Shortly after last year’s General Election defeat, I wrote a blog piece entitled Byrne(t) Out. Essentially, though not exclusively,the piece was a response to Liam Byrne’s quite terrible ‘Why did Labour lose – and how do we win again?’ post-mortem written for ‘Progress’, Lord’s Sainbury’s well-funded, entryist ”New Labour pressure group” .

In order to provide readers with a sense of the kind of support that Progress command within the PLP and amongst senior figures within the Labour Movement, I copied and pasted the following list directly from the ‘Chair & Patrons’ section of its website:

Rt Hon Alan Milburn MP, Stephen Twigg MP, Rt Hon Andy Burnham MP, Chris Leslie MP, Rt Hon Ed Miliband MP, Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, Meg Munn MP Rt Hon Douglas Alexander MP, Wendy Alexander MSP, Ian Austin MP, Rt Hon Hazel Blears MP, Rt Hon Yvette Cooper MP, Rt Hon John Denham MP, Parmjit Dhanda, Natascha Engel MP, Lorna Fitzsimons, Rt Hon Peter Hain MP, Rt Hon John Healey MP, Rt Hon Margaret Hodge MP, Rt Hon Beverley Hughes, Rt Hon John Hutton, Rt Hon Baroness Jay, Baroness Jones, Rt Hon Sadiq Khan MP, Oona King, Rt Hon Baroness Kinnock, Rt Hon David Lammy MP, Cllr Richard Leese, Rt Hon Lord Mandelson, Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP, Rt Hon David Miliband MP, Trevor Phillips, Baroness Prosser, Rt Hon James Purnell, Jane Roberts, Lord Triesman, Kitty Ussher

However, when I recently checked on the progress of…err…Progress, via an article on Maurice Glasman, its considerable number of standard bearers appeared to have dwindled somewhat to include the following:

‘Progress is chaired by Stephen Twigg MP. Our vice-chairs are Tristram Hunt MP, Liz Kendall MP, Bridget Phillipson MP, Rachel Reeves MP, Jonathan Reynolds MP, Anas Sarwar MP and John Woodcock MP. Progress’s honorary president is Alan Milburn, the former secretary of state for health. Patrick Diamond is our secretary’.

Dull stuff, indeed; except, perhaps not. Up until the 2010 General Election, Progress enjoyed the support of many senior figures within the Labour Party; many of whom are still in powerful positions within the shadow cabinet, including the Party’s leader, Ed Miliband. While it would be reasonable to argue that a few its acolytes might have jumped ship the moment Sainsbury stopped funding the Labour Party (no bad thing), opting instead finance a kind of ‘Continuity New Labour’, I find it unlikely that so many would have deserted it in such a rapid fashion.

The question is, then, have the CNL set gone in to – visible - exile of their own volition, or is it Sainsbury who’s hiding Progress’ ‘light under a bushel’ until the time, and Party, is ripe? Needless to say, I’ll be keeping a close eye on who turns up to see Ed Miliband’s keynote speech at the Progress ‘Winning Back Britain: New Ideas for New Labour’ Annual Conference 2011.

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