Playing for Zarah’s team

Playing for Zarah’s Team?

On the evening of 3 July, as MPs packed their bags for the return journey to their constituencies for the weekend, Zarah Sultana declared that she was resigning from the Labour Party. Moreover, she wasn’t going quietly. She was to be “co-leader” of a new party. Her co-leader was none other than former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Within days over 70,000 hopefuls had signed up to “Team Zarah” eager to be in on the new project from the outset.

Zarah is the MP for Coventry South. She was elected in 2019 with a slim majority of 401. Her hard work in the constituency and in Parliament earned her widespread support locally and her majority in 2024 rose sharply to over 6000. Starmer’s reward for this was in keeping with his determination to cleanse the party of left-wing undesirables. She was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party and had the whip withdrawn (along with six others) for voting to abolish the two-child benefit cap. Opposing poverty was unacceptable in Starmer’s “changed” party.

A year on, and with Labour’s despicable support for the Israeli genocide in Gaza there for all to see, Zarah decided she was not getting back in. And so came her call for a new left-wing alternative. There was a degree of surprise that her “co-leader” Corbyn appeared less than enthusiastic. It took some time before he made the characteristically cautious response that “discussions were ongoing” regarding the project for a new organisation. Honestly, his mastery of calm understatement can be infuriating, not least to his supporters.

Then there were briefings to the Sunday Times that let it be known that Jeremy was reported to be annoyed at Zarah’s public announcement regarding it as premature. Whether this came from Corbyn or not is unclear, but it served the purpose of sparking rumours of factional disputes at the heart of the project before it had even got off the ground.

Either way there are two vital elements to this development that could have a profound impact on British politics. Number one, this is the first time in history that a Labour MP has defected to the left. Every other defection in history has been to set up right wing, anti-working-class organisations like the SDP and Change UK. Can this historically unique defection buck the trend and lead to a new party and a realistic challenge to Labour from the left?

By the way, in case you are wondering, Jack the Hat McGalloway doesn’t count as a defection to the left. George was expelled prior to his short-lived marriage of convenience with the Socialist Workers Party in Respect. The divorce was as bloody as Shakespeare’s Scottish play, but not as entertaining and Respect disappeared.

Number two, the establishment of a new party, with polling suggesting it would start out with a baseline of 10% support across the country, would further confirm the crisis of Britain’s two-party system. That system has lasted since Adam was a lad and has served the ruling class well. When the working class looked for decisive and fundamental change after years of Tory inflicted misery, Labour was on hand to curtail any desire for revolution and channel it into the calmer waters of social reform. Think 1945 and 1974. If this system is finally torpedoed by the establishment of a new socialist party alongside the growth of Reform and the Greens, it opens the door to an entirely new political landscape in Britain.

The circumstances that have led Zarah to call for a new party were previewed by Labour in opposition under Starmer and then writ large with him in Number 10.

The rapid descent of Starmer’s Labour Government into a trash can for the hopes that millions placed in it last July has understandably upset the thousands of activists who helped it into power last summer. Sadly, the seeds of its decay into just another vehicle for the austerity policies dictated by the Bond markets and the Stock Exchange were sewn well before 4 July 2024.

Labour’s membership reached an all-time high while Corbyn was leader. Thousands were enthused by the unashamedly left-wing message. Since 2019, the beginning of the end for the left in the party, membership has slipped from 532,000 to 309,000, with Labour List pointing out that since the election in 2024 membership is down 11.4%. This decline is the product of Starmer’s handiwork.

Starmer had made clear that the relatively radical pledges he made to get elected leader were a mere party trick to deceive the left into voting for him. To win the leadership, in a party that had many left-wing members, Starmer lied about what he stood for. He made ten pledges all based on policies that were at the core of Labour’s 2017 and 2019 manifestos. He promised not to steer to the right. He made no personal attacks on Corbyn. He fooled quite a few people on the left into thinking he was going to be their friend.

But beginning with the sacking of Rebecca Long-Bailey from the Shadow cabinet and culminating in the ditching of the promise of the £28 billion originally promised for the Green Industrial revolution, Starmer demonstrated that the essence of his campaign to become leader was to impose an authoritarian regime and break any and every promise. Except for one – to use his leadership to destroy every vestige of left-wing influence.

An article in The House magazine by Sienna Rodgers recalled Peter Mandelson during the reign of Blair saying that the aim was to put the left in a “sealed tomb”. Today a left MP told Rodgers, “Now they’re not just sealing the tomb, but incinerating it.” The clan of apolitical but power hungry spads around McSweeney blocked or deselected left-wing candidates around the country before the election to purify the PLP’s ranks. They have made it their mission to ensure that never again will the party be led by the left by destroying it once and for all.

