Neal Lawson

Neal Lawson (born 1963) is a British political commentator and organiser. He helped to establish the Compass pressure group in 2003, and serves as Compass's executive director. He writes for The Guardian, The New Statesman and openDemocracy about equality, democracy and the future of the left, and appears on TV and radio speaking about political issues.

Quotes

• The alternative is to appeal to the country's latent progressive majority that goes back decades. Last Thursday, this progressive vote amounted to over 60%, while the Tories scored just 29%. To mobilise it means recognising that difference and diversity, within a broadly common value set, is a strength not a weakness and that the best future is negotiated not imposed. Critically it allows us to win elections by speaking to the interests of the centre and left, not the right.
  • "There is a way to oust the Tories, and stop them ever rising again. Why won’t we do it?", The Guardian (9 May 2023).
  • Advocating a change to a voting system using Proportional representation in the United Kingdom (in place of First-past-the-post) following the local elections held on 4 May 2023.

• We need a political class that can spend and regulate in the right way, that knows its job isn't to usher in a better world for us, but to create the conditions in which we can build it ourselves. [Caroline] Lucas knew that, but our political and democratic system is so broken it fails to people like her; it wears them down and spits them out.
  • "Caroline Lucas was the best PM Britain never had – but she’s shown us how to fix our politics", The Guardian (8 June 2023).
  • Caroline Lucas, the only Green Party MP in the period from 2010 to 2024, had announced she was standing down at the next general election.

• [T]he case for PR has been ratcheted up enormously by how disproportionate the outcome of the election was, up against a Labour-ist mindset that means justify ends and it doesn’t really matter, democratically, how you get there.
  • Cited in "Labour divided over calls to scrap first past the post after landslide win", The Guardian (17 July 2024)
  • In the 2024 general election held on 4 July, the Labour Party gained 63% of House of Commons seats on 34% of the electoral vote. The two largest parties (the other being the Conservatives) gained only 58% of the total vote