Who Is The Labour Growth Group?

The Labour Growth Group was set up last week to keep the support the Government mission to build more homes and infrastructure. Some Labour left MPs believe it is a No10 "front", but members insist it was set up to keep the party focused on "its most important mission".

On Sunday, 54 Labour MPs signed a letter to Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The signatories, overwhelmingly elected for the first time on 4 July, publicly pledged their support to Labour’s ambition to grow the economy and ramp-up development across the country.

Its members urged the new Labour Government to press ahead with “sweeping planning reforms” and said they were willing to make “tough choices” to allow building in their own constituencies, acknowledging that “it will mean difficult conversations in our own communities about how, not whether, we deliver our targets”. Analysis previously shared with PoliticsHome found that many of the battleground seats at the General Election were in areas with high levels of Nimby-ism (opposition to building in the local area).

The emergence of the group so soon after Labour's historic election last month victory raised some eyebrows in Westminster. 

In more recent years, intra-party caucauses have become associated with conflict and inflighting — perhaps Westminster's most well-known example being the European Research Group of avidly pro-Brexit Conservative MPs, which played a key part in the removal of Theresa May as prime minister and was often involved in the chaos which engulfed the party.

While it is clear that the Labour Growth Group is a very different beast to the ERG, there was still surprise that Labour MPs, just a few weeks into the job, would feel emboldened enough to launch a bid to hold their Prime