the key means by which wages can rise and economic insecurity be addressed for the long term.

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Third, they can be clearer about their vision for the economy. Prospect members work in some of the most dynamic and growing parts of the economy; from tech to renewables, from the creative industries to defence. These are the sectors that the government prioritised in its industrial strategy last year, but if you ask our members very few would know that fact and even fewer will have seen any tangible impact of this strategy. The central promise of the industrial strategy is more, better jobs in these key industries, yet so far only one of the sectors has actually delivered a jobs plan. This must change, and the industrial strategy needs to be made real to workers if it is going to mean anything. This must involve publishing an ambitious defence investment plan as soon as possible.

Fourth, we need a government that stands up for the public sector. One of the key groups of Prospect members who have moved away from Labour over the last couple of years are our members in the public sector, predominantly civil servants. There are several reasons for this, but it hasn’t helped that the government often seems embarrassed about defending public sector workers. That is not to say that the government should not be serious about public sector reform, it absolutely should, but too often we have seen a tendency to indulge in lazy attacks on civil servants, such as the Prime Minister’s infamous ‘tepid bath’ speech. Similarly, the ‘blockers’ rhetoric about regulators has left the skilled professionals who do this vital work feeling underappreciated and bruised. With Reform and the Tories constantly attacking public sector workers there is a chance for the government to vocally champion public service, showing public servants that it respects and values them. When the Right are trying to pit private sector workers against their public sector neighbours, we need a government that challenges this narrative. There is no benefit for private sector workers in an attack on public sector terms and conditions.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, our members need to see more clearly that this is a government that shares their values and is brave enough to fight for them. They see the country and the world moving in a dangerous direction and want to see their government resisting that trend. This is not a call for gesture politics, but there are issues where the government could be louder –  like on climate; or where they could embrace a much bolder position such as on Europe. There are others where they should change course entirely, like on legal migration and settlement where the current approach is both alienating voters and undermining economic growth in key sectors. 

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Our members are not going to listen to Labour again until they see that Labour is listening to them.

Local and national elections are not always great predictors of the future, but that is partly because they offer parties the chance to hear messages and change course before it is too late. I do not believe the government has lost the support of Prospect members permanently, but there is work to do in order to regain trust and rebuild support. That must start now.

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The post ‘Labour has work to do to regain the trust of Prospect members’ appeared first on LabourList.

Naturally, as many Labour members do, I have mixed feelings about this by-election. Let me begin with the positive ones.

I’m excited, as I always am, to be back in the city region I proudly call home: Greater Manchester. While I remain an unapologetically proud Boltonian, I recognise that between Bolton and Wigan there exists a rivalry that has often felt Made of Stone. From the Premier League battles of the late 2000s to more recent years scrapping it out across League One, there hasn’t always been much room for positive sentiment on the pitch between our towns.

READ MORE: ‘How We Win In 2029’

Then there is the culinary war: the Bolton pasty versus the Wigan pie.

But today, football loyalties and bakery-based tribalism are firmly parked.

Because today matters.

Labour members from across this region will gather to support the Mayor who has delivered for all our communities and who now needs our backing in a crucial by-election: Andy Burnham.

It is rare I agree with Nigel Farage. In truth, it is not a situation I expected to find myself in. But on this occasion, we appear to share a recognition that the stakes could hardly be higher. This by-election may prove to be one of the most consequential contests in British politics for decades – perhaps the clearest indication yet of where the country, and Labour, goes next.

That pressure is impossible to ignore.

The last two weeks, in particular, have weighed heavily on many in the Labour movement. I know I am not alone in feeling the emotional burden of what an existential threat to the party can feel like. It creates immense pressure on both this moment and the man standing in it.

The temptation, if you let it, is to become consumed by the nerves. To fear things may not go according to The Masterplan.

I refuse to give in to that fear.

Partly because I was genuinely heartened to see Keir Starmer, who may understandably have mixed feelings about this by-election for obvious reasons, make clear that he wants to see the whole Labour movement get behind the campaign. So do I.

But also because when you look at Andy Burnham, there is little sense that he is paralysed by the pressure. Instead, there is confidence but not arrogance, with conviction in what he believes this campaign can offer.

People will inevitably have different views about Burnham. But what cannot reasonably be denied is that there is a clear political pitch here.

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Back someone who wants to take the lessons of Greater Manchester, a place that has increasingly stood out for growth, ambition and local leadership during a period of wider national decline and apply them to the country as a whole.

