Manifesto to turn LINO - Labour in name only into a genuine Labour party

Enforcing Working Class MP Candidate Selection

The Trade Union movement has an institutional and democratic duty to enforce the selection of candidates drawn exclusively from working class backgrounds, preferably those with frontline work experience. We established the Labour Party to secure a direct voice for the people who create the wealth of this country. When the party’s parliamentary wing is overwhelmingly staffed by career graduates who speak the language code of the 'University Common Room,' the party is structurally incapable of hearing the voices of the shop floor, the hospital ward, the warehouse, the call centre or the factory line.

 

This disconnect is not accidental; it is a fundamental democratic failure that leaves the vast majority of affiliated union members without authentic representation, turning the Labour movement into a passive political concerto.

 

This failure of representation translates directly into political and economic incompetence, making change a strategic necessity.

 

The current Shadow Cabinet, typified by the Starmer/Reeves leadership, has demonstrated a willingness to adopt neoliberal, Thatcherite economic policies because they lack the lived experience to understand their destructive impact on frontline communities. A mandate demanding candidates with genuine working-class backgrounds would end this strategic blindness.

 

These candidates inherently possess the knowledge to prioritize domestic working-class investment over abstract geopolitical posturing and would ensure the economic policies of the next Labour Government are aligned with the interests of the people who fund the party.

 

Enforcing the mandate of recruiting MPs from frontline working class backgrounds, who preferably have front line working class job experience is the only way to re-assert the unions' stewardship and political influence over the Labour Party.

 

The Trade Union movement created, funded, and has sustained the Labour Party, yet it has allowed the party to be hijacked by a socially and linguistically disconnected elite. By using the power of the Trade Union movement and the threat of withdrawing endorsement or funding, we can force the selection of a new generation of MPs who look like the women and men operating industrial machinery, the people in the call centres, the people driving the delivery vans, the men and women in the warehouses and the women and men emptying the bins of Birmingham.

 

This is not just a call for better representation; it is the act of taking control and securing a working-class future for the party we formed built and own.

Turn LINO - labour in name only into a genuine Labour party