The Prospects of a Corbyn-Led Left Party

And so Jeremy Corbyn has now been formally banned from standing as a Labour candidate. What a pathetic state of affairs. For Keir Starmer, this is as much about excising the influence of the left from the party as it is telling the rest of the establishment that he can be relied on to punch left (and down) when occasion demands. What next? John McDonnell has called for a campaign for his reinstatement across constituency parties which, to put matters euphemistically, is not terribly likely to succeed. Therefore, the ball is now in Corbyn's court. Is he going to stand as an independent, despite the urgings of allies like Jon Lansman and Barry Gardiner not to? Probably. But how about a new party?

Long time readers know I'm sceptical about the prospects of new parties from the left. Indeed, we specifically addressed the possibility of a new Corbyn-led left party just over a year ago. The fundamentals remain the same. No sitting Labour politician is going to defect, and no existing trade union affiliates are likely to bid adios to the party - though it might attract some support from unaffiliated unions like the Bakers' Union and the RMT (who, after all, indulged the notoriously ineffective TUSC for over a decade). Acting as big drags would be sections of the far left who would undertake entry jobs and inevitably get caught up in recruitment turf wars with one another. Imagine the Socialist Party and Socialist Appeal duking it out in branches across the country. Scintillating stuff. And the undisciplined rabble of self-promoting narcissists - the George Galloways, Chris Williamsons, Tommy Sheridans and the dozens of activists who "accidentally" indulge antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories on their social media feeds - will ensure a new left party would become a toxic swamp very quickly. And there's the small matter of the election system, of which more in a moment.

Yet, there is a kernal of potential. There are tens of thousands of leftists who are looking for a new political home, and would sign up in a heart beat if Corbyn declared for a new party. A Corbyn party could attract wider layers as well. For example, the other day Sebastian Payne was wittering in The Times about how Keir Starmer lacks any big ideas, which makes him vulnerable to the competence (lol) affected by Rishi Sunak re: the Northern Ireland Protocol and the other policy deliverables. It's unlikely Labour have much to fear from this direction, and is part of the relentless effort of the Tory press to keep Starmer tacking right. The Tories might be staring defeat in their face, but their politics don't have to be vanquished. But Payne is right to scent a danger, albeit it's wafting in from the left. At the moment, most left wing voters - and there were over 10 million of them in 2019 - are supporting Starmer's Labour because they want the Tories out, and there's no credible alternative. But if there was ...

It's worth remembering why Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership election and then the support of millions. There was no Magic Grandpa nonsense. Corbyn simply stated that cutting public services was a bad idea because it hurt the most vulnerable, he talked about the housing crisis, was against shovelling public money into private pockets, and believed, to channel the popular meme, that society can and should be improved somewhat. Millions responded to this not because Corbyn was a messianic figure, but because he tapped into the hopes, aspirations, and interests that had long been neglected by establishment politics of the right and the left. It was a return of the repressed, and since the near death experience of 2017 the hallmark of "grown up politics" is to shove this back down into the hole. A new Corbyn-fronted party could open this up again and make politics more interesting.

But there is the historical record to contend with. The electoral system has proven an insurmountable barrier for the left outside of Labour, and challenges from this direction have only been episodically successful. The most high profile examples being Ken Livingstone winning the London mayoralty in 2000, and Galloway taking Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005 and Bradford West in 2012. A personality-centred challenge can work, and I have no doubt Corbyn would win Islington North either as an independent or at the head of the hypothetical party. Beyond that, victories elsewhere are unlikely. But it might not matter. The real potency for a Corbyn-led left party, provided it's not strangled by the wrecking left, is as blackmail potential. Before 2015 and in 2019, Nigel Farage was able to leverage the potential threat UKIP and the Brexit Party presented the Tories to achieve his aims: a referendum on EU membership, and then ensuring a hard Brexit was the only kind of EU exit the Tories could win an election on. The Starmerism-by-default position of millions of left voters could be thrown into question, and force Labour to attend to its natural support. If only a Corbyn-led party managed modest single figure polls, consistent numbers above five per cent would be enough to worry the more strategically savvy people in Starmer's office and force them to tack left. This could take the form of "rediscovering" the 10 leadership pledges, deciding "common ownership" means nationalising utilities after all, or emphasising policies already on the books, like the potentially transformative commitment to workers' rights.

True, the omens aren't good for a Corbyn-led party. But the potential to disrupt is there, and with politics still in a febrile state, despite the best efforts of government and opposition to calm things down post-Johnson/Truss and post-Corbyn, it could catalyse enough discontent that isn't to the liking of any wing of the political establishment.

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