The social movements that built and defined Labour have thinned. The machine is set up for a politics that no longer exists. Both of those can be worked on, but only by an organisation capable of changing what it thinks, feels and does. Strategy is important but culture will eat it for breakfast, as the saying goes.

Labour has long had a problem with internal culture. Defensiveness and factionalism in the Labour Party long pre-dating the Corbyn years: the Blair–Brown feud, Benn vs. Healey, the Bevanite battles of the 1950s, and back further to 1931, when our own Prime Minister left to form a government with the Conservatives.

So we have a problem and it isn’t new. Bunker mentalities, “boys’ clubs”, anonymous briefings against colleagues, “toxicity”, leaks, monocultures and groupthink, accusations of bullying and turning a blind eye to the poor behaviour of those on our side, factional selections, deselections and hiring have been described in many eras and at all levels of the party. It is not a factional or ideological problem – it’s a cultural one. 

But can we change?

The 2022 Forde Report was clear about where responsibility for cultural growth should rest: prime responsibility with the General Secretary and senior HQ staff and backed by the NEC – though the political leadership also has a role to play. The 2019 Labour Together Review reached similar conclusions. The current leadership has signalled that it wants to fix this, which gives the new General Secretary a genuine and potentially unique opportunity.

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed

But large volunteer organisations often struggle to change, and they handle critique and feedback badly. People take it personally. As Emma Burnell has written, people in mission-driven organisations will often accept a poor culture because they believe the cause matters more – until, eventually, they do not. 

Of course, the reality is that it is also about power, which does not always bring out the best in people, particularly, perhaps, in those not so used to wielding it. Labour adds its own history: real fears of entryism, and the strains of being a broad church. I believe that the most problematic consequence of this is that the organisation can be defensive towards new people and ideas, resistant to change, and quietly distrustful of its own members. The party is a place where everyone feels there is another room – or another WhatsApp group –  that they are not in. 

The answers to this are simple on paper; they are about openness and listening. 

Why openness matters

Being open to new ideas is not just something that is “nice to have”. It is vital to Labour’s chances of winning the next election and of fending off the threat of Nigel Farage’s Reform. A party which is open to fresh voices has a chance of finding answers in the new era we are in. One which tries to just polish up the old offer, perhaps done better, is highly likely to fail. 

This is not just a Labour problem nor even a British problem. It’s mirrored across Europe, where we see traditional left-of-centre parties struggling to find a response that’s adequate to the scale of the challenge from the populist right. After working for seven years on European elections and voter attitudes, the thing that struck me most was how badly political elites are misreading the public mood. Anti-system sentiment and the demand for change are far more widespread than most people inside politics assume. 

The instincts that political establishments have are frequently out of step with the public they are trying to persuade. Asked why they back a party, voters in many countries rank “most likely to change things” above “has the best policies.” People are not generally drifting to the populist right because they have signed up to its ideology. They are reaching for the nearest port in a storm – for whoever voters feel really acknowledges their experiences and anxiety and offers some practical hope.

That is the space the populist right is occupying: bold, radical ideas that signal they are on people’s side. Those ideas are often neither realistic nor implementable, and voters frequently know it. The signal still lands. And before anyone gets badly carried away, it is worth noting there does also seem to be a nastiness penalty, as seen in the US on immigration enforcement. Meanwhile the centre-left, particularly parties used to governing, appears to be choosing from a self-imposed narrow suite of options. This has implications for how you run a manifesto process. It is not necessarily an argument for being “more left-wing”, but it is one for being more open and a lot bolder.  

I am using policy as an example here as both a symptom and cause of our cultural problem. This applies to so many other things from electoral modelling to software procurement. But our defensive attitude to policy processes is instructive and is perhaps leading to one of the worst consequences for us. The Labour Party exists to change things for the better. When we shut ourselves off we greatly reduce the chances of finding answers that fit the moment. And we risk undermining our very purpose, of bringing about lasting change. 

Stop running scared

Sometimes we run scared in anticipation, pre-emptively censoring ourselves over what the Mail or the Times might say about any given position. That is a 1990s problem. It mattered then, and the scars are real, but it is not what the public is worrying about now. Those papers still shape the weather in Westminster, which is why we flinch. They are not going to decide the next election.

