The Revenge of the Left

Zarah Sultana’s recent announcement that she has resigned from Labour to ‘co-lead the founding of a new party’ with Jeremy Corbyn marks the beginning of probably the most significant left-wing schism from Labour in the party’s post-war history. For all the initial confusion over Corbyn’s involvement, the uncomfortable silence that trailed his own statement, and his rather non-committal claim that ‘discussions are ongoing’, we can probably say that at least some form of political organisation, designed as a left-wing alternative to Labour, will be launched in the coming months. As Corbyn has hinted in previous weeks, its first electoral test will be the 2026 local and devolved parliament elections, in which the combination of metropolitan council seats, and the proportional voting systems of Holyrood and the Senedd, offers fertile territory for an electoral breakthrough. 

To some extent, this has been a long time coming. Ever since Keir Starmer’s leadership began rapidly shifting the party to the right, shedding much of its Corbynite inheritance (including Corbyn himself), the Labour left has experienced a level of marginalisation that outdoes even the worst levels of ‘control freakery’ seen under Tony Blair. In response, as I have written elsewhere with Colm Murphy, the Labour left has had four strategic options: Conversion, Loyalty, Voice or Exit. As the leadership’s scorched-earth approach to party management has foreclosed most opportunities for the first two, it is the latter two approaches which have pre-dominated. If the recent rebellion over the welfare bill was a successful example of the ‘Voice’ approach in action, Sultana’s statement is a clear-cut demonstration of ‘Exit’. 

Yet as any trainspotter of the British left will tell you, we have been here before. Quite a few times in fact. In 2003, the maverick Labour MP George Galloway was expelled from the party, leading him to establish Respect, an eccentric political formation that was effectively an alliance between the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Muslim Association of Britain. Before that strange political marriage, the SWP had briefly been in another. Known as the Socialist Alliance, this had been a shaky electoral pact formed between the Socialist Party of England and Wales (formerly the Militant Tendency) and other far left groups, in opposition to New Labour. Before that, in 1996, Arthur Scargill had set up the Socialist Labour Party (SLP), largely rooted in opposition to Tony Blair’s revision of Clause 4. On each occasion, these initiatives sought to offer an electoral alternative to Labour, as the historic party of the working-class appeared to be abandoning core values and age-old ideological commitments in the New Labour era. Ultimately, however, while all three parties were greeted with brief flurries of early enthusiasm, the mighty obstacle of first-past-the-post (plus internal divisions over constitutions, policies, and personalities), saw each either spectacularly implode, or decline into irrelevance. 

But while memories of such past failures may give some prospective supporters of a Sultana-Corbyn party reason for pause, conditions now could be rather more favourable for the left. Initial polling suggests that a Corbyn-led party could win as much as 10% of the vote, while last year’s general election also revealed a substantial base of support for candidates to the left of Labour. Corbyn himself, of course, won as an independent candidate, as did four others, standing in opposition to the Labour Party leadership’s quietist line on Gaza. If one counts the four Greens also elected, this gives the non-Labour left the largest parliamentary representation it has ever enjoyed, just beating the handful of Communist, Independent Labour Party, and Common Wealth MPs elected in 1945. Of the previous left-wing challenges, only one (Galloway’s Respect) has involved a sitting MP, let alone two. And none have had a leadership team with anything close to the kind of national profile enjoyed by Corbyn or Sultana, both in the mainstream media, and on alternative platforms like TikTok. Unlike previous parties, this one could also start life with a substantial presence in local government, with left-wing independent councillors and groups already well established across the country, and some already signed up to a statement of aims circulated by the Corbyn-associated organisation Collective. If a new party was able to win over most of these councillors, it would gain a tangible presence at the local level that would help avoid media portrayals of the challenge as a purely online phenomenon.

With Labour currently haemorrhaging at the polls, and party politics more fractured and fluid than ever, a Sultana-Corbyn party could pose a very real electoral threat in constituencies across the country. However, there remain several major considerations and potential obstacles along the way. 

Who comes with?

Obviously, when the new party is formed, the first major question will be who will be tempted to join them. At the time of writing, nearly 40,000 have signed up to Sultana’s new mailing list. If this was translated into full-blown membership, it would already make it the largest left-wing alternative to Labour since the Communist Party of the 1940s. Yet, left groupings like Momentum have also condemned the initiative, ruling out any organised mass defection of Labour’s left-wing grassroots. Amongst Labour’s left-wing MPs, the response has also been muted, with Clive Lewis, Diane Abbott, and John McDonnell having already ruled out joining. Other potential defectors, such as Jon Trickett and Ian Lavery, are so far silent. While far from the be-all and end-all, establishing a substantial parliamentary base would surely help the party appear viable, and help make the argument that it deserves similar levels of media coverage to Reform. It would also go some way to convincing more reticent party members to take the plunge as well. But even then, as the SDP and Change UK experienced, a decent presence on the green benches now is no guarantee of electoral success in the future. 