Since taking government office a year ago Starmer and his cohort of nasty neoliberal remnants of the Blair inner circle – plus a few careerist newbies – have accelerated the shift to the right. He has maintained the two-child benefit cap, sentencing thousands of children to a life of poverty; he slashed the winter fuel payment causing misery for millions of pensioners and mad made clear that the WASPI women swindled out of their rightful pensions would be left to sing for their supper; he ramped up racism with his attacks on asylum seekers and refugees and his Powellite “strangers in our own land” speech; he tried to launch a major onslaught on the benefits of sick and disabled people and is now busy preparing to take a chainsaw to spending on special needs education spending, itself already desperately underfunded and in crisis.

Through all of this Starmer has ruthlessly purged his left opponents in Parliament – withdrawing the whip for those who voted to abolish the two child benefit cap – stood firmly in support of Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians, sucked up to the half wit in the White House, demonised Trans people, Trans Women in particular, and made peaceful, non-violent direct action illegal by proscribing Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

A new batch of suspensions for four “persistent rebels” as he called them, followed the welfare cut debacle. And to cap it all a man who echoed the racist ranting of Enoch Powell in his speech on immigration Starmer had the temerity suspended Diane Abbot for discussing the impact of racism on different communities. A long serving black woman MP who has been subject to racist abuse all her life and all her career was suspended for giving her views on racism.

This authoritarianism stems from the leader’s utter lack of politics beyond a determination to place Labour at the service of Capital. And it is leading to an attack on democracy not only in the party but now across society too with numerous peaceful protesters being arrested as “terrorists” following the designation of Palestine Action as a terrorist organisation.

Only when the newly elected crop of naïve Labour MPs knew their seats were on the line and revolted over the benefit cuts did he recognise there was, after all, a limit to how repugnant he could make the Labour Party look and act. But his U-turn did not mark a shift away from austerity – it just bought time for him to work out how best he could get back to business as usual.

A year that began with Labour Ministers blagging free tickets for Taylor Swift concerts, complimentary posh clothes and slap-up meals, continued with a succession of penny-pinching attacks on the working class, culminated in Labour getting an electoral kicking at the hands of Reform. From elation on 5 July 2024 to misery after the Runcorn by-election and local elections in May, both Labour and Starmer have gone from offering the hope of change in a Britain broken by years of Tory misrule to consigning those hopes to the knacker’s yard.

Which is why Zarah’s announcement has sparked real excitement and renewed hope amongst thousands of activists. Right across the country they are looking for an alternative so that their efforts locally can be matched by a powerful and ambitious alternative to the wretched policies of austerity and authoritarianism that Reeves, Starmer, Kendall, Cooper are peddling. They want a party that stands a chance of warding off the very real threat from the right that Farage and his crew of chancers represent.

Over three weeks after Zarah’s announcement the signatories of her call to action were still in the dark as to what was happening, though there has been an appeal for money. Rumours, gossip and leaks to the press have been rampant. As such it is very difficult to determine what is really going on. But the consensus appears to be the organising committee that has been working with Corbyn for some time on the project of creating an alternative political vehicle for both him and the various independents he has collaborated with in Parliament, is divided on what sort of organisation they want to create.

Leaving aside the colourful array of personalities on this organising committee the argument appears to be one between those who favour a party along traditional membership lines those want a looser coalition comprising the various politically heterogeneous independent groups dotted around the country made up of councillors and community activists. The committee did agree to endorse a “co-leadership” of Zarah and Jeremy but on a split vote with some unhappy as they feel that Corbyn had earned the right to be sole leader. In the light of the committee’s decision Zarah went public, Jeremy went coy, and the organising committee cancelled its next meeting.

The extent to which the organising committee is divided was impossible to assess without it publishing a statement of intent. The way forward for the founding of the party Zarah called for is, according to Corbyn, the subject of “ongoing discussions”. It was all as clear as a bathroom mirror after your kids have spent an hour in the shower. Which has not stopped people and organisations pitching in with their ideas of what should happen. And the range of views – on the organising committee, within the far-left organisations and amongst individuals associated with the project – highlight familiar obstacles to the formation of a new organisation, obstacles that have previously proved insurmountable.

The question is, can the thousands of people who want to build this alternative overcome such obstacles and forge a socialist alternative to Labour, both for the battles of here and now and at the election in 2029? Finally, an answer came – on 24 July the statement was published, and Your Party (a provisional name) was announced. A conference to determine policy and structure was announced, scheduled for mid-autumn. And Zarak told the waiting world that she thought the party should be called The Left or something like that.

While this announcement clarified that things have moved forward and Corbyn and Sultana have agreed a common statement, the differences that were revealed during the three-week hiatus have not gone away. Indeed, the statement is full of noble sentiments about breaking the rigged political system and redistributing wealth and power but it does not mention the word socialism once. This very much leaves the question of what sort of party it will be wide open with the different views on the organising committee likely to continue.

Those on the organising committee, and many beyond it, who favour the party option seem to be for a left-wing version of the Labour Party focused on the upcoming elections in 2026 (local) and 2029 (national). Richard Holmes outlined the case for this on Novara Media, writing: “A new party with the organisation, breadth and moral imagination to meet the moment is within our collective grasp. Creating it will mean overcoming the inane factionalism that has too often plagued the British left. But this is what’s owed to millions of people who have already waited too long for politics that is finally on their side.”

