Choose To Fight! is a new pamphlet by Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism Co-Convenor Mike Cowley and the Red Paper Collective’s Vince Mills, which makes the case for socialists to fight for a better future from within the Labour Party.

Re-stating the case for political intervention in a Party where tens of thousands of socialists continue to organise alongside trade union affiliates, the pamphlet has a Foreword by former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP. He says, “Currently a new wave of protest and trade union and political action is building in our communities. Inevitably that struggle will permeate and force change onto the agenda of the Labour Party.”

The authors agree. Taking us through the history of the Party and the main arguments that have been levelled against the possibility of making it an organisation that can represent the interests and aspirations of working people, the authors remind us of the huge surge in membership and popular support when Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, despite the best efforts of Peter Mandelson and his co-thinkers within the Party apparatus to destroy these achievements.

The authors say:  “As Morgan McSweeney (previously Liz Kendall’s campaign manager in the 2015 leadership contest) and Labour Together insiders would go on to describe to the journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund for Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer (2025), the primary danger they saw facing the Party between 2015 and 2019 wasn’t a Tory party shifting rapidly to the right or the rise of UKIP, and the increasing concentration of power and wealth at the top of society. Instead, the very real possibility of a Labour government committed to a redistributive programme and a repositioning of the UK’s international relations posed an existential threat to the defenders of the status quo.”

The pamphlet raises some thoughtful questions about the failed experiment in left leadership which ended in 2019. They include:

• Should the party have moved to a system of mandatory re-selection of MPs?
• Did the leadership respond decisively enough to charges of anti-Semitism?
• Why did the left fail to build a campaigning hegemonic bloc after Corbyn’s 2015 victory?
• How can we prepare ourselves for the intensity of establishment counter-attacks on a future left leadership?
• Was the ‘one more push’ strategy in 2019 overly-optimistic, too defensive, draining activists of energy and initiative?

Keir Starmer’s counter-revolution has seen him break every one of his pledges form 2020 when he stood for the Party leadership, including a 5% wealth rax, public ownership of utilities, the abolition of Universal Credit, the placing of human rights at the heart of foreign policy and the defence of migrant rights.

He also promised to end internal factionalism – but it is the extreme factional behaviour of his own team, blocking candidates at all levels, alongside a lurch to the right in government, that has seen the Party plummeting in the opinion polls.

The frequent U-turns of the government, however, including the recent ending of the two-child benefit cap, underline the fact that the Party remains a terrain of struggle, rooted in its institutional links to the mass organisations of the working class. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of the Party membership polled recently supported a ‘move to the left’.

The authors conclude: “As things stand, the 2026 Scottish General Election looks likely to provide right-wing forces unprecedented in British political history a Holyrood platform. Presented with such morbid symptoms, Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism remain committed to building a movement both inside and outside the party that restores the demands of the founding members of the Labour Representation Committee to the centre of political debate – the independent representation of working-class interests in parliament, at work and throughout society.”

Choose to Fight! Is a available here. Look out too for the relaunch of the Campaign for Socialism’s journal The Citizen this month.

Choose To Fight!

Choose To Fight! is a new pamphlet by Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism Co-Convenor Mike Cowley and the Red Paper Collective’s Vince Mills, which makes the case for socialists to fight for a getter future from within the Labour Party.

Re-stating the case for political intervention in a Party where tens of thousands of socialists continue to organise alongside trade union affiliates, the pamphlet has a Foreword by former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP. He says, “Currently a new wave of protest and trade union and political action is building in our communities. Inevitably that struggle will permeate and force change onto the agenda of the Labour Party.”

The authors agree. Taking us through the history of the Party and the main arguments that have been levelled against the possibility of making it an organisation that can represent the interests and aspirations of working people, the authors remind us of the huge surge in membership and popular support when Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, despite the best efforts of Peter Mandelson and his co-thinkers within the Party apparatus to destroy these achievements.

The authors say:  “As Morgan McSweeney (previously Liz Kendall’s campaign manager in the 2015 leadership contest) and Labour Together insiders would go on to describe to the journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund for Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer (2025), the primary danger they saw facing the Party between 2015 and 2019 wasn’t a Tory party shifting rapidly to the right or the rise of UKIP, and the increasing concentration of power and wealth at the top of society. Instead, the very real possibility of a Labour government committed to a redistributive programme and a repositioning of the UK’s international relations posed an existential threat to the defenders of the status quo.”

The pamphlet raises some thoughtful questions about the failed experiment in left leadership which ended in 2019. They include:

• Should the party have moved to a system of mandatory re-selection of MPs?
• Did the leadership respond decisively enough to charges of anti-Semitism?
• Why did the left fail to build a campaigning hegemonic bloc after Corbyn’s 2015 victory?
• How can we prepare ourselves for the intensity of establishment counter-attacks on a future left leadership?
• Was the ‘one more push’ strategy in 2019 overly-optimistic, too defensive, draining activists of energy and initiative?

