After Andy Burnham’s challenge to the Labour leadership, what is next for the new soft left project?
The highly successful mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, was a prominent figure in the recent launch of Mainstream, a new soft left group set up by centre-left think tank Compass and Open Labour. As one of the big Labour names involved, alongside Lord Alf Dubs, Momentum founder Jon Lansman and Labour MPs Clive Lewis, Dawn Butler, Clive Efford and Alex Sobel, he quickly became closely associated with the project.
Then came the rumours of an insurgence just before Labour conference. Burnham’s name hit the headlines as he refused to rule out a return to Westminster and a challenge to Keir Starmer. The speculation went as far as to suggest he could run in suspended Labour MP Andrew Gwynne’s seat in Gorton and Denton or in Graham Stringer MP’s seat – rumours which have since been rejected.
His speech at a conference fringe event did little to quash the talk. If Mainstream had played a part in Burnham’s interventions what did his failure at conference mean for the fledgling group? And to conjure up some crude comparisons – was Mainstream to be to Labour’s soft left what Momentum was to the hard left? And Andy Burnham its Jeremy Corbyn?
Burnham for PM?
Momentum was set up in October 2015 after Corbyn’s leadership victory, not to get him elected. But could Mainstream have been set up to make Burnham leader? After all, he is popular choice for leader. A poll of 704 Labour members conducted by YouGov in September found that 62% would back Burnham, and just 29% would back Starmer.
Rachael Maskell MP, who had the Labour whip suspended when she voted against the government’s welfare bill in July and signed Mainstream’s founding statement, was direct about wanting Mainstream to help make Burnham leader.
“I personally can’t see anybody else who can save our country from the far-right,” she said of Burnham.
Maskell thinks he is one of few figures in the Labour Party who has the leadership and communication skills to pull that off: “Those skills I haven’t identified in many people, I’m not saying any people but not many people in Westminster.”
The Labour MP for York said that “There’s plan A, which is that Andy becomes prime minister.”
“There’s plan B, Andy doesn’t become prime minister but we have such significant influence in whatever emerges,” Maskell added.
She said that Mainstream has “got to plot both paths”, adding that “if Andy is serious about doing this and still up for it, we’ve got to plot away for him to come back.”
Mainstream ‘wasn’t set up for that’
Other founding members in Mainstream were quick to dismiss the idea that the group’s purpose is to help a Burnham leadership campaign.
“Mainstream’s never done that, first of all. It wasn’t set up for that,” Alex Sobel, MP for Leeds Central and Headingley and another Mainstream founding member told Left Foot Forward.
“It’s just not the aim of the organization. I just want to say that very clearly. He came in very late to sign up. He came in literally at the last minute,” he added.
Sobel said that other equally well-known Labour MPs who he wouldn’t name had expressed interest in joining Mainstream before Burnham got involved, but in the end hadn’t signed up. Burnham’s involvement was welcome, but the group wasn’t created for him.
Luke Hurst, national co-ordinator at Mainstream, was careful to stress that the organisation doesn’t want to become bogged down in talking about individuals at the expense of discussing cultural issues within the party.
“We’re really glad that Andy’s one of our backers and he obviously has a really important contribution to make to Labour because he’s pioneered popular and transformative policies in Greater Manchester,” he said, “but there’s a risk that this entire debate becomes about people rather than culture.”
He added that if Mainstream were ever to take a view on whether Burnham should be leader, the decision would be voted on by Mainstream members.
The unsuccessful challenge
Burnham’s quiet challenge was swiftly flattened by the disciplined party run by Morgan McSweeney – some may say, aided by the persistent questioning of lobby journalists running around after the mayor at conference.
To a packed room at a Labour for Electoral Reform fringe event, Burnham said a “climate of fear” was shutting down “open debate” in the party. He criticised the leadership for suspending MPs like Maskell for trying to protect disability benefits. The Manchester mayor dismissed the idea he was speaking out “purely for his own ambition”, saying he was speaking for thousands of councillors worried about next May’s local elections.
