Does Compass point in the right direction?

So Compass have launched “Compass Labour”  as part of a wider project to campaign to bring together a “progressive majority”. 

On the one hand this is an idea which pops up from time to time when it looks like the Tories cannot be defeated any other way under our “first past the post” electoral system. Amongst the problems with this is that one of the key elements of any “progressive alliance” (the Liberal Democrats) turned out not to be so progressive when they got the opportunity to be in Government between 2010 and 2015.

On the other hand - from the perspective of Brighton and Hove - there is a lot to be said for a genuinely progressive “progressive majority” in our city where the great majority of voters vote either Labour or Green. After the May 2019 local elections, recognising the similarity between the manifesto commitments of the two parties, the Labour administration and Green opposition came together to pursue key policy objectives - an accord which has (so far) survived the Greens becoming the administration and Labour the opposition following the suspension/resignation of some Labour Councillors, in July of this year.

Our electoral system makes it hard for genuinely progressive individuals in different parties to find common ground, because those parties generally compete for support from some of the same voters - and also because the most partisan of members tend to dominate discussion in any particular party.

This is, I suppose, at the least, a discussion worth having (again).