Talk:Labour for the Common Good

Confusion as to origins?

Could this be a duplicate article with Common Good Labour, which was formed around the same time? Aletha Adu of The Guardian asserted in October 2023 that Labour Together grew from Labour For the Common Good. Storye book (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Issue now resolved. Storye book (talk) 10:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Feedback from New Page Review process

I left the following feedback for the creator/future reviewers while reviewing this article: Thank you for this new article. I have found no issues, except for a question as to whether this may be a duplicate article. I have explained the issue at Talk:Labour for the Common Good#Confusion as to origins?. I have added WikiProjects, a Talk header and a British English tag to the talk page. I have balanced the neutrality of the article a little more by adding some material from The Guardian, into the Controversy section. I have added a couple more article categories. I would like to add more "What links here" links, but am hesitating to do so until we can establish that this is not a duplicate article with Common Good Labour. Storye book (talk) 12:07, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

Hi! While creating the Labour Together page I myself came to the conclusion that they were separate organisations. My reasoning can be found on that talk page which I should have also put here, but in short I found several sources from 2015 establishing that Common Good Labour and Labour for the Common Good were separate organisations set up by different people at the same time with similar names; Common Good Labour changed its name to Labour Together in 2016.

The origin stories of both orgs are too different for them to be the same, with Jon Cruddas setting up Common Good Labour, and Tristram Hunt and Chuka Umunna establishing Labour for the Common Good. They also had separate political aims, at least to start with; Common Good Labour was much more focused on party unity while Labour for the Common Good directly wanted Corbyn gone. Umunna and Hunt also joined Common Good Labour in October 2015, months after either organisation was founded. It's reasonable to conclude that the author of that Guardian article (as well as this Politico one I believe) may have gotten confused and believed incorrectly that Labour Together grew from Labour For the Common Good. JamJamSvn (talk) 20:04, 10 January 2024 (UTC)

@JamJamSvn: What you say above sounds convincing, but in order to separate the two entities clearly, we need to prove it with satisfactory evidence on this article page. Can you do that? If you can't, I feel that I may have to start an AfD, requesting to merge the two articles, and I don't want to do that if I can possibly avoid it.

There is another element which I think needs looking into, for this article. I wish I can remember which decade it was - but probably 21st century - at a time when an election was looming and Labour was looking like a good bet, the BBC radio news was reporting that certain influential members of the Tory party were openly campaigning for Tory members to join the Labour party so as to undermine it by divisive voting within that party. The news reported that they were campaigning openly on social media. What came of that campaign, if anything, I have no idea. I'm not into conspiracy theories (which by definition are not carried on openly); I am only repeating what I heard on BBC news. However, in the light of your article, I find it difficult not to conflate the two campaigns (i.e. campaign for Tories to join the Labour Party resulting in LfCC). Since you have research skills in that area, you may be able to judge whether that information can be properly sourced and useful here. Storye book (talk) 09:48, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I'll give it a go with a list of quotes from various articles referring to the two separately:

"A series of meetings by Labour for the Common Good, the policy group briefly dubbed ‘The Resistance’, have been quietly held in recent months in Parliament. Other moderate groups have emerged including Labour Together, a “unity” project created by Ed Miliband’s former ally Jon Cruddas, and Labour Internationalists, which launched last week and criticised Mr Corbyn's foreign policy."

"Party groups associated with the moderate centre-left include [...] Labour for the Common Good (for MPs only) and Labour Together, both of which were formed in 2015".

The New Statesman also refers to the two in separate sections under separate headings, clearly delineating them as separate orgs.

In all, the two groups were part of the same movement and can be seen as companion organisations, but were separate organisations that used separate tactics to attempt to oust Corbyn. This is despite articles (all from 2023) that state LftCG evolved into Labour Together which seem to have confused the two similar names ().

While interesting and entirely possible, I doubt we can include anything about Tory members joining Labour in this article unless the news reports of that directly talk about Labour for the Common Good, otherwise it would likely be WP:OFFTOPIC. As far as I can tell, neither Hunt nor Umunna were former Conservative Party members. I'm not sure where to start researching about it either! JamJamSvn (talk) 11:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC) JamJamSvn (talk) 11:40, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow - thank you - you have done some excellent research here. Please could we have it copied into the article? I believe it would be appropriate to say in the article that LftCC and CCL existed at the same time, side by side, or at least that LftCC was not the only such splinter group and that CCL existed in the same year - plus all your sources as citations - so that we don't get some other editor in the future suggesting a merge? I would be very grateful if you could do something like that? I agree that the news article that I heard would be difficult to track down, so please don't worry about that. Storye book (talk) 11:54, 11 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you, JamJamSvn for your edit on the article. The issue is now resolved. I have struck out my comments above, to make it clear that the question no longer applies. Storye book (talk) 10:15, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help! JamJamSvn (talk) 10:48, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

You are welcome. Storye book (talk) 11:36, 12 January 2024 (UTC)

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