{"id":4519,"date":"2026-09-27T10:04:22","date_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/27\/the-house-article-neal-lawson-the-most-naive-person-in-left-wing-politics\/"},"modified":"2026-09-27T10:04:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-27T10:04:22","slug":"the-house-article-neal-lawson-the-most-naive-person-in-left-wing-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/2026\/09\/27\/the-house-article-neal-lawson-the-most-naive-person-in-left-wing-politics\/","title":{"rendered":"The House Article | Neal Lawson: \u201cThe Most Naive Person In Left-Wing Politics\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"
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(\u00a9 David Levene\/Guardian\/eyevine)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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\n 13 min read<\/span>2 hr<\/span>
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Reformed Blairite, longtime director of pressure group Compass and co-founder of new Labour group Mainstream Neal Lawson talks to Sienna Rodgers about his role in Andy Burnham\u2019s rise and the political journey that brought him to this point<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Neal Lawson was working for Gordon Brown when he first met Andy Burnham, then a 20-something Blairite advising Tessa Jowell. It was the 90s and they were fellow members of Demon Eyes, the amateur football team set up by young Labour advisers and named after the famous Tory poster portraying a devilish Tony Blair.<\/p>\n

The squad included future Cabinet ministers Ed Balls and David Miliband, as well as journalists and backroom staff well-known in political circles \u2013 Tim Allan, Dan Corry, Liam Halligan, Phil Collins, David Goodhart and James Purnell, today Burnham\u2019s chief of staff.<\/p>\n

Though Lawson and Burnham got on well, they were not especially close; it was from a distance that Lawson watched the subsequent adventures of his ex-teammate with interest, through his campaigning on Hillsborough to leaving Westminster for the Manchester mayoralty. The pair only recently reunited.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt his last mayoral election, we started chatting about ideas for his manifesto,\u201d Lawson recalls. \u201cHe called and we talked through some policy ideas, and it started dawning on me\u2026 \u2018He\u2019s the standout person. It\u2019s inevitable that Starmer fails, and it\u2019s probably inevitable that the Labour Party will turn to Andy Burnham.\u2019 And I thought, \u2018Let\u2019s try and help him get there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

He helped Burnham, he says, \u201cwith platform, polling, policy, organisation\u201d. In May 2025, the mayor spoke at a big Compass conference, alongside Miatta Fahnbulleh and Louise Haigh (both now Cabinet ministers).<\/p>\n

The context is that Lawson had decided back in the run-up to the 2020 leadership election that Keir Starmer was not his man. Soft-left figures like the director of Compass were being collected as useful allies when he was called in by Steve Reed and Morgan McSweeney to meet their candidate. But Lawson was not impressed. \u201cThis man is completely uninterested in ideas,\u201d he concluded. \u201cHe can\u2019t be the leader.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Starmer had to do without Lawson\u2019s vote (he spent two weeks on the Clive Lewis campaign and cast his ballot for nobody), he did, of course, nab Labour\u2019s top job. It led to an era that deeply frustrated Lawson, who felt he had been duped by McSweeney.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sat in that chair an awful lot,\u201d says Lawson, pointing to my seat in his London flat-turned-office. The party organiser who masterfully engineered Starmer\u2019s rise had spent a couple of years courting Lawson, drawing out his political ideas over the dining table.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made sense to me that he said his project was Corbynism without Corbyn \u2013 let\u2019s get rid of the antisemitism, let\u2019s professionalise it, but the underlying facts of the 2008 crash, austerity, the composition of the electorate means that we\u2019ve got to do something like Corbynism.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle did I know he was just an undercover, like the cops who join Greenpeace or CND. He was there to understand how the left thinks, in order to replicate it in a way that he could win an election.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, he does not believe there was any genuine intellectual curiosity there? \u201cNo, it was a complete and utter \u2013 ironically \u2013 entryist job. It was the \u2018Morgan tendency\u2019 \u2013 to infiltrate a group of people, understand how they operate and bend it to your will,\u201d Lawson replies. \u201cAs soon as you\u2019ve won it, you kick the ladder away, shut the door and start pouring boiling oil over the people who\u2019ve just voted for you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Does he think Starmer was in on the plan, or merely a passenger? \u201cI think he was just thinking about Keir and what was good for Keir, and this was good for Keir.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson today describes himself in no less scathing terms than a Corbynite on social media might use against him: \u201cNeal Lawson, the most naive person in left-wing politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Burnham, a leader he did back, now in No 10, for some on his wing of the party the question arises: has the most naive person in left-wing politics been duped again?<\/p>\n

