Yesterday’s man looks to Tomorrow

David “Baron” Blunkett is up to something – and he’s up to it with Brenda “Baroness” Dean. It could be not so much another outing for the Barron Knights as a case of the Barren Fights – but it could be a sign that some of the rebel MPs are preparing to walk out of the Labour Party.

Blunkett and Dean launched Labour Tomorrow on the website Labour List at the end of July – some time after the rebel MPs had launched their coup. However, its parent company – Labour Tomorrow Ltd – was incorporated on 1st April. Explaining their new project, the two Barons say that Labour needs to be an effective opposition – an inclusive party that doesn’t centre around one individual (Corbyn doesn’t get a name check, but he is clearly the individual they don’t want the Party to be centred around). They call (amid a large dose of waffly nonsense) for a major rethink of how Labour is organised and how it reaches out to the voters.

The two of them say they have set up Labour Tomorrow as a funding platform to “back projects in policy development, digital media, campaigning and building activist networks”. They are looking to collect money from trade unions and high value donors and from members donating much smaller sums. They promise to be compliant with political funding rules (just as well!).

Labour Tomorrow Limited, so far, is a small company – as indecisive as its founders’ waffle suggests, as the “nature of business” of the company has not been declared and will be “provided on next annual return”. The limited company has the following three directors.

Lord David Blunkett is a former Labour Leader of Sheffield City Council and Labour MP. He was Home Secretary in Tony Blair’s Government, but had to resign over allegations that he had intervened to fast track his former lover’s nanny’s visa application. He soon returned to the Cabinet, this time as Work and Pensions Secretary – but had to resign because he had broken the ministerial Code of Conduct by becoming a director of a company called DNA Bioscience without consulting the appropriate Committee first. Blunkett admitted he had made a mistake and said that he had resigned on this second occasion to “protect the Government”. Blair described him as “a decent and honourable man”. Goodness knows what praise Blunkett would have been in for if he had actually adhered to the Ministerial Code of Conduct.

Former General Secretary of the print union SOGAT, Baroness Dean appears twice in Companies House’s list of directors – once as Baroness Brenda Dean and once as Baroness Brenda Dean of Thornton Le Fylde. Dean led the print union SOGAT, one of the two unions involved in the Wapping Dispute with Rupert Murdoch in the 1980s. While the left argued for extending the strike to include other print workers and for the TUC to organise solidarity from other print unions, Dean preferred the tactic of looking for the mythical common ground between Murdoch and the unions. She had a secret meeting with him, after which she announced that he was committed to the print industry. The strike drifted on and Dean eventually agreed a deal with Murdoch to end the dispute on the basis that the sacked print workers were entitled to statutory compensation.

Nicola Ann Murphy is the third director. She is the only one to have been appointed on 1st April, when the company was incorporated – the other two having been appointed on 28th June. Her profile on Linked In lists her as a director of the Parliamentary Research Service until March 2016 and then, from April 2016, as a Director of Labour Tomorrow. She previously worked for Humana UK on “commissioning technology and health and wellness innovation projects”, and before that she was a special adviser in HM Treasury. Ms Murphy tweets as @murphyna – where her followers include “Labour First” and “Progress”, as well as “Liz Kendall for Labour Leader” and “Yvette Cooper for Labour Leader”. Also following her is Tower Hamlets Councillor Ohid Ahmed – reminding us that you can’t judge a person by their Twitter followers.

So far, so we’re all in the dark then. The big question is whether Labour Tomorrow is some attempt by Blunkett to have some influence in Labour affairs – or whether he is fronting up preparations by the rebels to walk out of the Labour Party. We may not have too long to wait to find out. Labour Tomorrow has just opened a Twitter account which promises that Labour Tomorrow “will be unveiled officially soon”. That should be good news for Labour Tomorrow’s 2,188 Twitter followers who are all waiting for its first Tweet.

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