None of that is a policy failure. It is a cultural one. An organisation that is closed to unfamiliar people is also closed to unfamiliar ideas. It filters them out using inherited assumptions about what is unsayable long before anyone decides whether or not they are undoable. 

The General Secretary does not write policy. But they do have a vital role whether the processes that carry ideas upward are open or closed, who is in the room when options are shortlisted, and whether saying something awkward is treated as useful or as disloyal. That procedural and behavioural role is mirrored across many processes and functions of the party.

The big challenges

I’ve argued that there are several big challenges the Party needs to face and solve. These resolve around ensuring we have a party machine fit for the current context. And, if not, can we change and change quickly? You could summarise them as follows: 

Is the machine fit for the context?

What will it take to run different campaigns in different seats, built around a variety of coalitions of voters and the different skills and resources of local candidates and parties? How do we get the most impact from incumbency? What replaces the national playbook? What decisions, roles, functions and resources can practically go to what level? How do we balance the risks? What central functions are needed in that strong core at HQ? 

How do we build real two-way communications with voters? What does a genuinely digital first, localised engagement and comms operation looks like? How do we integrate and layer on- and offline communities? 

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What central tech infrastructure is required and how much of this can be built in-house vs supporting high quality external integrations? 

What does the rhetoric of members and activists as ‘a major asset’ mean in practice for the roles, responsibilities and rights of the people involved?

If persuasion really is so key, how do we figure out what actually works and find a way of testing and scaling new practices fast? 

Can the Party change fast enough? 

How do we have a structured and effective approach to culture change where we can hear hard truths and act on them? How do we challenge and bring out the best in each other? How do we reduce the barriers to entry for people and organisations with new ideas, energy, purpose, talent and how do we ensure accountability? 

What needs to change in our processes to support cultural changes that widen and welcome the range of ideas and perspectives that reach the table? Get this wrong and it will sink every other change on this list, however well designed.

It’s also important to remember that the ground will have moved again by the election after next. What we need is a party that can keep noticing, keep testing and keep changing – a learning organisation.

Which is why I am hoping this is the start of a conversation rather than a verdict. None of this is one person’s doing and solving it is bigger than any one person’s job. The leadership in HQ and number 10 cannot do it from the centre alone, and they should not have to. Members should make up most of the means of delivering it. So the useful response is not to wait and see how the new General Secretary gets on. It is to get behind the change, be honest about what is not working, and be willing to try things even if some of them might fail and they seem scary. And we will need to resource it. That is definitely about giving our time but it is also about money. Which means the party needs contributions from the smallest to the largest level donors to create the space to do this. And while you are at it please do join me and become a Friend of LabourList and support our in-depth coverage and understanding of the Labour Party. 

These essays are offered in the hope they help find solutions and build support for what needs doing. I would like to hear what other people make of all this — what I have got wrong, what I have missed and what do you agree with? Please email us with your thoughts mail@labourlist.org. 

But what I am sure about is that the Labour Party has to make radical changes in how it is organised if it is to have a chance of winning the next election. Those changes will be difficult and some will be painful, but we cannot afford to dodge them. The stakes for this country are too high for that.

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This was the university that gave Michael Marra his undergraduate degree some decades ago. Moving on from Glasgow University to a stint at the London School of Economics to a career in academia, Marra is no intellectual slouch. A politician of the soft left, a unionist from ‘Yes City’ and an economist by training, Michael Marra was today confirmed as the new leader of Scottish Labour. 

Political leadership does not tend to change hands against a backdrop of good times and positive polling. The task ahead of Marra – that of leading Scottish Labour as a party in opposition at Holyrood with a bruising round of elections in the recent past and uncertain council elections in the near future – is not for the faint-hearted. He has talked in this leadership campaign about the need for Scottish Labour to find its heart once more. The question now is whether Marra can turn that language of renewal into a programme capable of rebuilding the party.

