Former Labour leader Neil Kinnock has joined senior figures from the Blair and Brown era to unite around a new “mainstream” group of MPs aimed at countering the twin threat of the hard-Left and a new centrist party.
Kinnock made an impassioned speech for previous factions to “come together” at the inaugural meeting of deputy leader Tom Watson’s Future Britain Group, with more than 140 MPs and peers in attendance.
Around 80 MPs - a third of the total - turned up for the gathering as Kinnock and Watson were joined by former Cabinet minister Peter Mandelson in issuing a rallying cry to restore “pluralism and tolerance” to Labour.
Although few made direct criticisms of Jeremy Corbyn and all stressed they were not “a party-within-a-party”, a string of former Cabinet ministers made plain that they wanted a fightback against activists who had effectively forced MPs including Luciana Berger out of the party.
Kinnock, who famously routed the Trotskyist group Militant in the 1980s, said that while Jeremy Corbyn had given the party a “desirability” among some voters, it was now time to give it “credibility” on policy to prove to voters that it could form a competent government.
One former Cabinet minister told HuffPost UK afterwards: “This is the only chance left for the party. It’s clear the party has been seized [by the Left] and asset stripped.”
The packed meeting in a Commons committee room on Monday night saw more than a dozen ex-ministers from the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown governments unite with senior allies of Kinnock and Ed Miliband.
Watson said that defection of Labour MPs to the new The Independent Group of MPs had been a personal “wake up call to step up and do more” to stem a bigger split in the party.
“I really fear that unless we restore pluralism and tolerance to this party it will be irreparably damaged and we will see a schism bigger than any we have experienced in our long history,” he said.
“I know that the last thing the party needs is another faction and this group is certainly not one. This meeting is intended to pull the Parliamentary Labour Party together at a time when our country needs a united Labour Party with all shades of red represented.”
Mandelson stressed that in the 1980s, after the SDP launched, it took an alliance of social democrats and democratic socialists within Labour to help it fend off a wider schism.
Darren Jones, MP for Bristol North West who is convening the new grouping, said its main work will be on policy, and to allow MPs to be listened to with “respect without fear of being isolated or criticised or receiving hate speech”.
“As Peter Mandelson said, he’s an unabashed Blairite but this is about the coming together of the TBs and GBs, that’s history now in the Labour party. What we are representing is the mainstream of our party,” Jones said.
The gathering was attended by a string of Corbyn’s current frontbench, including shadow transport secretary Andy McDonald, shadow ministers Gloria de Piero, Jim McMahon and Justin Madders, as well as three Opposition whips.
Former Cabinet ministers David Blunkett, Peter Hain, Hilary Armstrong, Hilary Benn, Yvette Cooper, Ann Taylor and Ben Bradshaw were all present, as well as leading Brown- and Miliband-era figures Spencer Livermore and Stewart Wood.
Jones added after the meeting: “Some have said this is a new faction, in fact it’s the complete opposite. As Neil Kinnock was saying this is a coming together of previous factions.
“We are very much looking forward to working together to put forward the ideas that we need to transform the country and to put Labour into government. We are not the ERG [Tory European Research Group of Brexiteers].
“We are not a party within a party, we are the coming together of all the wings of the Labour party. We won’t be caucusing in that way.”