Ever since Keir Starmer began shoving Labour rightwards in 2020, a space has been opening up in British politics. The limited enthusiasm for Labour at the election and since has widened that space further, as has a more general dissatisfaction: a common feeling that our party system doesn’t properly represent voters on many issues, from inequality to Gaza.
Until recently, the pandemic and then the protracted collapse of the Conservative government distracted most people from this void to the left of Labour. The fact that the more radical leadership of his predecessor ended badly, with Labour’s heavy 2019 defeat, also discouraged further leftwing experiments. Of the many thousands who had been drawn in by Corbynism, some left Labour for the Greens, while others gave up on party politics, threatening to become a lost generation of progressives.
Yet now this period of depression and relative inactivity on the left may be ending. At public and private meetings, in online discussions, independent parliamentary campaigns and other mobilisations, a growing range of leftists, from young ex-Corbynistas to union veterans, are becoming convinced that a new leftwing party is both necessary and timely.
“There is a political opening,” says a former senior adviser to Jeremy Corbyn who, like many of those exploring the possibility of a new party, prefers to speak anonymously. “There’s a good chunk of the population in the progressive tent who thought a Labour government would be a change in that direction. But Starmer is proving Labour can’t be.”
Through expulsions and suspensions, Starmer is also demonstrating that Labour won’t tolerate dissenters, as it generally has in the past. To some British socialists, setting up an alternative to Labour increasingly seems a necessity rather than a luxury. Meanwhile, the electoral system’s strong bias against new parties is showing signs of breaking down, as public opinion fragments, with five Labour seats falling to leftwing independents at the last election.
In September, they formed a parliamentary group, the Independent Alliance. The same month, a private meeting was held by Collective, an organisation founded this spring to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left”. Attenders included Len McCluskey, the former general secretary of the trade union Unite, Karie Murphy, Corbyn’s former chief of staff, Corbyn himself, Jamie Driscoll, the former Labour mayor of North of Tyne, plus an array of leftwing, non-Labour former parliamentary candidates. “Now is the time,” says a Collective promotional video, “to take on both the Labour-Tory establishment and our rigged political system.”
Also this autumn, an ongoing series of public meetings has been held in Bethnal Green in east London under the heading Party Time?. At each, a couple of hundred leftwing activists, thinkers and the politically curious have squeezed into an inadequately sized room for two hours or more, to explore whether and in what form a party should be created. The meetings have been noisy, enthusiastic, participatory, argumentative, full of articulate millennials and a little self-mocking – with an MC bellowing, “Good evening, comrades!” – just as many leftist gatherings were during the most expansive and effective phase of Corbynism. “There’s a lot of pent-up energy,” says one of the organisers of Party Time?. “We’re making the road by walking.”
Over the past 30 years, a succession of new British leftwing parties have made that claim: Respect, Left Unity, the Socialist party, the Socialist Labour party, the Scottish Socialist party, the Socialist Alliance, the Workers party. Some have won a few parliamentary seats. But none have sustained their momentum for long, often being derailed by splits and domineering personalities, which are especially damaging for small parties without deep social roots.
Why should things be different this time? People involved with Collective and Party Time? argue that the political context is much more favourable, with leftwing Britons more numerous, Labour more unpopular and the country’s problems less soluble by centrist means than during the relatively placid late 20th and early 21st century, when most of these largely forgotten parties were launched. A new leftwing force that appealed to the young would also have stronger social roots: “graduates without a future”, as a Party Time? source puts it. Meanwhile, the weakness of the Conservatives makes it harder for Labour to warn, and for left-of-centre voters to worry, that supporting a new party will let the Tories in.
Yet plenty of difficult questions remain. Will Collective and Party Time? unite or compete? When should a new party be launched? Some say within months, perhaps in time for next May’s local elections. Others say much more slowly: as a social movement first, which through community activism gradually wins enough respect to become a party. Where can it get funding? Most unions remain loyal to Labour. How should it appeal beyond disgruntled leftists? The white working-class and minority-ethnic voters it could attract, as an anti-status-quo party, often support Reform or Labour. And if it does take off, how should it maximise its power? By being an aggressive rival to Labour and the Greens – or by working with their radical elements in official or unofficial alliances? People involved in Party Time? repeatedly cited to me how Nigel Farage had radicalised the Tories.
The Labour right may actually be happy to face a new leftwing party. By attracting Labour dissidents, it could complete Starmer’s purge of the left. There is already talk of Labour MPs defecting. About one who is currently suspended from the parliamentary party for opposing the two-child benefit cap, a Party Time? source says: “I know members of [their] team have had an eye on our discussions.” The Labour right’s calculation may be that defections would do little electoral damage.
But we live in a time when centrists’ predictions often prove foolishly complacent, while rebels thrive against expectations. At the least, the left’s talk of starting afresh shows that Labour is alienating many socialists. Sooner or later, this dissatisfaction will bring Labour’s century-old dominance of our left-of-centre politics to an end.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist