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed

Marra hails from Dundee, a place once famous for jam, jute and journalism. Like the coarse, strong threads historically spun from jute’s rough fibre in the city’s textile production past, Scottish Labour’s membership base is crying out for the new leader to quickly weave a vision of hope that can inspire campaigners-in-waiting. Marra asserted often in the leadership campaign that the Labour Party is Scotland’s only vehicle for social change. Certainly, the appetite for service and community organising is tangible among the membership. His campaign has made clear that members are intended to play a central role in that internal renewal. A Scottish Labour led by Marra – a politician who has consistently prioritised political education – can provide the conditions for an era of development and empowerment that will enable local Labour teams to meaningfully forge deeper connections in the communities that need them most. 

While the ‘Jam tomorrow’ approach of Scottish nationalism continues to spill forth from a seemingly endless pot, recent weeks have seen senior SNP figures strike jarring notes of defiance after new PISA data revealed a decline in reading and maths attainment. Yet whatever Labour’s view of the SNP record and their acute awareness of the significant bearing that the UK political landscape had on their Scottish results, May’s election returned John Swinney’s party to government and left Scottish Labour facing another period of reflection. From this place of opposition, Marra’s ability to capture the right tone of probity and passion will be vital in establishing his authentic presence as a leader in Holyrood and beyond. There may well be times when the need to speak more in sorrow than in anger will be a prudent choice. Similarly,  Marra’s ongoing record on selecting pertinent and urgent campaign priorities will publicly prove the credentials of a politician who acts decisively in the interests of people across Scotland who need a strong Labour advocate. His so-called ‘moral purpose’ will set clear dividing lines between Scottish Labour and the SNP. Marra knows better than most about the business of building consensus and will doubtless be focused on opportunities to gain purposeful ground in the Scottish Parliament. 

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As leader of Scottish Labour, Marra now has an opportunity to make the case that a strong devolved Scotland within the United Kingdom can deliver. But doing so with 17 MSPs at Holyrood in a position of opposition will not be without its challenges. This means that the nuances of Marra’s relationships with Westminster parliamentarians and the Prime Minister will be pivotal in charting the course of constitutional politics. A thoughtful and highly-human ‘more in common’ message could resonate with Scottish voters just as Swinney’s Scottish exceptionalism appears misguided and ill-timed in a period of geopolitical and technological uncertainty. For Marra to effectively execute such a feat requires selfless discipline from colleagues, however well-meaning, from across the country who would do best to follow the lead of a prudent politician and work in lockstep with him when it comes to Scottish matters. 

The stakes are high and the next round of elections is never far. But if Scottish Labour’s down-to-earth, realist, clever new leader can crack the delivery of an effective opposition, if he can galvanise and build the capacity of the party troops and if he can maintain and maximise a purposeful relationship with the UK leadership that bolsters the union for the good of the people, then the rewards of a renewed Scottish Labour will be felt not only by Marra or Scottish Labour but by the country as a whole.

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Marra, a regional MSP for North East Scotland, defeated rival candidate Joe Fagan in a ballot of Scottish Labour members, winning 4,266 votes (63 percent)  to Fagan’s 2,485 votes (37 percent).’ Turnout was 6,751.

He becomes the 11th leader of Scottish Labour, taking charge of the party months after its worst Holyrood election – returning just 17 MSPs in May.

First entering Holyrood in 2021, he previously served as shadow education secretary and shadow finance secretary, and played a pivotal role in drawing up Scottish Labour’s 2026 election manifesto. 

WATCH: LabourList editor Emma Burnell interviews Michael Marra during the campaign

Marra pledged in his campaign to devolve power across the party and “rebuild a movement that belongs to its members, trade unions, and communities”.

His election as leader came following the resignation of Anas Sarwar, after his appointment to Andy Burnham’s government as a trade minister.

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Following his election, he said: “To be entrusted with the leadership of our Scottish Labour Party is a singular honour and a great responsibility.

“I am grateful for your trust and take on the duty of advancing our cause of a fairer, more equal Scotland with all that I can possibly give.”

In a post on X, Fagan congratulated Marra on his victory and added: “I’m proud of the campaign we ran and grateful to every member, trade unionist and affiliate who took part.

“I look forward to working with Michael to build a party that delivers for working people.”

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Many of the 3.5 million cohabiting couples in the UK believe they have some legal protection as ‘common law marriage’.  Common-law marriage is a myth. And often, the stark inequality between cohabiting and married couples only becomes apparent when the relationship ends. Women who thought they had rights can be thrown into destitution on illness, separation or death.

