Zarah Sultana MP and Jeremy Corbyn have announced they are launching a new party!
Over the past few months, the call for a new left party has become deafening. It is clear this is an idea whose time has come, with a surprise announcement from Zarah Sultana that she and Jeremy Corbyn will be launching a new political formation.
Socialist Alternative England, Wales and Scotland has been boldly calling for a left party of struggle to confront Starmer’s government from the beginning. The announcement of a new party will be a significant and exciting development that we are enthusiastic to be a part of. There is the potential for it to dramatically improve the lives of ordinary people, and importantly to cut across the rise of the right.
A democratic and open party that represents the working class
As well as individual membership, organisations such as trade unions and socialist groups should be able to affiliate to a new party. Its structures should be democratic with accountability and an elected leadership. And it must be led from below, with every single member getting a say — a party of, for, and by the working class.
We need a political voice, and a party that represents our interests. Labour now couldn’t be further from that. The movement around Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership might have been driven out of Labour by Keir Starmer and his right-wing cronies, but the hundreds of thousands of workers and young people who flocked to the banner of Corbynism haven’t disappeared. Many made their way into the mass strike wave of 2022–23, alongside the ongoing anti-war movement and mass Palestine solidarity movement. What they’re looking for now is an organising space and a political party they can truly call home.
Starmer has made it crystal clear whose interests he supports — those of the wealthy and big business. Labour under Starmer’s leadership was never going to represent anything other than the status quo, but the attacks on the working class have been astonishing in their relentlessness, and have particularly targeted the most vulnerable in society, slashing billions from disability benefits to pay for warfare. But Labour are now not only happy to don Tory clothes with their version of austerity 2.0 — they have gone as far as to ape Reform.
Trans people have been thrown under the bus by Labour following the Supreme Court ruling. The rights of trans people are an ideological battlefield that the right wing has been using to shore up their base. Shamefully, Starmer has waded into the culture wars, mistakenly thinking it will quell the hemorrhaging of support for him and his party. Added to the reactionary mix are attacks on migrants and refugees, with Starmer’s rhetoric that “Britain risks becoming an island of strangers.” It is almost hard to imagine that this was once a party seen by trade unions, socialists and working-class activists as “their” party, and it is certainly not the party that we need or want now.
Challenging Farage and the right
Our new party needs to fight back against all oppression — not just in words, but actively campaigning against and challenging racism, sexism, LGBTQ+phobia, ableism and all oppression. The fight against austerity goes hand in hand with this — we need decent jobs, homes and fully-funded public services for everyone, funded by forcing the billionaires to pay up and seizing hold of their wealth.
Under Corbyn, Labour’s membership surged to more than 600,000. The exodus of Labour Party members under Starmer has been so great that the party no longer even publishes its membership figures. It is likely that Reform now has more members than Labour and is the biggest political party in Britain. Labour’s rightwards lurch under Starmer has created a vacuum on the left and a space for the right to grow.
Tacking even further right is not a tactic that can cut across Reform’s ascent. The May local election displayed a surge for Reform, and polls show them on course to win the next general election.
Working-class people are struggling to make ends meet, and the transition from a Tory to a Labour government has not made things easier — for many it is now even worse. Nigel Farage has been gifted the opportunity to make gains by cynically posing as an antidote to establishment politicians — a “man of the people.” With the Tories facing their own crisis and collapse in support, we are witnessing the demise of the two-party system.
Crucially, the way to take on Reform is from the left, cutting across the scapegoating and divisiveness of Farage and his ilk with a program based on the common interests of the working class in all its diversity. This must include (but by no means be limited to) taxing the rich to fund education, health, and council housing, while ending privatisation of our NHS and kicking out the private companies bleeding it dry. It means giving full support to unionising all workers — migrant and British-born — to fight for our real common interests and oppose the billionaires’ divide-and-rule agenda.
A socialist program to counter the right also needs to stand firmly for public ownership — including energy, water, housing and other key sectors of the economy to plan the economy in the interests of the things we need.
Resisting war and imperialism
The world has watched in horror as the genocide has continued in Gaza. Starmer may have recently joined other world leaders in voicing mild criticism, but since arriving in Downing Street, he has been a staunch ally to Israel and utterly complicit in the bloodshed and suffering. And as the situation in the Middle East becomes increasingly volatile, this criticism has been swept aside as the government returns to the mantra of “Israel’s right to defend itself.” Starmer has voiced support for Donald Trump’s actions in Iran, including the bombing of nuclear sites.
The new party must stand in opposition to all imperialism and militarism. Under Starmer, the UK, like other countries, has ramped up military spending and we’re the ones paying through cuts to our services and living standards. We need to tax the rich to fund welfare not warfare. Arms factories should be nationalised under workers’ control, and workers’ existing skills redeployed produce the things society needs — not instruments of war.
Lessons of Corbynism
Jeremy Corbyn has a long history of opposing war, supporting workers’ struggles, fighting racism and all oppression. The phenomenon of Corbynism was an introduction for many young people to the basic ideas of socialism, and the concept that society can be run differently.
His involvement in leading a new party will ensure a membership that swells to tens of thousands very quickly. We must however heed the lessons from his time as Labour leader. Corbyn’s modest manifesto pledges brought about a campaign to crush him from the right-wing establishment — with the backing of many of his own MPs. Rather than mobilising the party’s mass membership to drive out the right wing, Corbyn’s leadership instead attempted to placate and conciliate with the Blairites who were determined to crush the movement.
This strategy was bound to fail, and it is something we need to draw clear lessons from. The capitalist class have huge resources at their disposal to defend their interests and their system, which they used to defeat Corbyn as Labour leader. The new party must be implacable in representing the interests of the working class and opposing those of the capitalists. Furthermore, it would be a mistake to take the approach that a new party is just for elections. It has to be about the fightback — giving a political lead to different struggles.
The launch has been a long time coming and has clearly been delayed for too long already. Even Corbyn himself has been forced to acknowledge this, saying at a mass rally in Liverpool called by the Merseyside Community Independents: “Many people are very frustrated that we didn’t found a new political party much earlier. If you want to blame anybody, blame me.”
Events similar to the Liverpool rally have been taking place up and down the country. This includes an Assembly of Resistance in Leicester, as well as the launch of the People’s Alliance for Change and Equality (PACE) in Kirklees, both spearheaded by members of Socialist Alternative. With Corbyn and other independents speaking, PACE brought together trade unionists, anti-cuts and anti-war campaigners and climate activists around the rallying cry of the new party we need.
Perhaps most importantly, we need a party that fights for socialist change. Capitalism brings crisis and chaos internationally. From the volatility of escalating wars to climate catastrophe which threatens the future of humanity, meanwhile billionaires hoard wealth and profit is valued more than our lives. Lasting improvements and gains for our class will only be achieved through breaking with this rotten system.