At its heart, this is a campaign rooted in optimism. In the belief that politics can still bring people together rather than drive them apart. That communities can still feel represented. That public service can still improve lives. Call it a Step On from the cynicism and managed decline that too often constrict political thinking.

Whether voters embrace that argument remains to be seen. Politics, as every Labour activist knows, rarely follows a predictable setlist and can really end up twisting your melon, man.

As Labour gathered in Makerfield today, perhaps this is the moment to put old rivalries aside and remember something simple: if we want a better future, this is no time to be Half the World Away from the fight.

All Labour members must come together to do everything in our power as we campaign in this by-election. Makerfield is the place to show that when it comes to Labour, There Is A Light That Never Goes Out.

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The post ShakerMakerfield appeared first on LabourList.

But here’s the thing, as hard as those results were, we can still build a country true to our values and win in 2029. We can win again by ending the affordability-driven angst and unite the whole nation in strength against the racism of Farage.

Why we lost 

 You know why we lost. You’ve heard it time and time again on the doorstep. Over the years, you’ve seen frustration turn to anger, and you see it beamed through your screen. We lost this year’s local elections for the same reasons we lost last year’s local elections, including in my own constituency. It is the same reason Britain chose to leave the EU. It is, ironically, the same reason we won in 2024.

READ MORE: ‘Who is Labour for?’

That reason is affordability. The affordability crisis, building for decades and then exploding in recent years, has broken out into fury. And into that space, feeding and building on that anger, the racists and finance-bro plutocrats have united in an unholy alliance to blame “those people over there”. Concerns over immigration are, partly, borne from concerns over affordability.

What defines our defectors, to both the Greens and Reform, is (un)affordability. These defectors are finding life unaffordable and see no way that life will become affordable either. Roughly speaking, non-graduates in post-industrial areas like Barnsley are leaving us for Reform and young (graduate) renters in places like Bow are going to the Greens. Non-graduates see no way they can get a decent job, young people can’t afford housing, and all our defectors are finding energy bills too high and wages too low. 

We need to win both sets of defectors back. While it is true we are losing more voters to the left (and to undecided) than to the right, Reform defectors count double in constituencies where they are our main opponents.  

Our economic response  

 To win them back, we have to both make life affordable again and bring both sides together with a unifying political story of what it means to be British.

You know that working hard doesn’t work. There aren’t enough good jobs for people, too little housebuilding has driven up rents, and our fossil fuel-based economy means our energy bills are too high.

In the short-term, we can help make life more affordable with direct energy bill reductions funded by wealth-based taxes. These energy bill reductions have a double benefit. They make life affordable directly, but they also get inflation down – this means lower inflation-linked debt interest payments and more space for the Bank of England to cut interest rates.

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But affordability is about more than just short-term relief. We also need to create good jobs across the country and get costs down for good. We do this by creating the conditions for businesses to thrive, by investing in better transport infrastructure and devolving powers so local areas can better control their destiny. It also means the government stepping in to create good jobs in construction, healthcare, and the clean economy, just as we’re doing with social housebuilding and our Warm Homes Plan. When we invest in the clean economy, we don’t just get costs down, we build up economies in the Midlands and North that have been suffering for too long.

How to pay for this is crucial. Extra borrowing is not the right decision at this point – especially when it will make it even harder for the Bank of England to cut rates in the coming months. Instead, we have to pay for this through taxing wealth and not work – as we have with private jets, dividends, and mansions. The good political news here is that our Reform and Green defectors want economic populism. It worked for FDR, it worked for Attlee, and it can work for us too.  

Our political response 

 More than this, we also need a political answer – a project that can unite our nation and party. 

 Our project – Common Endeavour – is one of strength from unity, based on the foundational values of both our party and our country. Our party’s foundational values, from Clause IV, are this – that by our common endeavour, we can guarantee for each of us a good life. Britain’s foundational values were forged in the Second World War, where people who looked and sounded different came together to defeat fascism. And today, our different communities come together to forge one British nation, and our everyday culture evolves with us. Where we can go for a pint, queue politely, and cheer on our football teams as united nations. 

 Our project is consciously defined as both Labour and British. It can win back both our Green and Reform defectors. We consciously define ourselves against the unholy alliance of finance-bro plutocrats like Harborne and the racism of Reform. Both want to divide us so they can get what they want – tax cuts for the super-rich and divisive ethnonationalism. We should remember that Reform-curious voters do not share the same views as the core Reform voters.  

