{"id":530696,"date":"2026-04-14T17:56:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530696\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T17:56:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T17:56:09","slug":"group-of-labour-mps-proposes-new-policies-to-beat-rightwing-populism-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/530696\/","title":{"rendered":"Group of Labour MPs proposes new policies to beat rightwing populism | Labour"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of Labour<\/a> MPs is to propose a series of new policies to defeat rightwing populism, including a Swiss-style deal with the EU, lower electricity prices, a robust defence of climate policies and a reduced dependence on Washington.<\/p>\n

Among those contributing to a new collection of essays is the former cabinet minister Anneliese Dodds<\/a>, who calls for a fundamental reappraisal of the UK-US relationship, saying alliances should be based on \u201ca hardheaded assessment of which nations share our values and goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrew Lewin, the Labour MP for Welwyn Hatfield who led calls for the government to accept the EU\u2019s youth mobility deal, said in his essay that the UK must now seek to forge deep new economic ties with the EU including greater freedom of movement.<\/p>\n

The pamphlet \u2013 titled Common Endeavour <\/a>\u2013 is set to be published by eight of the party\u2019s most ambitious MPs as ways to try to revive the government\u2019s currently bleak fortunes, with Keir Starmer\u2019s party now polling behind Reform, the Conservatives and the Greens in the latest YouGov poll.<\/p>\n

The MPs \u2013 who have written on challenges from climate, to the cost of living, to international relations \u2013 have been holding ideas salons in parliament called \u201cLabour Thinks\u201d to try to rewrite Labour\u2019s offering.<\/p>\n

The Loughborough MP Jeevun Sandher, who convened the initial group and has written the pamphlet\u2019s essay on the economy, said there was a feeling among MPs that they wanted to make a bigger intellectual contribution to the party\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t shrink away from it. We\u2019re in the middle of a hurricane. We\u2019ve got an affordability crisis and smartphone-fuelled hate that\u2019s tearing at us from within. You\u2019ve got war and great power politics threatening us from without. And you have to deal with that all at a singular moment. That\u2019s what we have step up and do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lewin said it was right that a far bolder vision for a closer EU relationship was set out \u2013 including making the case for freedom of movement with a Swiss-style emergency brake.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to be confident enough as a party to at least have that debate now because we are in such a changed space from where we were two years ago \u2026 looking at migration numbers of almost net zero this year,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has a profound impact on growth and there is a case for more movement with the EU from principally young professionals that\u2019s good for the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among those who have authored the collection of essays are several with government roles \u2013 Sandher is parliamentary private secretary to the Department of Business and Trade, Luke Murphy has the same role in the Department for Transport, as does Anna Gelderd in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, and Liam Byrne is chair of the business and trade select committee. Two of the defence select committee \u2013 Calvin Bailey and Alex Baker \u2013 have also authored the pamphlet\u2019s essay on security.<\/p>\n

Byrne argues in his piece that Labour should not treat Reform as a protest vote but that rightwing populism is an \u201cAmerican franchise operating on British soil\u201d \u2013 and that it should explicitly campaign on the idea that populism is a foreign import, funded and directed by US interests to undermine British social cohesion.<\/p>\n

Sandher argued in his piece that a lack of affordability for basic pleasures has been fuelling \u201cfrustration and fury\u201d among voters, particularly the low pay of non-graduate jobs.<\/p>\n

He said the government should seek to vastly expand those jobs in the green transition and construction \u2013 which cannot be done by machines abroad \u2013 and seek to find more universal measures to give cost of living relief even to middle income families, such as the recent cuts to energy bills by removing some green levies.<\/p>\n

Murphy, whose essay is on climate, argues for the government to look at faster ways to reduce bills by shifting more levies off bills and said the government should move quickly towards ending the system where fossil gas determines the price of all electricity.<\/p>\n

But he also urged the government to be bolder in making the case for climate action and to stop underestimating public support.<\/p>\n

Geldard\u2019s essay, focused on AI and data, argues for the UK to build its own sovereign fund based on the wealth of data that the UK holds \u2013 rather than selling data piecemeal to corporations.<\/p>\n

She urges government to build \u201can AI model we own, running on infrastructure we control, trained on data we hold and governed under democratic oversight. Such a model need not compete on every benchmark with the largest American or Chinese systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt needs to be best-in-class in the domains that matter to national governance. The UK\u2019s advantage lies in data that private firms cannot currently access at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pamphlet, published by the Fabians, has the name Common Endeavour to echo the wording of clause four of Labour\u2019s rulebook, which was controversially changed under Tony Blair during a 1995 party conference.<\/p>\n

But the group\u2019s work will be seen by some as the mirror image of the efforts of the ambitious newly elected Conservatives who wrote the treatise Britannia Unchained in 2010 \u2013 including Priti Patel, Dominic Raab and Kwasi Kwarteng \u2013 under David Cameron\u2019s Conservatives, which urged their own party to be bolder in government.<\/p>\n

Both Lewin and Sandher said they hoped the essays would help the party better make a positive case. \u201cThe world is different in April 2026 than it was in July 2024, nobody is going to doubt that. The pace of change has been accelerated by the last couple of months in particular,\u201d Lewin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a consequence of that, any governing party needs to think hard about what its priorities are and where we need to change and put extra emphasis. In some areas, that means we need to go further and faster. I don\u2019t think there are people in government who would disagree with that. But unless you\u2019re doing the thinking and saying: \u201c\u2018Look, this is how the world looks now, here are the new challenges,\u2019 then you won\u2019t rise to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A group of Labour MPs is to propose a series of new policies to defeat rightwing populism, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":530697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-530696","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/530697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}