Exclusive: Jeremy Corbyn on building a new party to transform British politics

MEE sat down with the former Labour leader to talk about his vision for the new left-wing party

Jeremy Corbyn MP in Finsbury Park, London on 20 August (Yassin Soudan/MEE)

Jeremy Corbyn MP in Finsbury Park, London on 20 August (Yassin Soudan/MEE)

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In just over five years, Jeremy Corbyn has gone from being Labour leader to a key figure in the formation of a new left-wing party that could cause untold damage to the one he previously hoped to bring to power.

The new party was announced on 3 July, when MP Zarah Sultana left the Labour Party and said she would co-lead a different outfit with Corbyn.

That party doesn't exist yet. It doesn't even have a name. But it has already received more than 800,000 sign-ups.

Polling this week found that a third of 2024 Labour voters would consider voting for a Corbyn-Sultana-led party, as well as over a quarter of Labour members.

This week, Middle East Eye sat down with Corbyn in London's Finsbury Park for an exclusive and wide-ranging interview.

Corbyn discussed the formation of the new party, its electoral ambitions, challenging the Labour government and Britain's involvement in Israel's genocide in Gaza.

The full conversation is available to watch on YouTube.

On establishing a new party

The basis of the new party is the Independent Alliance: a collection of six independent MPs that have a larger grouping in parliament than Reform UK. Zarah Sultana is a recent addition to the group, which was formed after the July 2024 election.

"We have a broadly similar political direction," Corbyn explains.

"On Gaza, there is no disagreement at all. Generally, on economic and social justice issues, in the same direction....We all work together with each other. We share out strategies of how to ask questions [in parliament] and do things."

He adds: "If something arises where we're not all of the same mind, fine. We make our own points. We don't attack each other."

A founding conference for the new party, where members will vote on a name, among other issues, is likely to be held in November.

"Hundreds of thousands of people have signed up. They won't all become members, but many will. And it's exciting."

Corbyn lays out five principles which he said are behind the party. The first is peace: "Therefore, no bombs to Israel to drop on Gaza, for example."

The other principles "are about economic justice within our society. They are about dealing with the worst vestiges of poverty within our society".

"They are about environmental sustainability, and they are about public ownership of public service," Corbyn says.

"But it's also about the kind of creativity and democracy we are," he adds. "So when you bring people together in a creative endeavour, through local forums and grassroots democracy, you defeat the far right, you defeat the racists.

"Nigel Farage needs to be very aware that we're out there and we're offering something different, which he can't. We're offering hope."

Co-leadership

One of the more unusual elements of the party is the ambiguity surrounding its leadership. Although much media commentary tends to present Corbyn and Sultana as co-leaders, this hasn't been set in stone.

Does Corbyn see himself as leader? "I'm a young man!" he jokes. Then, more seriously, he suggests he will only take on a leadership role if the membership wishes him to.

"I want to see change," he says. "I want to see social justice. I want to see a transformation in our society. That's what I've done all my life."

"That's what I'll do for the rest of my life. Whatever job people want me to do, I'll do it," he adds.

One major issue that has dogged the party is the sense that Corbyn and Sultana aren't really in lockstep. For one thing, Corbyn took over a day to follow up her initial announcement of a new party in July, and his statement was much more ambiguous.

Then, over the weekend, an interview Sultana gave to the N ew Left Review was published in which she levelled serious criticism against his leadership of Labour.

Sultana suggested Corbyn had capitulated by adopting the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, which critics say has been used to equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

"I think it wasn't really necessary for her to bring all that up in the interview, but that's what she decided to do," he said.

"The party did adopt the IHRA definition. Personally, I was more in favour of the Jerusalem Declaration, which is simply saying that antisemitism is wrong.

"It is wrong to be antisemitic, and it is perfectly possible to discuss the politics and behaviour of the state of Israel without being antisemitic.

"People do that all the time. Indeed, many people in Israel do that all the time, and so our party will have a resolutely anti-racist position."

Corbyn said he would like the new party to adopt a "general declaration of respect for all communities, all ethnicities, all languages, all faiths and no faiths".

The new party's electoral ambitions

Despite apparent disagreements between the party's leading figures, it has regularly polled above 10 percent.

Coming alongside the rise of the right-wing populist party Reform UK and the collapse of the Conservatives, the party could win scores of seats and accelerate the destruction of the old two-party system.

Corbyn says even Labour ministers should be worried. One of them is Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who Corbyn recalls "was never terribly helpful to me" when he was leader.

"He had a quote ready for every occasion, which was always condemnatory [and] undermining of me," Corbyn says.

Streeting came close to losing his seat in 2024 to an independent British-Palestinian candidate, Leanne Mohamad, who has since continued to campaign in the constituency, Ilford North, including alongside Corbyn.

In Ilford North, Leanne Mohamad and the British left set their sights on Labour

"I've been in Ilford with Leanne Mohamad and we had a huge public meeting. She chaired it," Corbyn says.

"It was a very wonderful atmosphere, and I was impressed by the age and ethnic diversity of the meeting. That was an example of the coalition of support she's put together in Ilford."

"So I would think Streeting has a great deal to be worried about there," he muses.

"But maybe he'll be looking for another constituency. Who knows?"

And what about Prime Minister Keir Starmer himself? Andrew Feinstein, a close Corbyn ally, stood as an independent and significantly cut into Starmer's majority in his central London seat in 2024, winning 7,312 votes.