Keir Starmer’s counter-revolution has seen him break every one of his pledges form 2020 when he stood for the Party leadership, including a 5% wealth rax, public ownership of utilities, the abolition of Universal Credit, the placing of human rights at the heart of foreign policy and the defence of migrant rights.

He also promised to end internal factionalism – but it is the extreme factional behaviour of his own team, blocking candidates at all levels, alongside a lurch to the right in government, that has seen the Party plummeting in the opinion polls.

The frequent U-turns of the government, however, including the recent ending of the two-child benefit cap, underline the fact that the Party remains a terrain of struggle, rooted in its institutional links to the mass organisations of the working class. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of the Party membership polled recently supported a ‘move to the left’.

The authors conclude: “As things stand, the 2026 Scottish General Election looks likely to provide right-wing forces unprecedented in British political history a Holyrood platform. Presented with such morbid symptoms, Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism remain committed to building a movement both inside and outside the party that restores the demands of the founding members of the Labour Representation Committee to the centre of political debate – the independent representation of working-class interests in parliament, at work and throughout society.”

Choose to Fight! Is a available here. Look out too for the relaunch of the Campaign for Socialism’s journal The Citizen this month.

Choose To Fight!

Choose To Fight! is a new pamphlet by Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism Co-Convenor Mike Cowley and the Red Paper Collective’s Vince Mills, which makes the case for socialists to fight for a getter future from within the Labour Party.

Re-stating the case for political intervention in a Party where tens of thousands of socialists continue to organise alongside trade union affiliates, the pamphlet has a Foreword by former Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell MP. He says, “Currently a new wave of protest and trade union and political action is building in our communities. Inevitably that struggle will permeate and force change onto the agenda of the Labour Party.”

The authors agree. Taking us through the history of the Party and the main arguments that have been levelled against the possibility of making it an organisation that can represent the interests and aspirations of working people, the authors remind us of the huge surge in membership and popular support when Jeremy Corbyn became leader in 2015, despite the best efforts of Peter Mandelson and his co-thinkers within the Party apparatus to destroy these achievements.

The authors say:  “As Morgan McSweeney (previously Liz Kendall’s campaign manager in the 2015 leadership contest) and Labour Together insiders would go on to describe to the journalists Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund for Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer (2025), the primary danger they saw facing the Party between 2015 and 2019 wasn’t a Tory party shifting rapidly to the right or the rise of UKIP, and the increasing concentration of power and wealth at the top of society. Instead, the very real possibility of a Labour government committed to a redistributive programme and a repositioning of the UK’s international relations posed an existential threat to the defenders of the status quo.”

The pamphlet raises some thoughtful questions about the failed experiment in left leadership which ended in 2019. They include:

• Should the party have moved to a system of mandatory re-selection of MPs?
• Did the leadership respond decisively enough to charges of anti-Semitism?
• Why did the left fail to build a campaigning hegemonic bloc after Corbyn’s 2015 victory?
• How can we prepare ourselves for the intensity of establishment counter-attacks on a future left leadership?
• Was the ‘one more push’ strategy in 2019 overly-optimistic, too defensive, draining activists of energy and initiative?

Keir Starmer’s counter-revolution has seen him break every one of his pledges form 2020 when he stood for the Party leadership, including a 5% wealth rax, public ownership of utilities, the abolition of Universal Credit, the placing of human rights at the heart of foreign policy and the defence of migrant rights.

He also promised to end internal factionalism – but it is the extreme factional behaviour of his own team, blocking candidates at all levels, alongside a lurch to the right in government, that has seen the Party plummeting in the opinion polls.

The frequent U-turns of the government, however, including the recent ending of the two-child benefit cap, underline the fact that the Party remains a terrain of struggle, rooted in its institutional links to the mass organisations of the working class. At the same time, nearly two-thirds of the Party membership polled recently supported a ‘move to the left’.

The authors conclude: “As things stand, the 2026 Scottish General Election looks likely to provide right-wing forces unprecedented in British political history a Holyrood platform. Presented with such morbid symptoms, Scottish Labour Campaign for Socialism remain committed to building a movement both inside and outside the party that restores the demands of the founding members of the Labour Representation Committee to the centre of political debate – the independent representation of working-class interests in parliament, at work and throughout society.”

Choose to Fight! Is a available here. Look out too for the relaunch of the Campaign for Socialism’s journal The Citizen this month.

Image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/190916320@N06/53800679651 Creator: Labour Party | Credit: Labour Party Copyright: Labour Party Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Deed