Your Party is here. Can it cut through and help defeat Reform?

Left wing parties are like buses. You wait for ages for one to come along, and then two turn up. 

Or, as Zarah Sultana explained it at the founding conference of a new left party last weekend, echoing Lenin, there are decades when nothing happens, and then there are weeks and days when decades happen.

We are in such an historical moment: Conservatives and Labour, the two parties that dominated British politics for a century, are seeing their support drain away, replaced by a right wing and left wing insurgency, respectively Reform and the Greens.

The Green Party was long a marginal force, gradually growing membership and councillors over the last 15 years, and winning four seats in the 2024 elections. Then in September, the members overwhelmingly elected a dynamic new leader, Zack Polanski.

Like the Zoran Mamdani wave that swept New York this summer, culminating in the democratic socialist’s stunning victory last month, Polanski has almost singlehandedly rebooted the British political calculus, and can fairly claim to have shifted Labour’s budget leftwards in November. 

After Chancellor Rachel Reeves held firm to her so-called fiscal rules, using the excuse of an alleged £20bn financial black hole, both the rules and the hole were shown to be conjuring tricks designed to justify her conservative fiscal stance. Then, due to the Green threat and Labour’s plummeting poll position, she ditched them in her budget. 

If Corbyn represents a brand of radical social democracy and internationalism, Sultana’s brand is full-blooded socialism and anti-imperialism

In its first 17 months in power, Labour pursued continuity austerity, with Reform-like anti-migrant policies, and authoritarian repression against pro-Palestinian protesters. The result has been a slump in popularity unprecedented in modern history, going from first to third in the polls, and regularly seeing its councillors ejected in local by-elections by huge swings to Reform.

And now there is a new socialist party in Britain, led by Jeremy Corbyn, which held its founding conference this weekend. The party began with a bust-up between the former Labour leader and his youthful challenger, Zarah Sultana, and has carried on that way.

There is an ideological divide. If Corbyn represents a brand of radical social democracy and internationalism, Sultana’s brand is full-blooded socialism and anti-imperialism.

For example, while Corbyn backs the UN consensus of a two-state solution to the Palestine question, Sultana told conference that she backs one democratic state of Palestine from the river to the sea. These bold positions make her a rock star on the left, if not in the country.

In Liverpool, among more than 2,000 voting delegates, it was easy to be swept up in the drama of the clash between camp Corbyn and camp Sultana. And yet that does not capture the grassroots enthusiasm among the new membership, or its frustration at bureaucratic control by backroom apparatchiks.

Already at 55,000, it is the largest left-wing party in Britain since the communists in 1945. Yet it has not seen the spectacular growth of Green membership since Polanski’s election, which has reached 150,000, surpassing both Conservatives and Lib Dems.

Mostly, younger left-wing activists have no patience for internecine squabbles and have moved to back Polanski’s vibrant, populist leadership. Those who have opted to stay with the new left party are in many cases veterans of decades of struggle, from the poll tax uprising against Thatcher, anti-racist campaigns, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and union battles. 

The party is highly diverse and working class in the main, with a major new cohort being the Muslim pro-Palestine movement that saw four independents elected in July 2024. The two cultures - white leftists and Muslims - must develop trust and unite on core issues, or retreat to the comfort of small political groups. 

TikTok left leaders

The backdrop to the revival of the left and far right is the death of the neoliberal consensus over the last decade. The Covid pandemic, the Ukraine war and the Gaza genocide were triple blows that exposed how centrist politics had nothing to say in the face of the ripping up of the US-led globalised order, and the cost of living crisis, while supporting genocide in Gaza. 

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The insurgencies of the populist right and left are aided by the algorithms of social media. Instagram and TikTok are the great equalisers for the new politics, hence the rush of billionaires in recent years to acquire platforms and shape the narratives away from forces that, correctly, see the oligarchs as the main cause of our social ills.

Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, alongside right-wing dinosaurs like Rupert Murdoch, have successfully pushed politics right, but in this time of technological revolution, upstart political actors like Mamdani and Polanski have emerged as if from nowhere to speak directly to millions of people. 

They have mastered the art of mobilising mass enthusiasm for ground campaigns to door knock hard-pressed voters, while speaking the language of popular feelings about the unjust economic system, with simple ideas like making life affordable (Mamdani), and making hope normal again (Polanski). Both take unapologetic aim at the billionaire class.

Before them, Corbyn did this when he was Labour leader, but his less slick, less combative, style of communication has now been eclipsed by this dynamic new generation of leaders. 

Bernie Sanders or Lenin?

Sultana is part of this new generation, although her language is more Marx than Mamdani. She told a meeting on Friday night that the left should look beyond the key utilities to nationalising “the entire economy” to overcome British wealth concentration.

Before we imagine a Bolshevik takeover, she mentioned construction firms and the banks and, given the former’s dismal record on housebuilding and the latter’s mega profits, this has logic to it.

Sultana can switch from Bernie Sanders to Lenin in a moment, but this is Britain, where the Conservatives have been leading a permanent revolution towards oligarchy; since the racist riots of 2024 and this summer's far-right mass rally in London, the spectre of fascism is real.

A recent Ipsos poll showed half of Britons want radical change but only 4 percent trust Labour to deliver it - Sultana and Polanksi are tapping into that. 

Sultana was undoubtedly the star of the conference, both in her crowd-pleasing speech, and in her absence on the first day in protest at the banning of several members of the Socialist Workers Party. 

Your Party’s diverse working class members are ready for the fight, if they can turn outwards into communities and take on Labour and Reform

Your Party suffers from the tension of wanting to be a broad, democratic party with grassroots bases across the country, while being led by people used to working within unions and the Labour Party where central control is hardwired, and fear of takeover by Marxist groups pervasive.

It may seem paradoxical that a party formed following mass expulsions of Corbyn supporters by Labour would engage in expulsions of the left on the first day of its founding conference.

Sultana is adamantly opposed to this. The conference backed her view in allowing membership of smaller left parties. Figures close to Corbyn such as former Unite leader Len McClusky oppose letting Leninist groups not known for pluralism into the party.

The party also voted, by a tiny margin, to back collective leadership over a single leader and executive. The central executive will be elected in the new year and it will have to find a way to cut through to the public without a single figurehead. Corbyn and Sultana already have high profiles, and perhaps new figures will emerge. 

Genuine member democracy can produce unexpected results. Sometimes what feels good in a vote will not survive contact with reality. The Conservatives discovered the same when they elected Liz Truss as leader. 

It might be unsocialist to want a saviour, a charismatic figure who speaks directly to the public and wins their support. But as Polanski and Mamdani are showing, this can be critical in the media war, and as a new party with a fragile beginning and a sometimes fractious membership, this will be vital.

Your Party’s diverse working class members are ready for the fight, if they can turn outwards into communities and take on Labour and Reform. In this time of monsters, the stakes could not be higher.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.