Labour members want progressive change – from scrapping the two-child cap to stopping arms sales to Israel. The leadership is ignoring them. This video asks: what is Labour afraid of, and what must change?
This is the audio version:
This is the transcript:
Labour is out of step with its members, and we now know that.
A think tank called Compass, which many viewers of this channel will be familiar with, and which I think I'm a member of because it isn't technically aligned with the Labour Party, has undertaken a survey of Labour Party members and they have shown overwhelming support for progressive change in our society in the opinions that they had to offer.
They're in favour of public ownership, wealth taxes, and scrapping the two-child cap, and they want proportional representation, but Labour's leadership is rejecting or ignoring them, meaning that the Labour Party is split into two camps. There's the leadership, and the membership, and frankly, they're on different planets.
Let's just look at what the poll found.
Apparently, 92% of Labour Party members want water to be in public ownership.
91% want increased taxes on the wealthy.
89% want fair migration policies rooted in a welcome for those coming to this country because people know that they add value to the communities that then host them.
84% want arms sales to Israel to be stopped.
The same ratio of 84% say they want the two-child benefit cap to be scrapped to ease child poverty in the UK, because doing that would take 600,000 children out of poverty in this country.
75% of Labour members oppose new oil and gas licenses because they are quite reasonably concerned about climate change.
And 74% oppose the policy that Labour currently has of stripping MPs of the whip if they speak out against the leadership.
Finally, and most importantly, as far as I'm concerned, 66% of all Labour Party members back proportional representation for elections to Parliament.
Now, none of those eight issues I've just referred to are fringe demands. They're credible, popular, and morally based policies. They are intended to address inequality, climate change, poverty and the failings within our electoral system. They are all policies with a moral purpose, and yet the Labour leadership is turning its back on them all.
Labour's response is in fact to be silent on public ownership, to reject wealth taxation in all its forms, and to dog whistle on migration, whilst giving a green light to new oil and gas licenses, and refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap, whilst carrying on with arms sales to Israel, and punishing MPs for dissent, while excluding the possibility of proportional representation for elections to parliament entirely.
This is not a policy of triangulation by the Labour Party leadership, where it tries to find the common ground where as many people as possible might vote for Labour as a consequence of putting forward policies which find a common ground.
It isn't that at all.
It is capitulation.
Labour is fighting on ground staked out by the right-wing press, the City of London and the fossil fuel lobby.
It has ceded the left entirely.
There is no one left arguing for the sorts of policies that people who have always traditionally joined the Labour Party want because they are on the left of politics.
It has literally hollowed out its own party as a consequence. Hundreds of thousands of people have already left it, and probably many more will do so, because it is refusing to deliver what the people who pay the subs actually want as a consequence of doing so.
The Labour Party once got its energy from its membership.
Its membership actually gave rise to the party, the Labour Party. The Methodist chapel and the Trade Union Lodge combined to fight for the cause of working people. But now that energy is draining away. A hollow centralised party cannot inspire or deliver, and it's very clearly leaving the public with a sense of emptiness.
At the time of recording, Labour is standing at 21% in opinion polls, which admittedly puts it second in the party rankings, but it's 10% behind Reform, and that's a measure of how far it has fallen in every sense that you can imagine.
Labour has to now listen to its members. They are not asking for extreme policies.
They're asking for sense, and it has to lead with moral purpose now. It cannot follow the Daily Mail for any longer. It must act as if people matter.
And that means it has to act boldly on climate, on inequality and democracy.
It has to have one mantra, which is to ask with regard to every single policy that it proposes, does this policy harm the poorest? And if it does, it doesn't do it, and if it helps the poorest, it does it. That's 📍 the guiding principle that Labour should have. It has to think that way if it's to repair and manage the decline in our society and reverse it so that we have a chance of prospering again.
The Compass Poll shows what Labour's members want.
Change can only come when people demand it.
The choice is urgent and unavoidable.
Labour must change course urgently, by which I mean now. This September, at its party conference, is the chance it's got to give itself a new direction. The members and the movements that support it must turn up the pressure as a consequence.
