Labour comes to the home of progressive cooperation

Comrades gathering for Labour Party Conference in Brighton will have plenty of opportunity to consider issues of controversy – if not “do we need a Deputy Leader?” What precisely should our stance be in relation to Brexit?

However, yesterday’s worldwide demonstrations for climate justice show us what the most important issues really are (if the next General Election is about Brexit more than it is about the Climate Crisis, that will simply illustrate what a sorry and parochial little island we have become).

The scale of the crisis facing humanity certainly calls for effective unity on the part of those who can see that scale – and that is why it is so timely and appropriate that Party Conference will be opened with a welcoming speech from the Leader of Brighton and Hove Council, my friend and comrade, Nancy Platts.

Following May’s local elections in the City, where Labour held our position as the largest Party (the first time any Party had done that since 2003), we did not have a majority. However, we saw that our 20 Labour Councillors had been elected on a radical manifesto with many striking similarities to that on which 19 Green Councillors had been elected.

The two parties recognised a shared responsibility to work together on key issues to deliver the objectives supported by the large majority of voters in Brighton and Hove. It is early days for this ambitious attempt to work together, but already we can show the example of a joint approach to the housing crisis (in the City with the least affordable rents in the country).

A radical approach, inspired from the Labour Left, can unite not only the breadth of our own Party but, reaching out respectfully to other genuine progressives with whom we engage as equals, we can build a wider and more effective unity.

We have come a long way in the past two years, but we have much further to go.