Lawson, 63, comes from what he calls a \u201ccomfortable working-class\u201d family: his mum worked in a shoe shop; his dad was a printer in Fleet Street; they owned their own home in south-east London, and he was the first child in his class to go on a foreign holiday.<\/p>\n

His father was also father of the chapel, a powerful member of printing union Sogat. Lawson proudly notes that his dad negotiated a four-day week before anyone else had it, and remembers fondly his support for the miners, with Sogat sending money, resources and food.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur phones were definitely tapped,\u201d Lawson says.<\/p>\n

He struggled academically \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure I\u2019ve got dyslexia\u201d \u2013 so was sent to a technical school despite his love of ideas and language. He left with \u201cvirtually no qualifications\u201d and found himself working in a book-pulping factory, where he could pick out books destined for recycling from a conveyor belt.<\/p>\n

At 18, he returned to education, starting with A-Levels at a college, followed by Trent Polytechnic. It had taken some convincing. \u201cI was a class-warrior kid: \u2018I\u2019m not going to university \u2013 they all wear duffle coats, and they\u2019re all Tories.\u2019\u201d His parents, who left school at 15, sent for a neighbour who\u2019d been to university to talk to him about why he might like it.<\/p>\n

There, Lawson encountered an outpost of Frankfurt School lecturers who introduced him to Herbert Marcuse, Max Horkheimer, Antonio Gramsci and Zygmunt Bauman (who became his \u201cintellectual guru\u201d). His Marxist education was compounded by his surroundings: \u201cI was in Nottingham during the miners\u2019 strike. If you wanted a lesson in hard-class politics and the brutality of the British state, that was it.\u201d And when he was not on those picket lines, he was at home, on those in Wapping.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, his first job was as a regional political organiser for a union \u2013 the Transport and General (T&G, today\u2019s Unite) in Bristol. But Militant\u2019s role in left politics meant, while finding Tony Benn himself \u201cmesmerising\u201d, Lawson ended up organising against the Bennites.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were a young socialist, you were grabbed by Militant,\u201d he explains. Recounting his very brief flirtation with the Trotskyist group, he recalls being invited to a Marxism weekend conference: \u201cI\u2019m thinking, fucking hell, this is the answer to everything!\u201d Yet he quickly decided he was against Militant\u2019s \u201clying cheating entryism \u2013 I don\u2019t like that in any form\u201d.<\/p>\n

His job at T&G was to ensure \u201cthe right candidates\u201d were selected for the 1992 election. One of the MPs sponsored by the union was Gordon Brown, whom Lawson was then invited to work for during the campaign and full-time once he became shadow chancellor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love Gordon dearly, and we still talk,\u201d Lawson says, but goes on: \u201cThere is a big cultural difference between the way Gordon does politics and the way I do politics. Gordon is brilliantly tactical, focused laser beam\u2026 I\u2019m much more, \u2018What\u2019s the big picture here? What\u2019s the big vision of where we\u2019re trying to go?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

By then, Lawson had a family and needed money. Looking to spread his wings, he settled on lobbying. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what public affairs or lobbying was, but it seemed to be the thing that people did.\u201d He came across the outfit of Tim Bell \u2013 best-known as Margaret Thatcher\u2019s spin doctor, and later a Tory peer \u2013 and it was, bizarrely, here that Lawson went next.<\/p>\n

