AS LABOUR gears up for a plethora of by-elections it seems a good time to assess the state of working-class representation in Westminster. Sadly, an initial look does not make good reading.

In recent weeks selections forced by boundary changes have seen the loss of colleagues Mick Whitley and Beth Winter. 

Parliament will be poorer without both Beth, who worked as a trade union official, housing officer for the charity Shelter and a community worker, and Mick, who worked in the merchant navy and at Vauxhall Motors, eventually becoming the union convener. Their losses are both a blow for the left and for authentic voices of working class in Parliament.

Outside of these contests, selections across the country have been dominated by a professional class of potential politicians, almost universally from a particular faction of the party. 

Working-class trade unionists such as Maurice McCleod, Lauren Townsend and Matt Kerr, to name only a few, have been blocked by the party from even putting themselves forward to members. 

While spokespeople for the party say they now have “higher standards,” whether by design or implementation, the chances of working-class people being MPs appears to be reduced.

In 2019 the Labour Party was punished for ignoring working-class voters in the culmination of trends seen over decades. 

While polling currently shows the party on course for a big election win next time, murmurings of what might happen after we win continue to cause concern. 

The party needs a bold offer that will genuinely improve the lives of working-class people and communities who have been so brutally attacked by successive Tory governments. 

However, the party must once again be representative of our communities if we are serious about putting down the roots to once again represent our communities.

Trust in politics remains at a low ebb and while the actions of the Conservative government and its former leader have driven them to record lows, we too have played our part. 

There will be nobody reading this who can say that while canvassing they haven’t heard voters say we’re “all the same.” 

Politicians who look like them and understand their problems through lived experience of them are surely part of the solution.

When Labour wins it takes a coalition of voters from both middle and working-class backgrounds to do so. Our representatives must also be drawn from these groups, and a failure to do so risks storing up huge problems for the future.

When Labour won power in 1945 it put into progress an iconic programme that brought us the NHS and welfare state. 

This programme did not materialise from thin air. The NHS was based on a model long present in mining areas, most famously Tredegar in Wales, where communities organised together for affordable healthcare. 

The nationalisations of the Attlee government were made possible by the vast proportion of its MPs that came from a background in manual work and understood how these industries worked. In 1945, of the 393 Labour MPs elected, 45 were ex-miners.

While there are now barely 45 miners in the country, let alone mining MPs, the premise still holds. 

How, for example, can we build a national care service fit for the future if those who’ve worked at the pick point of that industry and those who need care have no chance of being selected as MPs. 

Those from professional backgrounds are now more likely to get a leg up into politics, to be given access to and the knowledge needed to take on selections. 

With many trade unionists blocked, the leg up previously given to working-class applicants is now taken away.

Despite the rigged nature of selections, there is another major blockade to working-class people becoming involved in politics at the first place. 

There is an epidemic of fear within the Labour Party and while those playing politics might enjoy it, it genuinely has the capacity to ruin lives. 

Hostile briefings from party spokespeople are becoming ever more familiar. They infer things about a person never put in writing and have the potential to do severe damage to individuals, with those delivering them remaining anonymous. 

Aspiring politicians from working-class backgrounds simply cannot afford to have their careers ruined by those playing factional games.

The left of the Labour Party has been under serious attack and, not only is it a huge error of judgement, its ferocity has spread well beyond its initial targets. 

Trade unionists, community activists and young workers have all fallen foul of the control-freakery at play within the party not only on parliamentary selections but also in mayoralties and councils. 

It has led pundits to ponder whether some of our current front bench would have been selected under the current regime?

Ian Lavery is Labour MP for Wansbeck. He served as chair of the Labour Party from 2017 to 2020 and was president of the National Union of Mineworkers from 2002 to 2010.