Some obvious collaborators could be found among the so-called ‘Gaza independents’, currently organised with Corbyn through the ‘Independent Alliance’, but this is also potentially problematic. While they and Corbyn may agree when it comes to Palestine, or austerity, there are indications of profound differences when it comes to social issues, as hinted by the opposition of some of its members to decriminalising abortion. As a result, their presence in a new left party could prove divisive and risk alienating the kind of socially liberal left-wing voters that would make up much of the new party’s electoral and activist base. Something like this played out in Respect in the early 2000s, when SWP activists had to contend with the socially conservative views of the party’s Muslim members and supporters. To avoid more damaging ruptures later, some kind of statement of principle, likely including an uncompromising commitment to LGBT+ liberation and abortion access, could probably act as a useful vetting process for any would-be members. 

While probably a smaller presence than twenty or thirty years ago, the organised Far Left, found in small revolutionary and Trotskyist parties or groups, could also be a major administrative headache for a new left party. Its membership will be likely filled with members of groups like the SWP, Revolutionary Socialism in the 21^st Century, the Alliance for Workers Liberty or the Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee). While some could certainly contribute enthusiastically to forming a pluralistic left party, others will bring with them their own agendas, policies, and, most importantly, rivalries. This could lead to major internal disagreements between the party’s core founders and organisers, and the wider membership. This was seen in the SLP, where Scargill insisted upon a broadly conventional left-wing policy programme reminiscent of Tony Benn’s ‘Alternative Economic Strategy’, to the disappointment of the numerous revolutionary organisations that eagerly joined his party. In other instances, it could lead to straight forward sectarianism, with pre-existing groups battling it out for influence rather than focusing on the growth of the new party as a whole. In such a scenario, a typical non-aligned left-winger, enthused by Corbyn but otherwise oblivious to the internecine conflicts of the British far left, could find themselves once again alienated from political activity after sitting through a few meetings that descend into score-setting and factional bickering. To avoid such a scenario, the party leadership could try and suppress such groups, adopting a more bureaucratic and top-down leadership structure. But, as seen in the decline of Scargill’s SLP, this could merely intensify disagreements, leading to howls of objection from the grassroots membership, embarrassing news stories of vote rigging or backroom fixing, followed by the mass abandonment of the party as a discredited and dictatorial husk organisation. 

Finally, any new left party challenging Labour would want to find friends in the labour movement. Left-wing unions already disaffiliated from the party, such as the RMT or BFAWU, would be the most obvious candidates. Union support would not only provide a very helpful source of funds, but also a wider affiliated membership base and a substantial grounding in organised working-class politics. For a leadership concerned about being overwhelmed by ultra-left sectarians, the institutional heft of affiliated unions and their membership could also play a necessary party management role. 

 Yet Britain’s trade unions have always been cautious beasts, wary of losing the precious institutional access to a party of government that affiliation to Labour provides. In extreme cases, the unions have always been more likely to simply disaffiliate and redirect their funds to purely industrial matters, rather than back an outright electoral competitor to Labour. Even Arthur Scargill failed to use his status to gain the support of a single trade union when he founded the SLP. One exceptional example was the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC), an unwieldy electoral alliance which had the backing of the RMT in the late 2000s, to seemingly no electoral advantage. This might put a serious mental block on even the most disaffected left-wing unions trying the same thing again. The more likely course, then, is that the new left party will try to toe the difficult line of growing its influence among the trade union rank-and-file without alienating left-leaning, but ultimately cautious, general secretaries.

The Green Factor

The other major organisation the new left party will have to tangle with will be the Green Party. Since the 2000s, the Greens have frequently acted as a haven for left-wingers unhappy with Labour. And, after years as a virtually one-woman-band in the eyes of the average voter, their breakthrough at the 2024 election has made them a more attractive political prospect than ever before. The leadership campaign of Zack Polanski, on a left-wing ‘eco-populist’ platform, has also attracted a lot of attention from the post-Corbyn left (despite Polanski’s past life as a Lib Dem and Corbyn critic!), leading to a surge in the party’s membership and the growing visibility of the left-wing pressure group Greens Organise. If Polanski wins, and is able to take the Greens in a more full-throated socialist direction, it would be madness for a Sultana-Corbyn party not to propose some form of electoral cooperation. Based on his tweets welcoming Sultana’s announcements, Polanski would likely accept.  