The country is broken.
Polite management will not now do.
Labour has to show moral courage, but will it?
That's the question I ask, and I'm going to ask it of you as well because there is a poll below this video. What do you think? Will Labour change course now? Could Keir Starmer discover moral courage? Or is Labour now a lost cause? Let us know because your opinion matters.
Poll
Has Labour betrayed its membership?
- Yes (67%, 286 Votes)
- They won't change course whether they have or not (30%, 128 Votes)
- Who cares? (2%, 8 Votes)
- No (0%, 2 Votes)
Total Voters: 424
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The majority of Labour members do not want any part of the NHS privatised. Yet a headline just two days ago reported:
“‘Past mistakes must be avoided’: anxiety as Labour eyes public-private funding for NHS” (20 Aug 2025) The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/aug/20/labour-public-private-funding-model-nhs-england
It is not ideological want a nationalised public-run NHS, but knowing that public-private funding is a complete disaster:
“Tony Blair’s Private Finance deals still haunt the NHS, new league table reveals” (2024)
https://weownit.org.uk/news/tell-wes-streeting-no-new-pfi/
“New study links hospital privatisation to worse patient care” (2024)
https://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2024-02-29-new-study-links-hospital-privatisation-worse-patient-care
“Private Finance Initiative: hospitals will bring taxpayers 60 years of pain” (2011) The Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/8279974/Private-Finance-Initiative-hospitals-will-bring-taxpayers-60-years-of-pain.html
So why the push for privatised services? I would think it is because:
“How private health has invested in Wes Streeting” (2024)
https://goodlawproject.org/how-private-health-has-invested-in-wes-streeting/
“EveryDoctor Uncovers Millions in Private Healthcare Donations to UK Politicians” (2025)
https://www.unionsafety.eu/docs/HSNewsItems%202025/May/EveryDoctorUncoversMillionsInPrivateHealthcareDonationsTo%20UKPoliticians.html
Thanks, as ever.
Might we be seeing a “Control Detatchment” form of crypto-fascism in the Labour Party and, possibly, nationally?
Yes
No steer and Rachel from accounts show the same “I’m not for turning” as Thatcher.
The wilderness beckons in 2029 for LINO.
In the meantime the UK continues the downward spiral of greater wealth inequality, increasing poverty, hollowing out of public services including privatisation of the NHS, increasing health issues, and so on.
Thereby setting up the 2029 election as very winnable for the far right.
Oligarchy rules these days – everywhere it seems – and is it not always propelled by money?
“Labour must change course urgently”
No Labour must NOT change course. It must keep going until, like the Tories, it has driven itself into irrelevance. It is so thoroughly rotten, there is no coming back. With it gone Sultana/Corbyn, Plaid Cymru, SNP can take over (hopefully).
Well said Sean W. In voting for over sixty years I have always had an inherent distrust of the Labour Party, that, despite their fine ideals which were badly needed at their inception, the present incarnation is so far removed from that idea as to be almost invisible. In particular the damage done to Scotland financially with the enormous P.F.I debt burden which costs the Scottish people many millions each year. And why so many in our country persist in voting for a political party based in another country is, frankly, beyond my ken.
Agree with all the comments. Which leaves: what’s next? Pointers will be provided next year (Wales & Scotland).
If LINO and the ghastly Tories are destroyed (fingers crossed) this will accelerate the crumbling of these two parties.
Deform? How well or how badly they do will define how fast the money moves to them.
There is also the question of the shape & accountability (= participation of members) in new parties
Labour has a long & unpleasant history of resembling the USSR politburo – directions come from on high & parties members toe the party line – enforced by assorted committees and control of local branches (witness the witch hunt by LINO zionists against Labout members that want an end to the genocide)..
Locally to me Labour has contracted dramatically, the residue being right wingers (one time friends of people like John Mann and Ruth Smeeth) and some very good town councillors who pretend all is OK or will change with conference. The whole left has gone.
It’s music to my ears that LINO are crashing into obscurity.
