Draft:Factions in the UK Labour Party

The Labour Party of the United Kingdom has been described as a "broad church" political party with several competing factions and groups. The four main factions in the Labour Party are the new Labour right represented by Progressive Britain, the old Labour right represented by Labour First, the soft left represented by Open Labour and the Labour left or "hard left" represented by Momentum.

For much of its history, the Labour Party has suffered from factional infighting. Factionalism was particularly strong during the infighting between the hard left and old Labour right in the 1980s and in recent years has increased following Jeremy Corbyn's election as party leader in 2015.

Overview
The Labour Party is one of the two main political parties in the United Kingdom. It is typically placed on the centre-left of the political spectrum. Labour has been described as a "broad church" party with several competing factions, groupings and political ideologies. The broad church dates back to the founding of the Scottish Labour Party in 1888; Keir Hardie founded the party as a broad church of trade unionists, socialists and other political radicals as a means to emancipate the working class. When Hardie founded the Labour Party in 1900, he expected its leaders to maintain this broad church and keep it united around a "socialistic" policy platform. However, the United Kingdom's two-party system has made it difficult for Labour to keep itself and its broad church united, and has led to the emergence of Labour factions across the country and its different legislatures. The first-past-the-post electoral system has forced the Labour Party to appeal to a broad spectrum of political ideologies to remain electable. This has allowed for an ideologically diverse party membership, which has led to more factional divisions. In other electoral systems such as the electoral system of Germany, many of the party's members would instead join other parties, for example green or socialist parties.

Labour's ideologically diverse membership, as well as its broad church, has led to a factional and ideological split within the party between more moderate social democratic members who accept capitalism and favour compromise, electability and reforms to the system, and more ideological left-wing democratic socialist members who favour a fundamental change to society. There are many other ideological positions that exist on this ideological spectrum. Historically, Labour's ideological divisions led to the formation of two main rivalling "left" and "right" factions in the party; the Labour left is the left-wing of the Labour Party and the Labour right is the right-wing of the Labour Party. The rivalry between the left and right can be traced as far back as the 1920s and continues into the present day. For a period in the 1980s and 1990s, the party's left–right split was replaced by a different factional divide between Labour's modernisers and traditionalists. The left–right split had re-emerged by the early 2000s, with the Labour left and Labour right becoming the two main wings of the modern Labour Party.

Factions in the modern Labour Party are typically based around the party's left–right split. The modern party has, broadly speaking, four main factions which are spread across the party's left–right spectrum. The Labour left itself is one of the main factions. Sometimes known as the hard left, it has been described as Labour's socialist or democratic socialist faction. Another main faction is the soft left, described as a loosely-defined socialist or social democratic faction historically on the left of the party but now generally thought to occupy the broad ideological space between the left and right (otherwise known as the centre or middle-ground of the party). The other main factions in the party are the old Labour right, described as taking a social democratic position, and the new Labour right, described as taking a more neoliberal position, which together form the modern Labour right. On the national left–right political spectrum, the hard left has been described as taking a left-wing to far-left (but not ultra-left) position, the soft left as taking a centre-left to left-wing position, and the old and new right as taking a centre-left to centrist position.

Disputed terminology
The term "hard left" can be considered pejorative. While the term did reflect a genuine divide between the two historical factions on the Labour left, the other being the soft left, the term has since become synonymous with the Labour left as a whole. It has been said that "hard left" can carry negative connotations which can suggest a more uncompromising approach to socialism. Historically, supporters of this faction have preferred the term "outside left". Similarly, the term "soft left" has also been said to carry negative connotations which can suggest a less enthusiastic approach to socialism. However, members of this faction have used the term as a self-descriptor to distance themselves from the "hard left". Soft left MP Lisa Nandy wants a "better name" for the soft left and said the term "sounds a bit like you’ve sort of collapsed into a jellyfish". Open Labour, the main organisation representing the soft left, has preferred to use the term "open left". Historically, the soft left was also called the "Tribunite left" and, to contrast it with the hard left, the "inside left". The term "right-wing" as a descriptor for groups and members of what can be considered a left-wing party can also be problematic as it usually has pejorative connotations. Most members of the Labour right do not openly describe themselves as such unless they are about to leave the party. Other names for the right of the party include the Labour "moderates" or "centre-right".

For the purposes of this article, the terms "soft left" and "Labour right" will be used. The term "hard left" will be used to describe the faction on the Labour left which emerged in the 1970s and the 1980s while the term "Labour left" will be used to describe the modern left of the party, also known as the "hard left", to avoid pejorative connotations.