- NEW/PURPLE LABOUR
- The think-tank Progress, founded in 1995, was one of the original pressure groups to support Tony Blair’s ‘Third Way’, and continues to champion New Labour policies. In 2011, the group published a series of essays by Blairite MPs in book called ‘The Purple Book’, giving rise to the new term Purple Labour as a means to describe the moderate to right wing of the party.
- During the rise of Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, former shadow ministers Chuka Umunna and Tristram Hunt announced a new Parliamentary group called Labour for the Common Good, aimed at moderate MPs, Peers and councillors to promote more centrist and centre-left policies.
- The group has been called “the Resistance” by the media, as it hopes to stop the party from moving too far to the left under Corbyn.
- OLD LABOUR
- Left-wing activists and MPs founded the Campaign for Labour Party Democracy in 1973 to pressure the party to change its constitution to ensure that the party’s policies more closely reflected the more left-wing views of its membership base.
- Jeremy Corbyn was a member of the CLPD prior to his election as Labour leader.
- The new left-wing group Momentum also formed in 2015 following Jeremy Corbyn’s successful election, and the growth in new Labour Party members and registered supporters.
- It describes itself as “a network of people and organisations that will continue the energy and enthusiasm of Jeremy’s campaign.”
- BLUE LABOUR
- The group Blue Labour was founded in 2010 by the Labour MP Maurice Glasman.
- It aims to “put relationships and responsibility at the heart of British politics” and argues that in order to win back the working-class voters the party has lost to the Conservatives and UKIP; the party must promote more socially conservative policies on issues like immigration and crime and should defend traditional institutions and family values.
- The faction also rejects the neo-liberal, free market economic policies endorsed by New Labour.
The new members’ group Labour Together has been viewed as an attempt to combine New Labour and Blue Labour supporters, to counter the influence of the growing left-wing group Momentum.