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\u201cAndy has taken a particular path since Makerfield, with people who were anti-him not that long ago, who are now supposedly very pro-him\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u201cI\u2019m in Mayfair, having coffee with someone, and there\u2019s literally a butler who walks in with white gloves and pictures of Mrs Thatcher on the walls. I\u2019m just thinking, again naively but in a curious way, \u2018This is fantastic.\u2019 I don\u2019t mean \u2018I aspire to this\u2019. This is like, \u2018I didn\u2019t know this world existed\u2019,\u201d Lawson says.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a working-class boy from south London who is then being paid quite amazing amounts of money, and your feet leave the ground. All of a sudden, you\u2019re dining in very plush restaurants, talking to all of these different people, and you\u2019re wearing cufflinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

His chain-smoking boss would \u201cpreach a politics of Thatcherism and practise a politics of socialism\u201d: \u201cHe took care of everyone. He was lovely to anyone. I did some terrible things to him.\u201d Lawson refuses to say which things.<\/p>\n

This path led him to \u2018lobbygate\u2019. Alongside Ben Lucas and Jonathan Mendelsohn, Lawson had left Bell to set up his own lobbying firm, LLM Communications, but quickly found himself embroiled in scandal when an undercover journalist caught them making inadvisable promises of government access to clients.<\/p>\n

While he used his knowledge to advise clients, Lawson says, \u201cI never used my connections, so I was a pretty awful \u2013 in that respect \u2013 lobbyist. I just thought it was too awkward and difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

The journalist posing as a client was repeatedly asking for a meeting, he claims, and ultimately he remembers \u201cgetting so worn down, and going, \u2018I can probably get you a fucking meeting\u2019. And that\u2019s the story. That\u2019s my fault and I was na\u00efve\u201d. It was exposed by the Observer in an \u201cembarrassing\u201d and \u201cawful\u201d episode.<\/p>\n

The company survived and eventually thrived, but Lawson describes lobbygate as an \u201ceye-opener\u201d: \u201cThat\u2019s the moment I stopped wearing a tie and cufflinks.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson was an early enthusiast for New Labour \u2013 \u201cI thought the Labour Party needed to be modernised and changed\u201d \u2013 and even did a stint with Peter Mandelson, working on strategy in the 97 Millbank operation.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus, God, what a brilliant organiser!\u201d he says of the \u2018Prince of Darkness\u2019 who recently became darker still. \u201cI was never that particularly close to him, but I could see why people were impressed.\u201d (Asked later whether he feels sorry for Mandelson, Lawson says yes, explaining: \u201cI\u2019m on the soft left \u2013 I\u2019m quite soft emotionally as well as politically.\u201d)<\/p>\n

But soon after their seismic win, Lawson started questioning it all: \u201cIs this taking us in the right direction? Is this a left project or is it a cover for not? I get disappointed really quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

He and other critical friends came together to start Compass in 2003. \u201cWe started off as New Labour\u2019s best friends but then they tried to do commercialisation of schools, the Iraq War, privatise the Post Office, all of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson had successfully stopped the privatisation of the Post Office while working under Bell, co-ordinating Alan Johnson and the CWU and undermining the proposal from within the Conservatives. \u201cIt\u2019s the only time privatisation under the Tories was ever stopped.\u201d When New Labour attempted to part-privatise the Royal Mail, \u201cI worked with the CWU again and stopped it again. Instead of being New Labour\u2019s critical friend, we were just critics.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lawson
Lawson in 2017 (Mark Kerrison\/Alamy)<\/figcaption>
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Ahead of the 2005 election, Lawson considered securing a parliamentary seat. He was on a train, on the way to a selection meeting, when he read an essay in Soundings by Marxist intellectual Stuart Hall \u2013 New Labour\u2019s Double-shuffle. The party had taken to speaking with a \u201cforked tongue\u201d, Hall argued, and was \u201cfundamentally neoliberal in character\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought, fuck me, I don\u2019t believe in this project. I got off the train, walked over the bridge, and got the next train back to London,\u201d Lawson says.<\/p>\n