The government consultation this summer ‘A fairer end to relationships’ focused on financial reforms around divorce, cohabitation and inheritance. It is right to look at this issue, as it affects an increasing number of adults and their children; in 2021, more babies were born to unmarried couples (51%) than married couples. 

Currently, the law fails to recognise non-financial contributions within unmarried couples. Women can be disproportionately vulnerable at the end of relationships due to lower earnings, greater unpaid care responsibilities and larger pension gaps. In the event of death, blood relatives of the deceased (including children from the same or different partners) have more rights to the person’s assets than their long-term cohabitee. 

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The government’s consultation should be seen in the context of its manifesto pledge to halve violence against women and girls. Women are more likely to experience domestic abuse, including economic abuse. It is vital that those leaving abusive relationships are supported by the law. 

I have been campaigning against this injustice since 2006, arguing for greater protection for cohabitants and their children when relationships break down. Back then, I received an anonymous letter from a woman who had lived with a man for 17 years and had five children with him. She was unable to leave him because he refused to give her a share in the family home, which was solely in his name. She described her position as that of a concubine. 

The then minister, Vera Baird, agreed that “it is women, usually, who are left high and dry after cohabitation, perhaps having dreamt that they did have some property rights … It is important for us to examine the whole subject with a great deal of care.”

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And a year later, the Law Commission reported that: “The result of the current law’s inadequacy is hardship for many cohabitants on separation, and as a consequence, their children… And in many cases relationship breakdown may lead to reliance on the State in the form of claims to welfare benefits and social housing.”

In my Cohabitation Ten Minute Rule Bill in March 2009, I argued: “The law does not recognise the choices that people make in the 21st century and it does not promote equality of outcomes for families. The Bill is long overdue, humane and compassionate. It promotes fairness, social justice and equality before the law.”

Twenty years on, the number of people cohabiting has increased by from 2.2 million to 3.5 million – and the injustice remains. 

The law as it stands is unfair, uncertain and illogical. It penalises the vulnerable and, in particular, the children of cohabitants.

That is why it has to change.

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Over the summer Labour got a new national leader in Andy Burnham and a new Welsh leader in Ken Skates. Yesterday, Joe Fortune was appointed as General Secretary by the NEC and tomorrow either Joe Fagan or Michael Marra will be elected as Scottish Labour leader (click on the links to see my interviews with the candidates).

Labour doesn’t have a new broom so much as a whole new broom cupboard. The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that all five of those names have something in common. This might be the moment for a tongue-in-cheek reflection that it will be nice to see men doing the sweeping for once…

As our brilliant chair Karin Christiansen has set out in her second of three essays today (you can read the first here, the final part will be published tomorrow) there is a great deal of cleaning work to do. 

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed

None of which is to criticise the individuals who came before. The vastly changed landscape has causes far bigger than can be laid at the feet of any one individual – or a handful of them. And, at the heart of Karin’s argument, is starting with understanding that each of the new leaders should recognise that the response will also need to be bigger than any one person.

It is also true that none of these leaders will start with a completely clean slate. I was extremely bemused by the slightly breathless tone of reporting about leaks from Downing Street showing overlap in some of the policies being considered by Keir Starmer and those announced by Andy Burnham. If two people are keen on leading the same party, then it just seems patently obvious to me that they might have certain policy goals in common.

But what people who are too deep in the weeds of politics sometimes forget (but never should) is that policy is only a small part of what makes politics work. Policy is vital of course. Policy is how we change lives. But policy is the end point of politics – not the starting point.

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In order to enact our policies, Labour must get elected and we must aim to do this at every level in all the villages, towns, cities, regions and nations of the UK. In order to get elected, Labour must understand who we are asking to vote for us and what they want. In order to understand our voters we must be embedded in our communities, we must reflect our communities, we must live, work and socialise in our communities. This is a job for thousands of us. It will be in enabling each and every one of us to play our part that any of these new leaders will succeed.