LINO did sweet eff all for Scotland where it was in power for decades prior to the great Scottish kick out at the 2015 Westminster election (sadly reversed last year).
As for LINO’s support for the genocide in Palestine .. no party deserves to be removed from power more than LINO does.
If there was even a semblance of democracy within the party – Starmer and co just wouldn’t be able to do what they are doing. They are funded by outside interests and very happy to get rid of members and unions money.
I am a member ….
We need a Commission on the Constitution – that ensures minimal democratic standards for all political parties. Democratic decisions coming up from grassroots local parties should be the way national policy is determined. It never has been like that but at least post 1945 there was a semblance….
Labour just lost another council seat in the North East to a successful combined campaign by a progressive coalition who agreed to back the popular Green candidate. Compass were involved.
Article in Canary today by James Driscoll. A really bad result for LINO and a pointer to the value of progressive co-operation.
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/08/22/green-party-south-jesmond/
Some other interesting headlines too.
This reminds me of Brecht’s poem, “The Solution”:
“After the uprising of June 17th the Secretary of the Authors’ Union had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee which said that the people had squandered the government’s confidence and could only win it back by redoubled labour. Wouldn’t it be simpler in that case if the government dissolved the people and elected another?”
Have Starmer and his apparatchiks read Brecht for insporarion, I wonder?
🙂
As a retired survey researcher, who once worked for one of the polling organisations you often cite, I worry about your question framing. Your answer codes need to be mutually exclusive and these ones are not. Both folk who (like me) feel that ‘no’ is the right answer and those who feel that it is ‘yes’ can honestly answer ‘They won’t change course whether they have or not’ is true. This muddies the waters!
I know this is a tad pedantic, but hey-ho it was my job for decades! Very happy to advise if asked!!
Noted
Thanks
And you slightly miss the point. Because I know my sample is already biased I am interested in the nunace of the choice. Does that alter your view?
@ Patten Case
I’m a case (no pun intended) in point to illustrate your reply to RM. I read all the poll questions and clicked on ‘Yes’ first, followed by ‘They’ll never change course even if they have to’ (or words to that effect) immediately afterwards.
But the poll only registered my 2nd click (the ‘not changing course’ one.) AS both strongly and more or less equally reflected my position I thought I could register both… I couldn’t.
Had I know that I would just have chosen the ‘Yes’ answer as that answer had the slightest edge over the ‘Not Changing’ one.
So I should always allow multiple answers?
Quite the contary. A simple solution is to state ‘only one answer is allowed’ if that is the case. If not, then ‘answer as many as you like’ or whatever.
38 Degrees do this in their questionaires; sometimes the former, sometimes the latter. It helps, given that I’m not Mystic Meg, yet I want to answer both acurately to myself and to also be of use to the questioner if at all possible.
When I am faced with two or more answers that can reflect my choices in more or less equal measure, all at the same time, then that does indeed confuse the issue from my point of view.
Perhaps I’m just a bit of a numpty when it comes to doing polls/questionires? I confess that I am often confused by both; they’re either too black & white, or not clear enough… URGHHH! Does my head in.
I suspect that asking questions is even more difficult than answering them! Maybe that is what Patten Smith (not Patten Case; no idea where that came from?) was intimating. For what it’s worth, I think he has a point.
Either way, your poll ended up scewed by 1 point as I’d have answered ‘yes’ and not the one that actually got registered (the ‘they won’t change regardless’ one.) The trials & tribulatiations of being a pollster are not what I would want!
Thanks.
I will definitely bear these comments in mind.
Liebour are a spent force with no way back. Over the next three years Jeremy Corbyn’s new party will probably become the home of traditional Labour voters.
Starmer and Reeves, but now also Cooper, have managed to alienate almost everyone who foolishly believed their manifesto and voted them into power.
Also, bear in mind that many “left” or socialist member of the Labour Party have left. The 300,000 or so remaining are either hoping that there is hope for a progressive Labour programme, or are confident that the Starmer capitulation to capital is the Right Thing.