Uniting the country 

 Most important of all is strength and optimism. We can only change this country and give the British people a reason to vote for us, if we show them the strength that is founded in each of us standing together and doing well. Like FDR before us, in hard times we use optimism and strength to create the world we want.

We are in government for the first time in 14 years. With courage, compassion and conviction we can meet this moment and transform this nation. By the strength of our common endeavour, we will build a nation true to our values, make life affordable for all, and win the next election. Let’s end post-polling day doomscrolling for good.

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The post ‘How We Win In 2029’ appeared first on LabourList.

It seems we have moved swiftly on from the “awful set of results” to “let someone else have a go” without a period of reflection and indeed without giving some people time to absorb their losses, both personal and for their Council.

So I want to return to that painful night – particularly hard in Yorkshire where it is fair to say we had a right drubbing.

No more so than in Barnsley that has been Labour for the past fifty years or so. It is still hard to watch the BBC interview with the former Labour leader Steve Houghton, a man dedicated to the town, and who is largely responsible for its renewal. Despite that, and whilst acknowledging he is respected and much loved, the electorate wanted to give Labour nationally a bloody nose.

READ MORE: WATCH: How did Labour get it wrong? LabourList 2026 Election Analysis

Steve said that he knew something like this was entirely possible. In various interviews he repeated “The reason we are here is not down to Keir Starmer… this has been building for the last 30 years with too many places and communities feeling left behind…. Changing the Prime Minister but keeping on the same direction is not going to cut it.”

He was not the only one to reflect on that. Former Labour Leader of Bradford, Susan Hincliffe, who lost her seat said “I think this is bigger than talking about Keir Starmer. You look back to 2016, since then we’ve had six Prime Ministers.

And South Yorkshire Labour mayor Oliver Coppard talked in a post on Facebook of how South Yorkshire folk weren’t feeling the fundamental change they were promised “and for as long as this government fails to recognise the urgency and scale of those demands, that sense of anger will remain.”

I live in South Yorkshire and yes, we turned the region red in 2024 but there is still something underlying in many communities that is feeding a sense of abandonment. Post industrial communities and seaside towns who’ve lost their mojo feel that they have never really recovered. For some places nothing has come in to replace what they lost.

That is not to say Labour has not tried to address this. One of the first acts of the new Blair government was to set up Regional Development Agencies (RDAS) specifically to drive economic development across all regions. This spatial awareness of regional inequalities was vital to try and rebalance our economy and to address the fundamental fact that we are a deeply unequal society. According to the Guardian “Britain in the 1970s was one of the most equal of rich countries. Today, it is the second most unequal, after the US.”

The Treasury weighed in with some pretty hard-hitting Productivity Reports, the Wanlass report on long term funding for the NHS and a deeper exploration of research, development and innovation in the regions. But the 2008 financial crash changed the direction of travel and the 2010 general election literally threw all of this out of the window. The coalition government never got it and cared even less.

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This Labour government has done things we can be rightly proud of. And there is an issue of perception over reality. Anyone who says that Barnsley is not transformed as a town never went there in 1980 and certainly has not visited today. Since coming into power, Labour has changed the dial for people in a positive way but it does not appear to be enough.

What seems to be lost is the story that goes behind this and how we actually deliver. We need to acknowledge the deep rooted and structural inequality that is unfortunately still evident and then show the routes out of this. The response of yet another reset does not wash unless there are changes in the way we do things and this may well start with how we tell our story as Labour and how we operate as a government.

Let’s look at government departments and the silo mentality surrounding them. The Treasury needs to learn to let go a bit more and give regions some devolved fiscal powers. The office surrounding Number 10 needs a bit of a shake too. Fundamentally we need to address concerns about how, who and where power is exercised, something that lies at the heart of the excellent work coming out of the Good Governance Forum. I would, as an aside, add pace on House of Lords reform to a full elected chamber on the regional list system. And I’d love a Minister of the North with a Cabinet role to address regional inequalities, although I already concede this does not address issues in our coastal communities and other regions.

As for telling our story – it’s really not that hard, it just needs good communicators and a consistent and authentic message. It’s not good enough to say we are listening or “I hear you” – I claim to listen to my husband most of the time – I still go and do what I intended to do in the first place. Increasingly I’m becoming a “see it, say it, sort it” type of gal, but then maybe I spend too much time on trains.

