It has been three weeks since Zarah Sultana announced that she and Corbyn would be co-leading a new party of the left. Posted online at 8 PM on a Thursday, this announcement proved to be a damp squib, with Corbyn going mysteriously quiet.
Eventually Corbyn made a statement suggesting there would be “a new kind of political party”. He avoided specifying what kind of leadership the new party would have. Nor did he affirm Sultana’s claim of co-leadership.
Sultana had just given up her Labour Party membership.
After being locked out of the Parliamentary Labour Party for several months because she opposed the two-child benefit cap, among other things, the timing made sense.
Labour could have been on the verge of expelling Sultana. She has been outspoken on Gaza and the banning of Palestine Action as a terrorist group. So you might say she had good reason to move quickly.
Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund, one of the authors of Left Out, claimed Corbyn was “furious” with Sultana for jumping the gun, fuelling speculation among the SW1 media class.
Corbyn had first hinted of “a leftist alternative to Labour” on Robert Peston’s ITV talk show just days before her statement. Although his phrasing was characteristically cautious, he made it clear that there would be some kind of progressive formation.
The Sunday Times soon published Pogrund’s analysis of the Corbyn-Sultana dispute, drawing on a cache of leaked WhatsApp messages. Reading between the lines, the divide was over what kind of structure to launch, whether it was the right time, and who should lead it.
Yet in the weeks since this revelation, Corbyn and Sultana have been working shoulder-to-shoulder in the House of Commons. So much for “furious”.
No matter. At the first mention of this potential new party, the attack lines against the Corbyn project were revived overnight.
It was just like old times. Did you hear that Jeremy was a Soviet Czech spy in the 80s? Did you know his Islington allotment was an IRA front operation too?
Thank god Corbyn lost in 2019. Everything in Britain has been absolutely wonderful. The country has reached positively utopian heights courtesy of Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
Of course, the new line among centrist dads is that Corbyn is going to guarantee Farage’s victory at the next election. This is another throwaway line intended to kill any independent thought among voters.
At a minimum, the fact that the new party attracted so much attention testifies to the overwhelming desire for something different.
Something is in the works. The potential is there. But getting it right will be very difficult.
The Challenge of Party Building
A mere six MPs would give the new party a bigger presence in Parliament than the Green Party and Reform UK. Two polls have found the party could get 10% to 15% of the electorate behind it. That would be a good start for an alternative party.
Over 70,000 people, including myself, signed up for the action network in the week following the announcement. Plenty of members for a new party of some kind. However, only if Team Sultana puts in the work. So far, I’ve received one text message.
It’s not just down to the action network. Corbyn has created a new political structure in Islington. After the 2024 election, Corbyn’s team set up a people’s forum in Islington North to take the place of the Constituency Labour Party.
The People’s Forum brings together ordinary constituents with seasoned activists and campaigners. This forum convenes regularly with meetings, talks and engagements with other organisations.
All of this is great. The People’s Forum is a model that should be exported across the country. Yet even though the new venture has barely got off the ground, it already appears to be repeating some of the original Corbyn project’s problems.
The most glaring of these is the lack of a cohesive political media strategy. Leaking to hostile journalists is not the way to build an organisation.
This problem is compounded by a lack of transparency. In the absence of any working-class self-organisation, invisible decision-making fills the void.
None of this is unusual. Most leftist organisations struggle with these problems. The results are everywhere to behold: reactive and defensive tactics, petty sectarianism and substitutionism.
This is partly what makes the left so dispiriting.
One of the unique challenges facing this prospective new party is the political make-up of the Independent Alliance. It’s not a straightforwardly leftist group, though the five are clearly united by opposition to the Gaza genocide.
The Independent Alliance includes four Muslim Independent MPs: Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed. This quartet is often misleadingly described as “Islamist” – as if Muslims have no other agenda.
