Three months on from Labour’s victory on the back of Sunak’s historical defeat and it feels as though all hope has been lost. The very man who attacked the Conservatives on their sleaze, scandal and austerity has now been embroiled in sleaze scandals of his own and has enacted his own austerity policies. People are, quite understandably, losing hope.
But not everyone. In the heart of Newcastle, a new movement is on the rise. One which aims to take on British politics in its current form and fight in the interests of the people. In a Holiday Inn in Jesmond, Majority holds its first ever annual conference.
Who are the members of Majority?
Defined by the members themselves, Majority is a cross-party/no-party progressive alliance that aims to support progressive candidates in elections. Built from activists and voters who campaigned in Jamie Driscoll’s campaign to become the independent North East Metro Mayor back in May, Majority offers support to candidates who come from a progressive background and sign up to the Nolan principles. Those principles are; selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Looking around the packed conference room, and it’s a room of people on the left. There are ex-Labour members there (many who backed Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in years gone by), Green Party members and councillors there as well as independent councillors. There are even a couple of Labour members there from what can be overheard, Labour members who are no fan of Keir Starmer’s leadership. Leading the charge, aside from the members, is the former North of Tyne Mayor turned independent candidate for North East Metro Mayor – Jamie Driscoll. When asked in audience participatory sessions; the vast majority, if not entirety of the room, identified as left-wing.
But Hugo Fernley, Jamie’s political advisor in the North of Tyne Combined Authority, argued that given opinion polls done with people across the country, the audience are less left-wing and more in tune with the majority of public opinion across Britain. No prizes for guessing how the name came about.
What could the electoral impacts be?
Majority itself is not a political party but instead an alliance supporting a wide range of progressive candidates. These can range from independent candidates to Green Party candidates and even to some Labour ones “who slip through the net”, as long as they are progressive and sign up to the aforementioned Nolan principles.
The North East of England is currently a Labour stronghold but its grip on the region has been loosening lately. While it may have won 26 out of the 27 seats at the general election; locally it’s a different story. Independents and Greens have made breakthroughs in councils across the region. Add on to that Jamie Driscoll’s performance in the North East Metro Mayor election in May in which he got 126,652 votes (28.2% of the vote), and you have a break from the binary Labour vs Conservative two-horse race.
This doesn’t just show an appetite for change, an appetite for local politics and an appetite for more independent politics. It doesn’t, either, just show an appetite for smashing the current political system. It simply reinforces that there already is one. The major gains of Labour and the Liberal Democrats in the general election were nothing more than an electoral illusion. Both parties lost votes compared to the 2019 general election. The reason they did so well was that in the First Past the Post voting system, the Conservatives simply lost more. Considerably more. The only people who gained votes were those out against the usual run of the mill politics; the Green Party, Reform UK and the independent candidates.
If smaller parties and candidates were already making a breakthrough before Starmer’s unpopularity hit the big time, then an organised campaign under a Majority banner supporting them could lead to big trouble for Labour in its northern heartland and cause shockwaves across England as well. If not careful, Labour might well be looking at the North East of England’s answer to Scotland’s general election result of 2015.
There is a lot of anger at Labour right now and as of this moment, the Conservatives are showing no signs of bouncing back. Britain’s two main political players are in disarray and a power vacuum is emerging. Many might expect Reform to fill it, but could the new left-wing alliance beat them to the spot? In the next general election, could Majority and others like them tip the scales in enough constituencies to defeat both the Conservatives and Labour?
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