And so back to May 7th. I would love someone to map who voted in these locals vs who voted in GE in 2024 as I think it was a very different electorate. And it felt very much a rerun of the 2016 referendum. Turns out, so called non-voters are voters after all, just not all the time. That’s where we should start – in those communities and having those conversations.

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We can move the deckchairs politically but unless we do things differently, we will get the same results. And – sorry for repeating my old mantra – but we are still, as a country, too London-focused and driven by the square few miles around the city and Westminster.

So, let’s use this opportunity to really reset and reframe our politics and our institutions that capture the early ambitions of the Regional Development Agencies. And let’s learn to tell our story more convincingly.

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The post ‘See it, say it, sort it!’ appeared first on LabourList.

Here are the seven most exciting breakthroughs and announcements this week that you can use, whether you’re on the doorstep, sparring on social media, or debating in the pub.

1. Free buses for children this summer

Labour is launching free bus travel for every child aged 5 to 15 across England throughout August.

No registration is required, and journeys are unlimited on participating local routes.

It’s part of a scheme to support families and businesses this summer amid price pressures from the Iran war, and includes:

• A tax cut for hauliers to keep shelves stocked.
• Extending the 5p fuel duty freeze to protect motorists.
• Emergency relief for families in rural communities who use heating oil.
  

2. Most homes built since 2020

Homes England has delivered its highest number of housing completions in six years, with more than 40,200 homes finished in 2025/26.

That’s up 9% on the previous year. Construction starts rose 11%, and the agency unlocked land for a further 61,700 homes, exceeding its government target by 15%.

The agency also launched the £27.2 billion Social and Affordable Homes Programme this year, covering 2026 to 2036, to accelerate delivery of homes for social rent, affordable rent, and shared ownership.

3. Record funding to pursue grooming gang offenders

Labour has committed a record £100 million to reopen closed cases, pursue offenders, and support survivors.

The biggest share, £38 million, goes to Operation Beaconport, the National Crime Agency operation dedicated to tracking down grooming gang members and putting them behind bars. That’s a tenfold increase on the operation’s original funding.

A further £3.2 million will help adult survivors rebuild their lives through dedicated support services.

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4. First branded Great British Railways train unveiled

The first Great British Railways-branded train has arrived on Britain’s rail network, as the country’s biggest operator prepares to join the publicly owned network.

From 31 May, Thameslink, Great Northern, Southern, and Gatwick Express services will transfer to public ownership, bringing the total to over 11,000 publicly owned services running each weekday.

Publicly owned operators are already outperforming private ones on punctuality and cancellations.

5. Knife robberies down by a fifth

New Home Office data shows knife robberies in the seven highest-risk areas of England and Wales have fallen by 21% since June 2024.

Every police force in the group recorded sustained reductions. The biggest falls were in West Midlands and British Transport Police, both down 39%.

This reverses a period when knife robberies were rising. The turnaround follows focused national leadership and close joint working between the Home Office and policing.

6. New mental health strategy

Labour is launching a once-in-a-generation cross-government mental health strategy to shift care from crisis response to prevention.

The strategy will support people to get help earlier and faster, and stay active in work, education, and family life. A call for evidence opened this week during Mental Health Awareness Week, with clinicians, frontline workers, and mental health organisations invited to shape the final approach.

The government has already recruited 8,500 extra mental health workers, three years ahead of schedule.

7. Guaranteeing pothole repairs

Labour is introducing a Neighbourhood Guarantee giving every community in England a legal expectation of basic public services for the first time.

Councils will be held to minimum standards on pothole repairs, street cleaning, and other local services people rely on. Local leaders will work with central government to meet those standards, with communities given a clear basis to demand action when they aren’t met.

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The draft code covers all nine protected characteristics under the Equality Act, including sex, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. It is intended to guide businesses, public bodies, charities, clubs and associations on complying with anti-discrimination law.

The most significant changes relate to the treatment of single-sex services and spaces following the 2025 Supreme Court’s 2025 ruling in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers. The code states that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, “sex” refers to biological sex, regardless of whether a person has a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC).

Under the draft guidance, organisations providing single-sex services such as toilets, changing rooms, hospital wards, refuges or sports facilities are advised that they may lawfully restrict access on the basis of biological sex where doing so is a “proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim.” The code says providers must assess each situation individually and consider issues such as privacy, dignity, safety and fairness. 

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The draft also recommends that organisations consider providing mixed-sex or gender-neutral alternatives where possible. The guidance warns that excluding transgender people without justification could still amount to unlawful discrimination under the protected characteristic of gender reassignment.