The question then would be: what form would such a pact take? There are plenty of Red-Green alliance parties in Western Europe and Scandinavia that could provide something of a template, as well as France’s New Popular Front. In terms of divvying up seats, it could probably be done in a way reminiscent of the SDP-Liberal Alliance, with incumbents going unchallenged, and certain areas with an established local presence already (the Greens in Bristol and Sheffield, or the independent left in Preston or London) ceded to one party or the other. But would such a pact also have a joint manifesto? If so, how would that be authored, and how would policy differences be navigated and surmounted? The next question would be: how many Greens, particularly those embedded in affluent Tory or Lib Dem areas, could actually stomach cooperating with the left at all? In that sense, could such an alliance merely facilitate a splinter within British environmental politics, rather than offering a unified left opposition to Labour? 

What kind of party? 

The final, and probably most existential, question facing a future Sultana-Corbyn party is what structural and organisational form it will take. According to Gabriel Pogrund’s reporting, current planning appears heavily centralised, based on two small informal networks of activists, organised around Corbyn and Sultana respectively. Given the political cachet possessed by both politicians, it’s likely that both will wield considerable power and influence over the party’s formation. But this secretive, informal form of political organising can also give way to highly personalised, and often trivial, forms of internal wrangling. At the moment, it appears that one side sees Corbyn’s lingering status among the British left as an essential asset for a future party, despite his age and lack of enthusiasm for leadership roles, while the other sees Sultana as the face of a new generation of left-wing politicians and activists. Whatever the merits of either argument, the fact that these divisions have already become public knowledge through leaks to the Murdoch press probably shows that a smaller network of cadres does not guarantee a more disciplined political organisation. 

 An alternative model preferred by many at the grassroots level, particularly those in pre-existing groups, would be a multi-tendency organisation, where factions would be able to operate in an open, pluralist, intra-party democracy, likely based on some sort of delegate system. An example of this would be the briefly vibrant Communist Refoundation Party in Italy from the 1990s, or the contemporary Democratic Socialists of America. There is no space here to fully explore the debates about what that could look like, but critics might object that such a structure would be unwieldy, replicating the worse forms of ‘rule by committee’, as well as merely amplifying internal disagreements. It could also reduce the party’s policy-making structures to a hyper-democratic consultation process that pays little attention to wider electoral considerations. Such a scenario could easily see Corbyn and his allies acting as the main voice of moderation against the maximalist policy demands of various factions involved, a situation that might seem ironic to Corbyn’s arch critics.

Conclusions

These are just a few of the obstacles the new left party will have to navigate over the coming weeks, months and years. All the while it will also have to compete with an infamously hostile media environment, who will likely find many opportunities to rehash the anti-Corbyn attack lines of the 2015-19 era, as well as accusations that the new party’s defection risks merely splitting the vote and gifting the next election to Nigel Farage. It will also have to contend with the still powerful pull of the Labour Party – which is, despite all its faults, the historic party of the working-class – to left-wing voters and activists. Rather interestingly, the experience of the recent welfare rebellion, while immensely damaging for the Starmer government, may well have convinced a few waverers that there is still life in a dogged left-wing opposition within the party fold, not least because the soft left is also beginning to reassert itself. 

Nevertheless, we are at a major juncture in the history of the Labour left. While the left’s presence in the party has always fluctuated, entering periods of growing power and influence, followed by decline, marginalisation, and occasionally outright exodus, such a dramatic and high-profile schism has never been mounted before, nor in such a fluctuating, and potentially fertile electoral landscape. While outright government power is almost certainly unrealistic in the long-term, the current aim of the new left party, surely, is to be a king-maker after winning dozens of seats at the next election.

Peter Mandelson is once reported to have said that disillusioned left-wing Labour voters simply had ‘nowhere else to go’. But Sultana and Corbyn’s left party may be the biggest challenge to that theory that the Labour Party has ever seen. Despite all the problems that face the new party, it would be the absolute height of complacency for the Labour Party leadership to underestimate it.

Alfie Steer is a historian of contemporary Britain, currently finishing a doctorate at the University of Oxford on the history of the Labour Left since the 1980s.