Most of these MPs are ex-Labour supporters, except for Khan, who was a Liberal Democrat until recently. These MPs voted against closing a tax loophole for private schools because many Muslim families rely on private Islamic schools.
Khan’s conservative views make many leftists squirm. He’s on record opposing gay marriage. He also once called for the army to be deployed to break the Birmingham bin strike. Neither position is something we’d associate with Corbyn.
The politics of the four Muslim Independents is a mix of social democracy and conservative liberalism. If the Independent Alliance becomes the foundation for the new party, Corbyn and Sultana would constitute its secular left faction.
It’s important to remember that all political parties represent coalitions. Reform UK is a mix of conservative libertarians and ultra-nationalists, whereas the Liberal Democrats encompass social democrats and market liberals (including many ex-Tories).
Meanwhile, the Labour Party has traditionally been an alliance of conservative social democrats and reformist socialists. Somehow, it expanded to include a new force in the Blair era: progressive neoliberals.
I’d discuss the Tories too, but no one cares anymore. Much like a green anaconda, Nigel Farage is devouring the Conservative base. He may well swallow the entire party in due course.
The obvious parallel to the potential Corbyn-Sultana party is the Green Party. The Greens have long been a coalition of radical liberals, left-wing libertarians and eco-socialists. Stopping the climate collapse is what unites them.
The Independent Alliance is similarly united by Gaza. This cluster may well be the proto-party in waiting, but the character of the parliamentary group will change as the party develops its membership and national structure.
This is exactly why it’s important that the new formation not be a re-run of the Corbyn project. It cannot be a fiefdom of campaign managers and office managers. Such a party would inevitably fall prey to the same pitfalls as the Labour left circa 2018.
The Left Landscape
A new party with six MPs could shift the wider political context. Lots of people on the left have been talking about a ‘red-green bloc’ since the 2024 election. A new party led by Corbyn and Sultana could open up this possibility, though it’s by no means guaranteed.
The timing couldn’t be better: the Green Party is about to change leadership with Zack Polanski pitching a new populist strategy. Polanski has already made it clear he would work with a new left party.
Many ex-Labour members have joined the Greens and back Polanski. However, many Greens (including ex-Corbynites) think their party is the left’s best hope right now. This divide will play out once Corbyn’s alternative is finally up and running.
The months ahead will be crucial for how the project takes shape. Whether the new party will forge a broader alliance with the Greens is just one of many questions to be answered. A non-aggression pact between Corbyn and Polanski is another possible route.
This is all happening at a critical moment in British politics. What future historians may regard as the British crisis, beginning with the 2016 Brexit vote, is still unfolding.
Keir Starmer and his team thought they could put this crisis in a box and close it for good. But they were wrong.
While the Labour government has a strong majority in Parliament, it has little real support beyond Westminster. We could well see Starmer toppled in the next year given his terrible polls.
This is the era of political fragmentation. It cannot be switched off or locked away. The country needs radical change; otherwise, this omnishambles will continue.
Meanwhile, many voters despair at the state of the country and are crying out for a new left formation capable of representing them in Parliament. Until now, the Greens have failed to capitalise on this situation.
In the absence of a left alternative, many people tired of traditional party politics are turning to Reform UK and embracing a populist right agenda. This hodgepodge programme includes everything from nationalisation to workplace creches.
The real motor for Reform is its anti-immigrant politics. Hard borders are the party’s miracle cure for reviving the economy, cutting welfare, fixing the NHS, raising employment, increasing wages and restoring law and order. So far, no one in the UK has developed an effective counter-strategy to this delusional xenophobia.
Launching a new party is a high-risk move, but worth a try. Reform could well be in power by 2030. The left cannot afford to have no electoral presence, even if the main struggle is outside Parliament.
Although the House of Commons might seem like a distraction, the executive still needs it to wield power. A fragmented Parliament and declining voter turnout provide opportunities for both the left and right.
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Photograph courtesey of Paul Hudson. Published under a Creative Commons license.