The code further advises service providers not to rely heavily on official documents to determine a person’s sex, stating that there is no single document that provides conclusive evidence for Equality Act purposes. Instead, providers are advised to make proportionate and practical decisions based on the circumstances.

Beyond gender-related issues, the updated code includes guidance on disability discrimination, reasonable adjustments for disabled people, harassment, indirect discrimination and victimisation. It also expands or clarifies protections concerning breastfeeding, menopause, pregnancy and same-sex marriage. 

The EHRC says the code is not new law but statutory guidance explaining how existing law should be interpreted and applied. Courts and tribunals may take the code into account in legal proceedings.

The draft code is now subject to a parliamentary scrutiny period before it can formally come into force. 

A spokesperson for Labour for Trans Rights said: “Labour for Trans Rights can in no way support the EHRC’s Code of Practice. The text differs minimally from the draft version that was leaked last year.

“This Code of Practice does not deliver certainty, and once again fails to lay out ways in which service providers may include trans people in their services and spaces.

“It is now clear that the only solution to the impasse created by the Supreme Court judgement is legislative change. Without bold action to reverse our current course, the Labour Party’s relationship with millions of LGBT+ voters and allies will continue to degrade.”

A statement from Labour Women’s Declaration reads (in part): “We welcome the news that the updated EHRC Code of Practice for Services, Public Functions and Associations has finally been laid before Parliament and we commend the Secretary of State for this action. 

“There can now be no more excuses from public bodies, including government departments, that they are “waiting for the guidance”. 

“We will study the Code in detail. However, regardless of the wording of the guidance, the law is the law and it is the Supreme Court’s ruling which has to be complied with.

“Labour Women’s Declaration will continue to hold our Labour government to account on sex-based rights and to campaign against any attempt to row back on the progress that has been made by the clarity of the Supreme Court ruling.”

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One of my favourite anti-war songs of all time is the beautiful and haunting Shipbuilding by Elvis Costello. The song breaks with the traditional certainty of the genre with the opening line asking the question “Is it worth it?” and genuinely exploring the tensions between the difference that defence can make to a working class town and lives and what it is that is being built in those factories. The song (as would be expected by an anti-war song) comes down on the side of ‘no’ but it does not do so without a sense of what might be lost. 

I like this subtlety and this ability to think beyond the black and white of a question where you are usually expected to take a position and fight for it fiercely – giving no quarter – or humanity –  to the other side. But the truth is that pacifists are not all naive hippies and those who support increased defence spending are not all heartless warmongers. Being dovish over the war in Iran and supporting Starmer as he has kept the UK out of the fighting does not mean I believe the action doesn’t support the argument that Britain needs to be much better able to defend herself. 

Politics and governing have to be grounded in the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. And the traditional international umbrellas we have relied on – a stable US ally,  a strong NATO – have shown themselves to be far more fragile than we believed. Relying on these made being dovish in the UK an easier choice. While we thought we were able to rely on the protection of others, it was a lot easier to say that building up our own capability was not ‘worth it’. Even the Tories – traditionally a far more hawkish party – were able to slash £90 billion from defence with little outcry. 

READ MORE: ‘Security, opportunity, pride, growth and hope for every part of Britain’

Meanwhile, aggressors like Putin have been attacking the borders of our continent for over a decade. Russian submarines, cyber warfare and other subversion measures continue to threaten the UK at a level below direct warfare but enough to undermine our security and make clear where and how we are vulnerable. 

So the question for a Labour government is how to fulfil our first duty of ensuring the security of the realm while also ensuring that we focus on our purpose of ensuring that people are able to use their labour in fulfilling jobs that enable them to live a good life. 

The Defence Secretary John Healey has laid out how Labour is approaching this in an exclusive piece for LabourList today. In it he draws on Labour’s Bevinite tradition outlining the twin pillars of strong alliances and strong workers. He outlines the government’s ‘back British’ approach – investing in British firms with unionised workers offering good, secure, well paid work. 

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I wish we lived in a world where I could answer the question ‘is it worth it?’ with a firm ‘no’. I wish we lived in a world where spending billions on weapons, drones, helicopters and artillery didn’t feel like a necessary response to the aggression of autocrats. But I can’t in good conscience argue that we do. 