Andy Burnham’s biggest mission is about giving power away. About devolving decision making to the lowest possible level to bring it as close as possible to the communities that are affected. Sadly though, the debate about devolution in Scotland and Wales all too often descends into a fight between parliamentary systems with the further devolution of power ignored in the bun-fight. But I would argue that building power in these nations from the bottom up will be essential to any strategy for Scottish and Welsh Labour. Just as it is in England.

What is good for the country would also be good for a political party seeking to run that country. Decentralising the party at all levels would energise members, enable a plethora of ideas to be discussed, debated and decided, and decisions to be made by a far greater number of people. It must be the case that what we are arguing is good for Rotherham, Raglan, Roehampton and Rutherglen is also good for Reading Central CLP, Rhondda and Ogmore CLP, Redcar CLP and Renfrewshire Labour.

As Skates and Burnham continue to find their feet and set out their stall and the new Scottish leader joins them, the first task for Joe Fortune will, perhaps, be to work with them to take some of their power out of their sole hands and put it into those of the rest of us.  

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Firstly, congratulations to Joe Fortune, announced yesterday as Labour’s new General Secretary, and who I had the pleasure of working with at the Co-operative Party.

The machine the new General Secretary inherits was built with real skill. The trouble is that it was built for a politics that no longer exists.

The current machinery is designed for a different contest. Put simply, and a little unfairly, it was built to do two things. It identifies Tory switchers and persuades them through the ‘air war’. And it identifies Labour loyalists and turns them out through the ground game. This worked in a two-horse race with the Conservatives. We generally struggled against other challengers – whether the Greens, the SNP, Respect or Reform [EB: what about the Libdems? KC: oops, good point…] Where we do beat them, local teams usually improvised their own strategy, and the national playbook just got in the way.

Beyond the two-horse race

This is no longer a simple two-horse race with the Tories. For most of the post-war period the question in most seats was “Labour or Conservative?” and the machine was built around answering that. Now the competition comes from several directions at once, and it differs seat by seat.

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed

The British Election Study (BES) analysis of Labour’s support since 2024 found the vote fragmenting rather than swinging. The largest single outflow was to uncertainty – don’t know or won’t vote – with most of the rest going to the Greens and Liberal Democrats rather than directly to Reform. The Greens, in particular, are absorbing the energy on the left. The BES also notes that in a context this fragmented there is arguably no longer a straightforward category of “marginal” seat.

So switchers and core turnout alone will not win seats any more. For a growing number, not voting is an active choice, not a failure to show up – and you do not fix a choice with a reminder. Much of the job is now persuasion. 

Persuading people 

It is an awkward point, but we know remarkably little about what actually changes people’s minds. That demands that we are more experimental, not less. What evidence we have points one way – listening to people works better than broadcasting at them. There seems to be something in ‘deep canvassing’ that needs to be tested seriously.

What we do know is that if the job is persuasion, then the people who do that best are colleagues, friends and neighbours who can listen and engage. The current model largely treats members and activists as a voter ID, turn out and delivery mechanism and in the last general election, one that could be moved into target seats as needed. As members, our own skills, working lives and networks don’t feature enough in the party’s calculation. That is a waste of one of the party’s greatest assets, and it is something we need to change.

New environment, new methods

The ‘air war’ is also in trouble. It was built on announcements to the national press, broadcast, the lobby organised through ‘the grid’. The ground has shifted underneath it. 

The Reuters Institute’s 2026 Digital News Report found that social media and video networks have, for the first time, overtaken both television and news organisations’ own sites as the most widely used source of news globally. Trust in news has fallen to its lowest level since the Institute began measuring it, and the share of people saying they are very interested in news has dropped sharply since 2021. More than four in ten now say they sometimes or often avoid the news altogether, up from under three in ten in 2017.

For a party machine, the implications can be uncomfortable. Both HQ and Andy Burnham’s team are well aware of the fundamental shift in the media environment. What to do about it is the hard part. 

This new environment needs new ways of working. The old media still matters for elite engagement, for policy debate and acceptance – and clips for digital content and sharing. But any operation built around old media is now focused on a set of channels that reaches fewer people, less often, with less trust. 

Public political communication is now a digital strategy. And it is not about announcements. It is about being there when and where people are already talking.