"Andrew is a formidable campaigner and [has a] very interesting political background: a former African National Congress MP in South Africa and Jewish," says Corbyn.

"Many of his family were lost in the Holocaust. He has enormous empathy with people under stress and under pressure, and is very strong in support for the Palestinian people in Gaza, in the West Bank.

"So very, very hard for Starmer to oppose."

The votes Feinstein won in 2024, Corbyn suggests, should worry the prime minister: "Traditionally in British elections, the leader of the party, or prime minister, gets almost a free pass in their constituency."

Could Britain see the end of the two-party system?

"Yes," Corbyn says confidently and without hesitation, noting that the Tories and Labour are polling at around 20 percent each or thereabouts.

"Traditionally the two-party system has usually attracted up to 90 percent of the vote to two parties. I think it's time for proportional representation."

Corbyn adds that he wants even more reform to the political system than that: "Let's abolish the House of Lords. Let's just get rid of it, and have a senate of 100, 200, that sort of number."

Cameron's threat to ICC

Corbyn also gave his views on Israel's genocide in Gaza, which he believes Britain is complicit in.

He called for the Labour government to investigate reports that David Cameron, the former UK prime minister, threatened the International Criminal Court (ICC) chief prosecutor Karim Khan while he was serving as foreign secretary in the previous government.

Middle East Eye reported in June that on 23 April 2024, Cameron privately threatened Khan that the UK would defund and withdraw from the ICC if it issued warrants for Israeli leaders.

Earlier this month, French newspaper Le Monde also reported that Cameron threatened the prosecutor with Britain's withdrawal from the ICC.

MEE revealed details of the call based on information from several sources - including former staff in Khan's office familiar with the conversation and who have seen the minutes of the meeting.

Exclusive: David Cameron threatened to withdraw UK from ICC over Israel war crimes probe

Corbyn said the report was particularly serious because Britain was one of the countries which set up the ICC.

He said he was in parliament when it voted on the Rome Statute, the ICC's founding charter.

"There was opposition from some Conservatives who wanted the armed forces exempt from it," Corbyn recalls.

"But that didn’t happen, it went through in the way it should have done, and we are part of the ICC.

"And so the idea that the foreign secretary would challenge the chief prosecutor, who’s a man who should be treated with respect, with great integrity, and in a very, very difficult job - to be threatened by one of the original signatories [of the Rome Statute] is absolutely appalling and shocking".

In June, Cameron did not respond to MEE’s requests for comment.

"He's a very busy man!" Corbyn says, with more than a hint of sarcasm.

Cameron, now a Conservative peer, was the British prime minister between 2010 and 2016. Corbyn was leader of the opposition from 2015 to 2020.

Corbyn warned that threatening the ICC prosecutor is a criminal offence, noting that if he as an MP attempted to influence a British judge, "that judge would probably haul me straight before the court, as being in contempt of court. And he would be right, or she would be right, to do that".

"So the same principle must apply in international law as well. And so Cameron, in a sense, is in contempt of the ICC process," Corbyn says, adding that the former prime minister "at some point is going to have to answer questions about this".

The Gaza Tribunal

Earlier this year, Corbyn submitted a bill in parliament for a public inquiry into Britain's involvement in Israel's military operations in Gaza. Unsurprisingly, the government blocked the bill.

Now, he is organising a Gaza Tribunal of his own.

"We have on 4 and 5 of September, for two days in Church House in Westminster, an open public inquiry," Corbyn says.

"It will be live on YouTube and lots of other platforms and channels, and that inquiry will be hearing voices from people in Gaza, in the West Bank, aid workers, journalists, lawyers, international legal experts.

"There will be a small group of assessors who will assess all the evidence and it will all be published."

What impact could this have? "It can't change government policy in and of itself," he concedes.

"But it can and will create a debate and a narrative about the dishonesty of the way governments have behaved by continuing to supply weapons to Israel, knowing full well those bombs are going to drop on schools and kill children."

One of the key issues the tribunal will examine is the secrecy surrounding British spy planes that have flown over Gaza.

Exclusive: UK won't say if spy planes captured footage of Israeli attacks on UK charity workers

Aircraft from the Royal Air Force (RAF) have conducted hundreds of surveillance flights over Gaza throughout Israel's war on the besieged enclave.

"What are these flights for?" Corbyn questions. "There's an awful lot of them."

The Ministry of Defence has repeatedly insisted that the surveillance flights over Gaza are in support of "hostage rescue". Corbyn doesn't buy this.

"It's a very strange way of helping a hostage release, to take photographs from the air," he says. "If the hostage is being held in tunnels under Gaza, a photograph isn't going to help of the ground above. It's nonsense.

"I've always felt that the real purpose was to supply information to Israel, to know where to bomb.

"If that argument can be sustained, then Britain is even more complicit in the genocidal acts of bombing schools, hospitals and people's homes."

The veteran MP has often been accused by political opponents of focusing too much on foreign policy issues irrelevant to his constituents.

This is nonsense, Corbyn says. Foreign and domestic policy are intimately connected. More money for weapons and war abroad means less for caring for people at home.

He gestures around Finsbury Park.

"If you get up and say, 'What would you prefer, an F-35 jet or personal independence payments for people with disabilities?' I don't think there are too many people in this park that would go for the F-35."

His is a radically different type of politics to that represented by the major parties of Labour and the Conservatives.

It's unclear how the new party will shape up. But it seems to stand a good chance of having an impact on national politics in the years to come.

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