So, given that, I want to know that we are investing in line with other values I hold dear. That we are investing this money in British firms with unionised jobs. That we are investing in the future of working class communities. That we are using this spending to both pursue the defence of the realm and to give people more security in their own lives. That we are giving our young people future skills that will work in this industry but are also transferable should we reach a world where we can turn our swords into ploughshares. And we should be constantly vigilant about who we sell these weapons to and how we influence and control how they are – and are not – used by others. 

Labour should never allow our patriotism to edge into jingoism. Any military action must always be able to answer the question ‘is it worth it?’ and I know there will rarely be an easy and obvious answer to that question. My instinct – particularly on aggressive rather than defensive action – is that there will need to be a very high bar to answer that question with ‘yes’. 

But having been convinced that in this insecure world investing in our defence – rather than rushing to aggression – is worth it, my next question must always then be ‘how do we do this in a Labour way?’ It is an answer to this that John Healey has laid out for us today.

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Apparently, nobody in the Cabinet meeting last Tuesday brought up the resignation issue because it was not on the agenda. Are these ministers or obedient schoolchildren?

The only thing that enraged me more than those briefings was the response to Josh Simons taking one for the team to make space for Andy Burnham.

Some say Burnham is the messiah. I say Simons is the prodigal son who redeemed himself. And how did some of the Pathetic Loser tribe of our party respond to his sheer bravery and boldness? They responded with cowardice.

“Look at the polls! Andy will lose!”

With Cassandras like you by his side, he might as well.

What are polls for if not to be changed? If the concept of campaigning – turning people’s minds around – completely evades us, we don’t deserve to win. We govern by polling. Runing scared of confrontation. We have forgotten how to do politics. 

This cowardice runs deeper than our cabinet – it’s in all of us. I admit, I don’t always know if I’m falling in line out of self-sacrifice or self-preservation. 

Consider how we’ve handled every thorny, culture-war-adjacent issue over the last five years.

On immigration, both wings of the party have performed their respective moral panics with equal cynicism. Lacking the self-reflection to realise they don’t have the necessary pathos to perform, let alone embody, populism, the right of the party measures their success in positive headlines in the rags read by voters who hate us. 

The left, on the other hand, insists on its lack of curiosity and nuance. Apparently, not letting people stay forever if they overstay their visas or fail to obtain a new one is cruel and unusual punishment. That is news to me as an immigrant.

On trans rights? We went from a party whose vibe was calling women vagina-havers to one whose vibe is calling trans women men in frocks. Did we bridge the divide between competing rights, or did we prove to both groups that we are dreadful hypocrites who go with the wind? 

On the Israel/Palestine conflict we are now getting the grievance politics and inter-religious warfare we deserve. For a secular party that “doesn’t do God,” we sure proved nothing is sacred for us. Not even human life.

On cronyism? That Lobby Firm lounge monstrosity slapping you in the face as soon as you entered the conference in Liverpool this year was a sight to behold. If the choice for our conference is between that corporate takeover cash cow and the Corbyn years’ Student Union hippy fest, pass me the joint. 

On energy? The right wants to bin the one Cabinet member who can run a department. The left would rather see PM Farage reopen the coal mines than exploit our oil and gas reserves.  

On violence against women and girls? Know the same type of personality who fails to speak up on rape gangs is equally able to ignore someone’s connection with a paedophile if the political benefits are too good to pass up. 

How we deal with these issues reveals our pathetic disposition in the face of contradictions and competing interests. Our leadership hopefuls wouldn’t challenge Starmer without a poll rolling the red carpet for them. We approach policymaking the same way, waiting for focus groups to tell us what to think rather than trying to change minds ourselves.

This is the excuse I heard early in my journey as a Labour staffer: the UK is a right-wing country, this is why they always win, anyone left of centre has an uphill battle, poor us! With experience, I realised that, as conservative as the country may be, there’s another reason. The left is weak and cowardly. One negative poll is enough to scare us off trying to convince anyone of anything.

Only the right could have looked at the Brexit polling showing 60/40 odds and think, “We can win that.” If Brexit were the Left’s cause, we would have balked at the polling.

So, we don’t deserve to win. 

We don’t deserve to win because a handful of weak men can silence us by waving polling charts for one faction, gilt yield charts for another, as if they are religious texts. 

“But Stella, in the face of evidence, what are we supposed to do?!” 

Wrestle the laser pointer off their clammy hands, tell them where to stick it. 

And then? Renew your rail cards. We are going to Makersfield. 

READ MORE: Stella Tsantekidou column: ‘The dark arts are dead’

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