The choice of who to talk to and listen to is often framed as how finely to slice the electorate. Modern tools let you segment almost endlessly, targeting ever-smaller groups with ever-more-tailored messages. Done badly, that fragments the message until the Party stands for nothing recognisable, and burns resources on micro-targeting with little return. 

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The alternative is to treat segmentation as a question about channels. You must focus on where people are, what they are worrying about and hoping for, and who they are listening to. Then build the messaging around persuadability – what moves people who are open to moving. Don’t build it around which amusingly named cluster-analysis artefact they have been sorted into.

None of this works without fixing the system and tech that underpins it all. As an example, research across more than 30 MP operations found the same pattern: staff and organisers improvise with spreadsheets and WhatsApp chats because the systems do not talk to each other, losing knowledge every time someone moves on and carrying real legal risk. There are people at HQ working on this, but it needs to be made a major priority.

Bottom up strategy

Taken together, this new environment requires a change of a different order: many campaigns, many coalitions, many channels. It also points in one direction: decentralisation. A machine that runs everything from the centre cannot do this.

Electoral strategy now has to be built from the bottom up, seat by seat. It means running very different campaigns in different seats, built around different voter demographics and values. Crucially for a General Secretary, it means assembling a different electoral coalition – a different combination of voters – in each. It means working with MPs, candidates and local parties whose skills, capacity and resources vary enormously.

Decisions and resources should sit at the lowest level that can actually carry them – which will vary by place, and that variation is a genuine complication rather than a tidy rule. 

It is worth being precise about what this does not mean. Successful change will not consist of pushing everything out to the regions, which has a history of producing fiefdoms rather than capacity. Rather, the party needs a core central operation and infrastructure strong enough to support, resource, pipeline, monitor, evaluate and learn from many different local campaigns. But also one that is confident enough not to run them.

In part three: culture change is the decisive issue that will determine the success of everything else.

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Britain’s four biggest banks reported profits of almost £30 billion for the first six months of 2026, putting them on track for a record-breaking year. The government is a key source of these profits, as it foots the bill for the billions of pounds the Bank of England pays banks in interest on their reserves each year. And although banks do pay slightly more tax than other corporations – in recognition of the oversized risks their activities pose to the wider economy – it’s worth remembering that those taxes were slashed by the Conservative government in 2023, precisely when banks were starting to feel the gains from higher interest rates.

Yet bank bosses, especially JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, continue to take to the airwaves and insist that higher taxes would break Britain’s banking sector. Just last week, Dimon met with Burnham and Healey, and claimed that a windfall tax would harm investment and employment in Britain. But do these warnings hold water?

The truth is, banks are already failing to invest in this country. Earlier this year, the Boston Consulting Group found that bank lending to UK businesses has fallen to its lowest level since 1998. Analysis of bank lending data also shows that the lion’s share of loans go towards safe assets (predominantly existing property) rather than productive, job-creating industries (such as construction or manufacturing).

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed

If banks were truly worried about their capacity to invest, it’s unlikely we’d see them diverting almost half of their profits (£13.7 billion) to shareholders, or paying out the kinds of bonus packages unseen since the 2008 crash. These are not the actions of a sector struggling under the weight of its “tax burden”.

It’s also hard to take threats of job cuts seriously, given the speed with which the banking sector is already handing out redundancies. This year alone, the boss of Metro Bank received a record-breaking pay packet after slashing 1,000 jobs, and Standard Chartered’s CEO was forced to apologise for referring to the 7,000+ staff losing their jobs to AI as “lower value human capital”. HSBC is also reportedly considering up to 20,000 job cuts worldwide because of AI, and the branch closures we’ve seen from all banks across the country are putting hundreds more people out of work.

Fundamentally, the threats being made by bank bosses ring hollow. Even Dimon’s ploy to pull plans for new UK offices if banks are taxed more in the Budget is difficult to believe – given it’s exactly the same threat he made to Alistair Darling when he proposed taxing bankers bonuses back in 2009 – and the planned offices went ahead anyway, despite the bonus tax being introduced.

