If the British1 left is to organise itself electorally, then clearly a new political party is needed. After the failures of 2015–19, it was always going to come to this. Some would say, not without good cause, that organising within the Labour Party was always doomed. Whatever your view, it’s now obvious that, finally, the socialist ‘party within a party’ is a complete strategic and moral dead end.
So after the crush of the Corbyn movement, and the ensuing half-decade of melancholia and paralysis, it’s pleasing to see something finally happening. Despite that resolute defeat in December 2019, the need and desire for a mass socialist movement did not simply evaporate overnight. Since then, while all strategic avenues have been zealously barricaded by the Labour right, it’s evident that the moral persuasion of those being blocked has not altered. Over ten million people voted for a left-wing Labour Party in that election, and Starmer’s incarnation, despite ‘sweeping’ to power (with a lower number of total votes than 2019, no less), has been hated from the left just as much as the right, despite the singular media narrative of Reform’s impending rise. The appetite is still there, the base is still there – the only thing missing is an organising locus around which a mass movement can be (re-)built.
While organising within the Labour Party has been foreclosed, mass migration to the other extant left-liberal parties was never quite going to suffice either. The Green Party and, in Wales, Plaid Cymru, have made overtures towards a politics that foregrounds broad left-populism, and have been reasonably effective in conducting parliamentary attacks on Starmer’s government. But both come with institutional impediments that render them ill-placed to build a mass socialist movement on their own: namely, the possibility of their left tendencies getting bogged down by blockers.
Plaid have been there already: there was a real left insurgency under Leanne Wood’s leadership (2012–2018), a movement that looked poised to elegantly synthesise the spirit of Corbynism (minus the toxicity of Welsh Labour) with the simultaneous rise of an energetic (if ultimately directionless) left-nationalism. Much like Corbyn, it was stymied internally before it could ever really build enough momentum to threaten national power. It’ll be interesting to see how Zack Polanski’s leftist bid for Green leadership fares with these precedents in mind.
In short, none of these parties are socialist parties. They are, at best, parties with socialists in them. But frankly, with the far right inching closer to power, accelerating ecological collapse, and unceasing militarisation all looming, we don’t have any more time to waste on long marches through labyrinthine institutions, attempting to win over liberals (whose politics are antithetical to a socialist cause) before real power can be won. For something to be successful, it will need to foreground an unabashedly left-wing, socialist, class-based politics as a non-negotiable starting point, not as an alternative within a broader, unwieldy political vehicle.
There are, of course, pragmatic preconditions that will need to be met before this new party could have any hope for success – comradely relations with other ‘progressive’ parties will be essential (and likely), as will a significant degree of trade union affiliation (less likely, sadly) – but the possibility of it coming into existence provides at least a greater degree of hope than anything we’ve seen in some time.
And yet, at the time of writing, it’s not clear at all that this Sultana/Corbyn-led outfit will cut it. The issues related to its launch (or lack thereof) are ominous. At this embryonic stage, the party is still only within the purview of the inner circle planning its development. Consequently, almost everything known to the wider public is filtered through the prism of existing media forms and discourse: social media tittle-tattle, giddy lobby journalism, leaks to uncomradely reporters, etc.
There’s a lot of handwringing from supportive onlookers about the rights and wrongs of what Zarah Sultana’s ‘camp’ is doing versus Jeremy Corbyn’s, but this is to miss the point somewhat. That this information is being leaked, presumably from within, shows that it may already be too riven with people au fait with the same old dirty games of factionalism and betrayal, compounded by a preoccupation with how a hostile media class might portray it, top-down, to those it is hoped will eventually join. The stirrings of a mass democratic party this is not.
The worry, then, is that this fledgling organisation is still far too close to all that needs to be expunged for it to be successful. Its strategy appears to be predicated on its ability to play the rules of a game that is rigged against it. The value of a new party will only be realised if, having shed the deadweight of (New) New Labour, it then comes out swinging against all that rendered the modern Labour Party unviable as a socialist apparatus in the first place.
This new party, in whatever shape it ultimately takes, cannot be successful if it merely mimics the form of its antagonists, with only an alternative political orientation to distinguish it. It can’t take that same old approach of relying on charismatic individuals – with their hearts and politics in the right place, yes – and hope to convince, to ‘lead’, to ‘win people over’. The party needs to be the people. In a truly democratic political party, in which the leadership and membership are as one, the intent of bad-faith external saboteurs becomes irrelevant. The media will be at odds with your demands at every turn no matter what – you don’t combat that by out-debating them, you combat it by becoming the reality they can’t dispel.
The problem is, this takes a very long time to build: there are no shortcuts, and you can’t fake it. I’m just going to rip from an earlier article that touched on this, rather than rehash it:
‘The challenge, however, is that the left and right are working at different temporalities. The ingredients for a leftist fightback – community resilience, workplace organisation, etc – take a long time to develop. This can’t be astroturfed, imposed top-down from without – such a project can only occur organically from below if it’s to have lasting success. The right, on the other hand, already has everything it needs for success: money, power, influence, a political culture well-suited for the contagion of their ideas, etc.’
In the meantime, those trying to get this thing off the ground need to take heed. Don’t try to beat people at their own discordant game. Don’t fret about making sure the most suitable celebrity-political figurehead is playing that game correctly. Don’t equivocate in the face of devious criticism from those who will always be against your cause – do not ever show them an ounce of contrition. Know what you stand for and push for it unrelentingly – millions will feel the same way. Be clear and confident in your morality, to yourself and to others. Be lucidly aware of who your political enemies are and don’t give them an inch. They won’t be able to handle it.2
These are the lessons that 2019 taught the British left. After that, and especially after the Labour Party’s forever-unforgivable approach to the Gaza Genocide, there has been a process of hardening resolve when it comes to moral commitments in the face of bad actors. That mustn’t be relinquished so easily.
(Promotional image: By Julian Stallabrass from London, UK – JPS_1425a-sm, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=140759153)
- Primarily I try to write and think from a Welsh perspective. At present it’s unclear what impact, if any, this new party will have in Wales, particularly with regard to the 2026 Senedd elections. When it does become clear, I’ll try to write something up. ↩︎
- ‘And there is also another form of fragility. The governing and media classes are used, by now, to being ‘out of touch’. They’re used to crises. Moral panic is how they police the crises. But, given the violence of their response to innocuous protest activities like chucking soup at a painting or spray-painting a plane, or even the political speech at a festival, one also has to conclude that they’re spoiled. What would they do, these delicate souls, faced with rioting Chartists or suffragettes engaged in a bombing and arson campaign? How would they cope with a trade union movement that could bring the country to a standstill? How, even, would they cope with a political movement that refused to grovel and ape their shibboleths? They have got used to an opposition that is peaceable and civil to a fault. They really have no idea.’
(Richard Seymour, ‘We’ll give you something to cry about’, Patreon) ↩︎
Disposable Everything 