Jamie Driscoll, the former North Tyne Mayor, on the other hand, favours the community alliance model as opposed to a party. The four independents elected largely on the issue of Gaza/Palestine tend to agree with this. Their emphasis is very much on the “independent” element of such an alliance rather than making it a party with a programme, membership rules etc. They want their local alliances (and of course themselves) to be free of any party control. Having spent a considerable amount of time building links with the four MPs Corbyn’s caution about Zarah’s call for a new party is linked to his concept of a “Peace and Justice” coalition rather than an avowedly socialist party.

Beyond these two versions of a potential new organisation there are the views of the established far left outside of the Labour Party. They are important because it is likely that they and their members would constitute a significant portion of any new group’s membership. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) have called for an “umbrella” organisation strictly limited to being a “socialist electoral alternative”, not a party. After all they believe they are the party the working class needs.

The Socialist Party (SP) agree on the need for an umbrella but as a step towards a new mass workers’ party. In the transition to such a party they will want a strictly federal structure that guarantees their organisation’s rights within any new formation. Referring to their own federal electoral front, the Trade Union and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) they write: “Today, a broadly similar approach is needed for a new party, allowing individual members, but also both the different organisations that are already fighting for a workers’ voice in the electoral field – including the various groupings of left independent and local councillors – and future forces that could be won to a new party, to collaborate together while maintaining their own identities and programmes.”

The Communist Party of Britain (CPB) have not yet said anything and while the Morning Star has carried articles wildly enthusiastic about a Corbyn/Sultana party the editorial line probably reflects the CPB’s position which welcomes the move but does not regard a new party as the answer to the political crisis facing the left. Rather it sees the answer as lying in a coalition of parties and movements.

The smaller organisations that comprise the patchwork quilt of the organised left in Britain (except for Workers Liberty and Momentum who both call on supporters to stay inside Labour and fight the right) have broadly welcomed Zarah’s call and tend to favour a membership-based party rather than alliance. And while some hopefully call on it to adopt a fully-fledged revolutionary programme others champion a milder left reformist set of policies that can appeal to a broad range of supporters.

Last, but not least, are the individuals outside any organisation, frequently refugees from either the Labour Party or left groups that have chewed them up and spat them out over the years. Unless they have the kind of stella reputation of the likes of Ken Loach, they have few openings for their views to be heard.

Which is partly why all the above have one call in common to both Corbyn and Sultana – open up the process. Begin a proper debate. Work towards a conference that can agree what the next step is and what policies should guide such a step. As Harry Holmes puts it in an article in Prometheus, we need to move away from “the same behind the scenes bun fights … This process must be opened up; we should have a national membership organisation.”

Perhaps the clearest call for opening this whole process up has come from Max Shanly in an article entitled, Building from Below, A Democratic Roadmap Towards a New Model Left Party.

Max identifies the need for such a party to be both working class based, committed to the principle of working-class emancipation and to socialism. He outlines a series of sound steps that could be taken towards the creation of such a party, with democratic safeguards to protect it from the inevitable machinations of the professional careerists, the left apparatchiks and the big names who populate the left.

Most importantly, he does offer a sensible road map towards the formation of such a party. His article deserves serious attention and can be found here https://medium.com/@maxshanly/building-from-below-2f9a47fe5ce6.

But while there is a great deal of sense in Max’s proposals there is a weakness in his first premise: he believes such a party can be built now, uniting many of the people and groups referred to in this article in a multi-tendency membership party. Unfortunately, both the experience of previous attempts to create a socialist alternative to Labour and the early signs from the Team Zarah initiative do not bode well for such a project.

The main players have, effectively, signalled their intention to keep any project under their tight control. A party that has decided its co-leaders in advance of its formation, in advance of any concept of what it stands for, in advance of an agreed democratic structure frankly does not bode well. Nor does the alliance that allows its range of disparate leaders to basically do and say what they like. And an organising committee made up of the leftovers from previous failed ventures does not represent anything new and is unlikely to inspire a new generation of class fighters.

As for the other forces likely to be involved, the far left will not give up their organisational existence for the promise of something new because it is in their political DNA to destroy anything that they do not control. They remain trapped in their belief that their defining mantras, their schemas, are eternally valid and their organisational existence must be preserved at all costs. They are like left over food preserved in aspic well past their sell by dates.

And when Max writes, “We either keep going as we are — splintered, bickering in echo chambers and WhatsApp groups, more preoccupied with scoring points against one another on social media than confronting capital — or we grow up and get organised” he is observing deeply ingrained traits of many of the individual misfits, egotists and headbangers who, for reasons best known to themselves, inhabit the nooks and crannies of the left’s increasingly barren landscape and live by the motto that a bicker a day is the sectarian way.

This state of affairs does not augur well for a new democratic and genuinely socialist party. However, if despite this balance of forces, the 500,000 people who signed up to the “Your party” website can tip the balance in favour of building a new party along the lines advocated by Max then perhaps there will be a chance for success. His model is certainly the best hope for that now.