The real issue here is not bank CEOs themselves. What industry wouldn’t push back against higher taxation? The real issue is the level of access City lobbyists have to senior government figures. Facetime for the finance sector has historically far outstripped that given to other sectors, and dwarfs the access unions and civil society organisations receive. But as Nowak said in his speech, Burnham must be prepared to “face down vested interests” to deliver truly transformative support for struggling families and businesses.

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At Positive Money, we have proposed a windfall tax only targeting the UK profits of Britain’s biggest banks, so as not to harm the competitiveness of their international investment arms. The fact that we still predict the Treasury could bring in £19 billion from the four biggest banks this year speaks to how heavily bank profits are being drawn from the UK public and government. The TUC predicts that even just reversing the tax cuts banks received under the Conservatives would raise £9 billion over four years.

Public frustration is mounting at the influence big business and billionaires are exerting over our democracy, and there’s a growing sentiment that in UK politics you have to pay to play. The decision before Burnham and Healey is a clear one: allow a sector that neglects the UK, showers shareholders in cash, and profits from the public to continue doing all of the above, or tax banks’ windfall profits, and use that money to fund a support package that people can actually feel the impacts of. Whichever they choose will be decisive in showing the public whose side this government is on.

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The post ‘Burnham – and Britain – can’t afford to be held hostage by bankers’ appeared first on LabourList.

While most MPs headed off for conference season, in Whitehall there was plenty of tangible progress towards renewing the country.

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. Another railway enters public ownership

Labour has brought Chiltern Railways under government control.

From 20 September, there’ll be nearly 10,000 extra seats a week on weekdays alone, with 25 additional daily services arriving in December. Chiltern is also adding six new trains to its fleet, finishing a £12 million refurbishment of the rest by 2028.

2. £500 million investment from McLaren

Labour has secured a major new commitment from McLaren to expand car manufacturing in Britain.

The company will invest around £500 million in UK manufacturing, creating 1,000 new jobs by 2032, with up to 3,000 more expected across the wider supply chain. The money brings in-house engine production and a new performance SUV to Britain, alongside expansion at Woking and new sites in South Yorkshire and at Bicester.

3. Tougher school food standards

Labour is overhauling what children are served for lunch in England’s schools.

It’s the first revamp of school food rules in over a decade, meaning more fresh fruit and vegetables, more fibre-rich food, and properly balanced meals designed to help children concentrate and stay energised through the day. Schools will have to publish their menus and food policies online, with a named school food governor accountable for getting it right.

One in three children currently leave primary school overweight or obese, and tooth decay linked to sugary diets remains the leading cause of hospital admissions for 5-to-9-year-olds.

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4. Cracking down on dirty money

Labour is recruiting hundreds of new officers to hunt down money laundering networks.

The 500 new officers across police forces, the National Crime Agency and the Crown Prosecution Service will be backed by £500 million over three years, funded by a levy on the finance industry itself. They’ll target Russian and international networks laundering money through high street businesses, drug trafficking, and people smuggling.

It builds on a strong run of results, including almost £350 million stripped from criminals in the past year, £26 million returned to victims, and nearly 4,000 money laundering convictions.

5. New trains for northern railways

Labour is funding a new battery-electric fleet to replace ageing diesel rolling stock on cross-Pennine routes.

The £1 billion order for 29 trains supports more than 6,000 jobs across the UK supply chain, including over 350 roles in Derby, and is expected to generate around £360 million for the wider economy.

Once in service in the early-to-mid 2030s, the trains will cut journey times by up to 10 minutes between Manchester and Leeds, and boost capacity by 30% with thousands of extra daily seats on routes including Liverpool to Scarborough and Manchester to Hull.

6. Passwordless sign-in for government services

Labour is rolling out fingerprint and face verification for accessing government accounts online.

More than 23 million people using GOV.UK One Login can now choose to sign in with their fingerprint, face, or device PIN, which can be up to eight times faster than typing a password and waiting for a text code.

The National Cyber Security Centre rates passkeys as more secure, since they can’t be phished, guessed or reused across different sites.

7. New drop-in centres for teenagers

Labour is opening 42 Young Futures Hubs across England.

They bring together open-access sport, creative activities, and trusted youth workers, alongside mental health support, skills training, and routes into employment, backed by up to £300,000 a year each. They’re for 10-to-18-year-olds, extending to 25 for those with special educational needs and disabilities.