Although he is clear about New Labour\u2019s failures, the soft-left chief does characterise the era as one of vibrant discourse and undeniable talent. Finding himself in the middle of exciting debates between Jack Straw, Mo Mowlam and Philip Gould as well as Blair, Brown and Mandelson was invigorating.<\/p>\n

Does he believe the level of talent we saw then is unmatched today? \u201cCompletely.\u201d Why is that? \u201cBecause why would you go into politics now? You don\u2019t get paid that much, you haven\u2019t got that much influence, you\u2019ve got complete exposure about who you are and what you\u2019ve done. If you wanted to change the world, you\u2019d start your tech company or your venture capital,\u201d Lawson replies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe talent pool is really drying up, and that is a problem. Our analysis was the Blairites didn\u2019t think a better world was desirable, and the Brownites didn\u2019t think a better world was feasible. In the end, you ended up in the same place. But, my God, they were giants in terms of thinking, strategy and tactics.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2011, Compass opened up its membership to other parties. The organisation\u2019s Labour-only rule did not make sense, Lawson figured, when his political outlook was so similar to that of Caroline Lucas. \u201cI believe everything she believes in and how you make politics happen,\u201d he thought, and yet, \u201cShe can\u2019t join Compass, but Peter Mandelson can. This is madness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reaction was strong: \u201cI hadn\u2019t quite anticipated the tribal backlash of people in Labour. \u2018You bastard! You\u2019ve given up. You\u2019re no longer one of us!\u2019\u201d But amid the rise of the internet and the multiplication of TV channels, he had long felt that the same fragmentation would come to politics too and Labour would not be able to remain \u201cthe only player\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hate the coercive power of first past the post. I hate forcing people to do what they would not otherwise do. That\u2019s a horrible politics,\u201d says Lawson. \u201cIt can win big majorities on 34 per cent of the vote, but then it finds it can\u2019t govern because you don\u2019t have any real support in the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unless there is real change, he warns his comrades on the left, \u201cThe causes of Reform are going to keep growing, and they won\u2019t be Reform. It will be Restore, or worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under the new Prime Minister, supporters of electoral reform are hopeful a major constitutional change is coming. But on other issues, there has been talk of the left of Burnham\u2019s camp being jettisoned.<\/p>\n

Asked for his thoughts, Lawson says: \u201cAndy has taken a particular path since Makerfield, with people who were anti-him not that long ago, who are now supposedly very pro-him. We\u2019ll see how that plays out\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s gone for, I\u2019d call it, a parliamentary Labourism route. We\u2019re back to the same question of Labourism and the Labour Party, and is it the sole vehicle, and can you build a good society just through parliamentarism? Or do you need bigger ideas and bigger vision and bigger alliances and bigger movements? People will take shortcuts, and shortcuts never work.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawson reasons: \u201cThere are never complete wins in politics.\u201d But he is delighted that a prime minister has declared they want to roll back 40 years of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many respects, job done. The bar has now been set at that level,\u201d he says, noting that someone close to Corbyn once told him \u201cthey could never get him to say that\u201d about neoliberalism. \u201cWe\u2019ve got a prime minister who\u2019s saying that. This is game on.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, he continues on \u201cthe long march\u201d, believing that society \u201cwill go fascist right or it will go Neal Lawson\/Compass\u201d. \u201cI\u2019m joking,\u201d he adds, although he isn\u2019t really. \u201cThat will end up being the choice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(\u00a9 David Levene\/Guardian\/eyevine) 13 min read2 hr Reformed Blairite, longtime director of pressure group Compass and co-founder of new Labour group Mainstream Neal Lawson talks to Sienna Rodgers about his role in Andy Burnham\u2019s rise and the political journey that brought him to this point Neal Lawson was working for Gordon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4519"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4519\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/smartinvestingschronicle.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}