Rebecca Long-Bailey is preparing to host over a dozen “Path to Power policy labs” across the country over the next week as a way of exploring policy and organising methods used by party activists.

LabourList can reveal that the Labour leadership candidate is committed to adopting some of the ideas developed in the sessions, as a demonstration of her pledge to “empower our movement” via grassroots policy-making.

Announcing the initiative, Long-Bailey said: “I’m so excited to see what comes out of these grassroots policy labs. Our movement is our greatest asset. It must be empowered as a vital part of our path to power.”

Her campaign is organising sessions to be held in areas including Worthing, North Wales, Nottingham, Bournemouth, Bradford, Bristol, London, Hull, Edinburgh, Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester, Colchester, Cardiff and Falmouth.

The labs will consist of facilitated, participatory discussions, which Long-Bailey’s team say are comparable to the roundtables arranged by the community organising unit to generate party policy around the ‘green industrial revolution’.

Long-Bailey explained: “I know from developing the green industrial revolution through meetings across the country with unions, businesses, local communities, members, activists and experts that policy created at the grassroots is more robust and more relevant to people’s lives.

“The party’s community organising unit played a critical role in organising those events, so I understand the deep connection between organising, policy-making, communicating and connecting with voters in communities.

“If we are to win in 2024, we have to be so much more than a team of politicians in Westminster but a mass, active, vibrant movement organising with people in every community and workplace. That’s the type of party leader I’ll be: I’ll organise and empower and help others to do the same.”

The labs are designed to help forge a “path to power”, the details of which she set out in a speech last month. It proposed four steps: “empower our movement”; “stir up a democratic revolution”; advance “aspirational socialism”; start a “green industrial revolution”.

Ballots in Labour’s leadership elections started dropping on February 24th, and voting will close on April 2nd. The results are set to be announced at a special conference in London two days later.