It’s a direct reversal of the last decade, when council youth spending fell 73% and over 1,000 youth centres closed.

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Last weekend two crypto billionaires, Ben Delo and Christopher Harborne, said they would hand Reform UK £36 million each. This is more money than every party in Britain received in donations in the whole of last year. It is an obscene amount, on a far greater scale, proportionately, than even the $250 million Elon Musk infamously splashed on getting Donald Trump re-elected in 2024.

But these donations are just the latest and most dramatic examples of an alarming trend. In 2015, donations of £1 million or more made up 1% of private political funding. By 2024 it was 35%.

As the Representation of the People Bill, a potentially seminal piece of legislation, passes through parliament, the clamour for a definitive cap on the amount any individual can donate to a political party has reached fever pitch.

READ MORE: Labour Party Conference 2026: Full LabourList events programme, revealed 

As Chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Anti-Corruption and Responsible Tax, I have been working with colleagues across all parties and both houses for months. The consensus is that something must be done. And it needs to be done quickly.

First things first, I think we now need to see a donation cap in place before the horse has bolted. It should start with a number that is low enough to prevent the sort of grotesque distortion we saw over the weekend, but high enough to avoid any unintended consequences. Given the current tax burden, I don’t want to see political parties being fully funded by the taxpayer.

Then we need to think about the future. There are two sides to this particular coin. The supply of money – the donation cap, and the demand for it – the spending limit. Both must be reformed in tandem. Ministers have written to the Electoral Commission asking for a review of the suitability of current spending limits by July 2027. That is a welcome step.

But I do think it is time for us to take this issue out of the political arena. That means that an independent body must have a say on both how much can be donated and how much can be spent. And we need specific, objective public interest tests for those figures to reverse the alarming collapse of trust in our political system. I propose the impact on the parties themselves, the fairness of elections and public confidence in electoral integrity.

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Failure to use the Bill to bring a swift end to the corrosive role of big money in our politics would represent a major missed opportunity.

Momentum is building. The Bill’s second reading in the House of Lords this week showed both the breadth and depth of support.

Cross-party consensus was also in evidence in other areas we have concerns about, including closing loopholes in the Government’s crypto donation ban and strengthening the criminal offence for breaches of political finance rules.

There are other issues which still need looking at, such as the absurd rules which allow you to set up a political party with any amount of money, from any source, without having to explain to anyone how you came by it.

But the issue of foreign interference and big money distorting our democracy can only be solved through constructive collaboration between politicians of different stripes. This is not an issue confined to any single party and, across the political spectrum, we will all lose equally if Parliament does not make the most of this precious opportunity. 

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Fortune, the general secretary of the Co-operative Party, was the only candidate still running for the position – and was elected by a unanimous vote of Labour’s National Executive Committee earlier today.

Two other candidates, including Labour’s executive director of stakeholder relations Claire Reynolds, were in contention to stand for the position – but stood aside after Fortune received the backing of Labour leader and Prime Minister Andy Burnham last month.

Fortune will replace outgoing general secretary Hollie Ridley, who was responsible for the world-renowned field campaign which helped to secure Labour’s historic general election victory in 2024.

It marks the first time in Labour’s history that Co-operative Party members have simultaneously held the rules of Labour leader, deputy leader and general secretary.

Fortune has served as general secretary of the Co-operative Party since 2019, having previously served as the party’s national political and policy manager in 2010.

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Joe Fortune, incoming General Secretary of the Labour Party, said: “Andy Burnham has been clear that, with his leadership, we are one Labour team working together to secure the next term of a Labour Government, delivering for all our communities.

“Taking up the role of General Secretary to help achieve that second term is a huge privilege and responsibility, and I look forward to working across the Labour movement to achieve it.”

Andy Burnham, Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party, said: “I want to congratulate Joe on his selection as General Secretary of the Labour Party. As a proud Co-op Party member, I have first-hand experience of the immense dedication and drive Joe has for helping put our Labour values into action right across the country.

“I know that Joe will build on the crucial work Hollie Ridley has done to ensure our Party remains the world-class campaigning force Labour is so that we can keep on delivering the change we want to see in every postcode across Britain.”

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