What Next for the New Left Party? We Asked Our Contributors

Rumours of a new left party were confirmed last week when Zarah Sultana took to social media to announce her departure from the Labour party to “co-lead [its] founding”. Sultana reportedly bounced her supposed co-founder Jeremy Corbyn into the launch – the former Labour leader released his own, more cryptic statement the following day. As the new party struggles to take shape, we asked five Novara Media contributors what they make of it so far, and where they think it should go.

Craig Gent, researcher and former Novara Media north of England editor.

The plan for a new Corbyn-and-Sultana-led party of the left, if plan is even the right word, can only have been cooked up by a near-circular Venn diagram of leftists for whom London is the country’s only relevant polity, and people who have learnt nothing from the experience of the 2019 general election, let alone their own contribution to the result. That this coalition includes a number of those on the left who had previously claimed to understand the limits of Corbynism as an electoral project is particularly depressing. It is an uncomfortable truth that Corbynism 1.0 never mastered how to transition from mobilising to organising; from mailing list to movement. Post-2019, the one thing all leftists could agree on was that we needed to turn back to community organising in a big way and, for many, decentre London in our activities (and mindset) along the way. Neither happened. Now, we’re invited to sign up for a “Team Zarah” Action Network list to await updates, while many of those batting hardest for Corbyn demonstrated the limits of their political acumen six years ago. Yes, the left has spent too long wallowing in its own misery. But if we do want a new national project, Corbynism 2.0 is far from the clarion some seem to think it is.

Joe Guinan, think-tank president and author.

Wait long enough for a bus and two come at once: such is the experience of Britain’s extra-Labour left awaiting leadership in the Starmer era. Yet though it has irritated some people, the confluence of the new left party’s formation and Zack Polanski’s prospective leadership of the Greens need not be a bad thing. We need political pluralism, not control freakery – more democratic choice, not less.

Starmer is only in power because of ruthlessly enforced political supply control, foreclosing progressive options. Breaking apart our dying party system is the only way to avoid a nailed-on Reform government at the next election. First past the post is only a barrier to gaining momentum until it isn’t – look at the displacement of Liberalism after 1906. Six prime ministers in 10 years is not a functional system. The Tories have already been blasted apart by the crisis – Labour will be next.

The shape of the new left party is critical. Its most suitable form would be a broad democratic front of the left, incorporating everyone from the plethora of independents to a refurbished eco-socialist Green party. It must focus on movement-building and community-building, not inward-looking factionalism. This way, some of the mistakes of the past can be avoided, and the dead skin of Labourism can finally be shed.

The new party will not – cannot – meet all the expectations of it. The best time for such a formation was four years ago, before much of the energy of Corbynism was allowed to atomise and drift away. We are in the realm of the suboptimal. We also cannot afford to get it wrong this time.

Jonas Marvin, activist and researcher.

Most people are fed up and cynical about change. This is a central problem for radical politics. If a new leftwing party is to succeed, we need to make socialist transformation seem feasible, not by conceding on our principles, but by expanding popular conceptions of what is possible. A new party led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn will attract thousands of people. But that’s not enough: we need to map our strengths and our enemies’ weaknesses. A new left party should not simply hope its figureheads will provide sufficient momentum for electoralism, but immediately begin to organise. Door-knocking and power-mapping in our communities can help us develop a picture of what animates people, whether that’s the cost of living or declining public health. We should use these insights to propose and organise around concrete policies that shatter what Mark Fisher coined as “capitalist realism”: price controls, building leisure centres, and reduced working time, for example.

Electing leftwing politicians won’t be enough. We need to break down the division between leaders and the led, creating a party of organisers that, in the words of the US historian Michael Denning, makes “everyone a legislator”.

Shanice McBean, author of Abolition Revolution.

After months of Jeremy Corbyn flirting with the idea of a new left party, I’m glad Zarah Sultana took the initiative to announce it. No doubt this was the result of factional manoeuvring. My hope is that this will all be washed away in a tide of popular democracy. For me, the real challenge will be what comes after.

Zohran Mamdani’s New York City mayoral campaign articulated capitalism’s crisis in ways that were meaningful to different communities. He critiqued kebab-flation while promising to expand gender-affirming care, pledged to freeze the rent and disband the NYPD’s notoriously violent Strategic Response Group..

The question isn’t whether a new party spits bar-for-bar like Mamdani, but how quickly it can learn the lessons of his success. Will it create a powerful alliance with a likely Zack Polanski-led Green party – as Mamdani did with his Democratic rival Brad Lander – or will it fall prey to ego and political purity tests? Can a new left party communicate an exciting, principled vision that unites communities, or will it decide to abandon trans people, migrants or other supposedly vote-losing issues? We’ll see – and some of us will fight.

Abi Wilkinson, journalist and research consultant.

My expectations of the Labour government were low – but somehow, it’s fallen short of them. No surprise, then, that over the past year, talk of a new left party has grown louder. This has been on the cards for a while, though confined mostly to whisper networks. The argument for keeping the plans confidential among a trusted circle, rather than engaging grassroots leftists at an early stage, is that you avoid airing dirty laundry in public. So much for that idea, eh?

Negative as I might sound, I’m actually hopeful a new left party can succeed. Zarah Sultana forcing things public caused short-term chaos but may help push the project forward. Personally, I’ll be staying in the Green party, which is already attracting some disillusioned Labour voters. I’m backing Zack Polanski in the leadership race because he’s a solid leftwinger who has vocally opposed the Israeli genocide in Gaza from the start.

Both projects are happening. It’s possible they can appeal to slightly different groups of voters, and a red-green coalition will be stronger than the sum of its parts. To take on Labour and Reform, the left must find a way to work together.