Burnham’s speech was met with criticism from the Prime Minister’s backers. Ex-Home secretary Alan Johnson, who was encouraged to run against then prime minister Gordon Brown in 2009, told Burnham “Do what I did, go and find a television camera, stand in front of it and say: ‘I have no intention of standing against the elected leader of our country’.”
Despite the failed challenge, Mainstream members maintain that Burnham’s intervention had merit.
Maskell said Burnham was “a really important voice at conference, I think he offered a lot of hope”.
“Some people say, did he overreach? And I don’t think he did,” she said.
She described Burnham’s intervention as “a respectful challenge” to the Labour leadership, and said it must be listened to because the polls are “spelling out disaster”.
Maskell didn’t see any issue with someone of Burnham’s proven capability giving advice, but added: “clearly it was a problem to the leadership and they tried to kill it off and shut it down.”
Hurst said that “The point that Andy was making about the culture of the party was vindicated by the response to the things he said at conference really.”
Sobel said that politicians as successful and popular as Burnham offer important lessons for the party.
However, he acknowledged that Burnham’s intervention probably didn’t go down well with the Labour leadership.
“I’ve not had a conversation with anybody in the cabinet, leadership or number about Andy Burnham at any point so I’ve no idea what they think, but I imagine that’s probably the bit that they would have liked the least,” Sobel said.
What’s next for Mainstream?
The group is soon to be two months old, and now has 2,000 members. The deputy leadership candidate Mainstream endorsed, Lucy Powell, won the election. Sobel said he thinks “Lucy will open up a dialogue with Mainstream”. He added that her seat on the National Executive Committee is important for internal Labour matters. “She’s particularly focused on Labour democracy, and I hope that’s where we’ll have the most engagement with her,” he said.
At a local level, Hurst said members come forward saying they want to organise within Constituency Labour Party (CLP). Ahead of the 2026 local elections, he said that councillors have expressed interest in forming a councillors’ network.
More broadly, Hurst told Left Foot Forward that around 30 more Labour MPs, who he said he couldn’t name, have expressed interest in joining Mainstream. He noted that the current culture in the party made it difficult for some MPs to sign Mainstream’s initial founding statement, which they published on 7 September.
“Various MPs said to us ‘we support what you’re doing, but we can’t sign this statement’ because of that top down disciplinarian culture within the party, which meant that some people were concerned about being part of something which says ‘look the party’s in a pretty dire place’,” Hurst said.
Mainstream’s aim is to push the Labour leadership to change course and improve its chances of taking on Reform UK in 2029.
Realistic but radical policies
As part of this, Mainstream wants the leadership to adopt more pragmatic but radical policies. It has yet to draw up policy plans and have members vote on them, but there are several popular ideas among Labour’s ‘mainstream’ that are likely to feature.
According to polling of Labour members commissioned by Mainstream, scrapping the two-child limit, public ownership of utilities, taxes on wealth are all policies that are overwhelmingly popular.
Sobel said that first, Mainstream needs to develop its internal processes and views on internal Labour Party democracy, and then it will develop public policy in consultation with its membership.
He said: “We’ll need more time to develop a comprehensive policy platform. I’m not sure how in-depth we’ll go, but we are 100% not running an alternative Labour Party.”
The Leeds and Headingley MP said he hopes Mainstream will have a policy platform in place in the coming months, but it could take up to a year: “I’m always hopeful so months is my preference, but these things are resource dependent.”
Central to Mainstream’s project is opening up debate within Labour. Hurst believes that the “centralising political experiment” led by “a hyperfactional group at the top of the party” is contributing to Labour’s malaise and slump in the polls.
He said discussion has “kind of dried up” in the Labour party, and that it’s part of a broader cultural problem in Labour that concerns Mainstream. Though they may disagree on some issues, Mainstream is willing to engage with members across the left, centre, and right of the party.
“Things are pretty dire and it’s going to take all of us to correct course,” Hurst concluded.
Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward
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