What's the Soft Left Anyway?

The left has a problem with labels. We have the Hard Left, the Centre, and somewhere in between, the Soft Left – a faction that once promised to bridge ideological divides but increasingly feels adrift in modern politics. As Starmer’s leadership consolidates around technocratic centrism and the remnants of Corbynism retreat to the margins, it’s worth asking: what happened to the Soft Left, and what has taken its place?

The first time I heard the phrase “class war social democrat” was at a Pontypridd Labour Party CLP meeting. It was used disparagingly, aimed at a new member, as if openly talking about class struggle were somehow improper. I didn’t take offence, but the phrase stuck with me. Here was a term that cut through Labour’s comfortable euphemisms and named the thing we’re all dancing around: that politics is fundamentally about who has power and who doesn’t.

The second time I encountered it was when Michael Walker described himself as a “class war social democrat” – I think it was on Novara Live, though I’m not entirely sure. He later wrote about it in the New Statesman. The uncertainty feels appropriate: the term hovers between insult, identity, and declaration, much like the political moment we’re living through.

A class war social democrat starts from a simple but fundamental reality: society is divided between those who own capital and those who sell their labour. Everything else – the policy wonkery, the electoral triangulation, the carefully crafted messages – flows from that basic recognition. Politics that ignores this divide isn’t just naive; it’s polite theatre masquerading as transformation.

This isn’t about revolutionary overthrow or abandoning democratic institutions. It’s about redistribution that actually redistributes, public ownership where markets fail workers, strong unions as a counterweight to corporate power, and linking social and environmental policy to real material outcomes for working people. It’s about struggle, not just goodwill. It’s about naming the conflict rather than pretending it doesn’t exist.

The Soft Left, by contrast, feels increasingly obsolete. There was once a tradition of politicians willing to push leadership from within, argue for fairness without apology, and achieve modest but meaningful gains for working people. Think of figures like Robin Cook on foreign policy or Gordon Brown’s redistributive budgets in Labour’s early years – politicians who understood that progress required both principle and pragmatism.

Today, the label often feels like a brand rather than a strategy. Too many who identify as Soft Left shy away from confrontation, signalling moderation while leaving structural inequality largely intact. Even well-intentioned leaders like Ed Miliband found themselves constrained by fiscal orthodoxy and leadership priorities that prioritised electability over transformation. The result? The party continues to drift rightward whenever nobody pushes back.

This isn’t entirely the Soft Left’s fault. The media environment punishes politicians who step outside narrow bounds of acceptable discourse. The electoral system rewards cautious centrism. And the institutional weight of the Labour Party machinery tends toward incrementalism. But at some point, strategy becomes complicity.

I want to love the Soft Left. I admire the idea of principled, careful politics that builds coalitions and wins elections. But too often it stops short – unwilling to take the risks required to meaningfully reduce the gap between labour and capital, or to defend social justice when it conflicts with party orthodoxy.

A class war social democrat doesn’t wait for permission. They name the fight, define the strategy, and refuse to hide behind moderation when moderation means accepting the status quo. They understand that sometimes the most pragmatic thing you can do is tell the truth about power.

This isn’t about purity or ideological grandstanding. It’s about recognising that in a system rigged toward capital, even maintaining the social democratic gains of the past requires a politics willing to confront that rigging directly. The Soft Left’s tragedy is that by refusing to acknowledge the conflict, they’ve made themselves irrelevant to resolving it.

The Soft Left once mattered because it offered a credible path between revolutionary socialism and liberal capitalism. Today, as inequality widens and climate crisis accelerates, that middle ground feels less like pragmatism and more like procrastination. The future belongs to those willing to name the struggle – and fight it.