Labour figures who wrote competing ‘manifestos’ join forces to warn against tribalism

Two of Labour’s leading policy figures, who put forward “manifestos” for Andy Burnham and a centrist grouping, are to join forces to help forge new ideas for a future government.

The authors of the two essays – which have previously been described as competing visions for a Burnham- or Wes Streeting-led government – said Labour urgently required a serious intellectual debate about its direction rather than simply a change of personality.

The intervention comes after a week in which senior Labour figures including Burnham, Streeting and Keir Starmer responded with their own essays to a highly critical intervention by Tony Blair, which said the party should reject workers’ rights reforms and net zero and allow far greater market freedoms.

Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, who authored the Manchesterism essay, and Mark McVitie, who wrote the Labour Growth Group’s An Honest Day, said Labour must reject the idea of “tribes” – such as blue Labour, new Labour and soft left – and find common ground in opposing high everyday costs and predatory capitalism.

Lawrence (left) and McVitie said the ‘old loyalties were made for a world that has gone’. Photograph: Handouts

They said any future prime minister should grapple with serious policy instead of the “desert of ideas” in Labour while the party was in opposition.

Lawrence is an influential ally of Burnham. His essay, The Productive State, argued for sweeping new public control of essential utilities. He said the “false calm” in which any dissent was crushed while the party sought to win an election had hindered the operation of the government, and now was the time for robust debate that should not be seen as pure factionalism.

“Forging that agenda requires the robust testing of ideas and a spirit of pluralism and open debate that was missing. If Labour is to successfully reset, it needs that now, more than ever,” he told the Guardian. “But that is not a recipe for damaging division or indulgent introspection.

“The hidden truth is there is an emerging consensus that shares a diagnosis of Britain’s stagnation and a prescription for renewal: Britain pays too much for the basics because it is too hard to build, and the state has lost control of the foundations ordinary life and enterprise depend on.”