Editor’s Note: Ex-Labour Party MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have announced that a new left-wing party will soon be founded in Britain. Corbyn, who was previously the leader of the Labour Party, said, “For too long, people have been denied a real political choice – not anymore.”
Corbyn is a long-time left-wing activist and parliamentarian who was forced out of the top spot in the Labour Party in 2020 after being elected by the grassroots membership. Sultana was elected as a Labour MP in 2024 but suspended by the party leadership shortly after; she has been a critic of Labour’s child benefit cuts and what she calls its “active participation” in the Gaza genocide.
The policies for the new party, which does not yet have a name, will be worked out at a founding conference at some point, but will surely include popular policies like restoring welfare and benefit benefits cut by the government; higher taxes on the wealthy; the return of water, energy, rail, and mail to public ownership; an end to attacks on immigrants and minorities; and a termination of British support for the Israeli military.
Already, more than 500,000 people have signed up to join the new party. By comparison, the ruling Labour Party has 309,000 members, the Conservatives 123,000, and the neo-fascist Reform UK party of Nigel Farage counts 227,000.
Robert Griffiths, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Britain, said that Communists are “broadly positive” in their assessment of this development, while also remaining cautious and realistic. He noted in a statement issued last Friday that the new party could “mark a significant point of departure for…the electoral struggle for working-class representation” in Parliament.
However, he warned of possible pitfalls.
First, the corporate media is already hostile to the effort and undermining the new party’s image, while the Labour Party machine is going all out to discredit it. Second, Griffiths noted that there have been no major responses from the trade union movement and that “any mass electoral alternative to Labour needs the solid bases and reach…that unions can provide. Finally, he warned about the need to be alert to ultra-left efforts to divide the new party and push it down sectarian dead-ends.
In the article below, Morning Star journalist Andrew Murray covers the launch of the new party and some of the motivations pushing its founders.
LONDON—Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana have reaffirmed their intention to launch a new political party of the socialist left to challenge a system rigged against working people.
The two former Labour MPs issued a joint statement July 24 committing to the new party after three weeks of sometimes tense and challenging discussions since Sultana quit the Labour Party.
They pledged the creation of “a new kind of political party—one that belongs to you” and looked ahead to a founding conference at which members would “decide the party’s direction, the model of leadership, and the policies that are needed to transform society.”
The founding process will also determine the name of the new party. It is understood that the process will be overseen by a working group to be established by the Independent Alliance of MPs, of which Corbyn and Sultana are both members.
Polling shows that the party will pose a serious threat to Labour, with one survey putting the two neck-and-neck at 15%.
In alliance with the Greens, currently in the midst of their own leadership contest, it could overhaul Labour as the main electoral expression of the left in British politics.
Certainly its existence will complicate Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s political strategy, which relies exclusively on trying to appeal to right-wing and even racist voters and has created the vacuum which the Corbyn-Sultana initiative seeks to fill.
The statement resolves protracted arguments over how the party would be led on an interim basis, until the initiative has its democratic processes in place. Considerable pressure was brought to bear by leading figures on the left for agreement to be reached.
“The system is rigged when 4.5 million children live in poverty in the sixth-richest country in the world,” the statement said. “The system is rigged when giant corporations make a fortune from rising bills.”
“The system is rigged when the government says there is no money for the poor, but billions for war. We cannot accept these injustices, and neither should you.”
The statement continued: “We will only fix the crises in our society with a mass redistribution of wealth and power. That means taxing the very richest in our society.
“That means an NHS [National Health Service] free from privatization and bringing energy, water, rail, and mail into public ownership,” it added, and “investing in a massive council-house [public housing] building program”—recalling some of the most popular policies of Labour under Corbyn.
The Corbyn-Sultana statement also takes aim at “the government’s complicity in crimes against humanity. Now, more than ever, we must defend the right to protest against genocide.
“That is why we will keep demanding an end to all arms sales to Israel and for the only path to peace—a free and independent Palestine.
“The great dividers want you to think that the problems in our society are caused by migrants or refugees. They’re not. They are caused by an economic system that protects the interests of corporations and billionaires.
“It is ordinary people who create the wealth—and it is ordinary people who have the power to put it back where it belongs.
“It’s time for a new kind of political party. One that is rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements. One that builds power in all regions and nations. One that belongs to you.”
It is not yet known whether Corbyn will be leader of the new party, but his latest polling shows him to be more popular than the Prime Minister—a very low bar, admittedly. Starmer’s approval ratings are poor across all age groups, sinking to minus 30 among young people.
Corbyn said of the new party: “The Labour Party is a very top-down, highly centralized party that is full of control freaks.
“This is going to be community-led, community-based, grassroots-led; this is going to be very different, and you know what? It’s going to be fun.”
He also pledged close collaboration with Sultana, saying: “We’re working absolutely together on this. So, it’s all fine, we’re working very well together, all of us.” Some corporate media reports had suggested Sultana had jumped the gun and announced the pending foundation of a new party without consulting Corbyn first.
The party is understood to have attracted well over 500,000 supporters since its announcement, making it potentially the largest political party in the country. Its six MPs already give it a larger parliamentary presence than the Farage outfit, which has lost MPs to splits and scandal.
It is believed that the as-yet unnamed party will hold its inaugural conference in the near future.
One issue to be determined is whether it will take the form of an alliance of already existing left and independent electoral initiatives across the country, or be a more formally structured organization, or some hybrid of the two.
Whatever final view is taken, it will be registered with the Electoral Commission as a party.
It will have to decide how best to give effect to the two leaders’ pledge to “build a democratic movement that can take on the rich and powerful—and win” as Britain enters a period of increasing electoral and political volatility.
Morning Star
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