Along Comes Another New Left Wing Party

A new left party, you say? Announcing itself to the world on Tuesday, Transform is the newest kid on the block. But hold on a moment, is it really? Firstly, it's not a party as such but rather a call to form one that, apparently, will be called Transform. Issued by the Breakthrough Party, Left Unity, the People's Alliance of the Left (hold on, isn't that a compact between these two parties?), and Liverpool Community Independents, there are a few relative notables on board too. Like Thelma Walker, ex Labour MP and former candidate for the Northern Independence Party, broadcaster and troll target India Willoughby, my old mucker Derek Wall - ex Green speaker, and BFAWU president Ian Hodson. It has a 10-point charter of principles committing it to class politics, understands these are inseparable from so-called identity politics, is internationalist and anti-imperialist and, among other things, seeks to intervene electorally, industrially, and at the community and street level. People who support the call for a new party are invited to sign their declaration, and almost 3,000 have done so at the time of writing.

Isn't this all just a little bit of history repeating? In the post-Corbyn era of post-Corbyn regroupments, the Northern Independence Party made the biggest media splash but never amounted to much. Though its founder, Philip Proudfoot, is among the signatories. At around the same time the Breakthrough Party was established, and in a short time enjoyed more local authority success than the longer-established TUSC, attracting some defections at parish and district council level from sitting councillors. There is also the Harmony Party who used to have online meetings ... and that's about it, from what I can tell. Breakthrough and NIP later formed an alliance with Left Unity and founded the People's Alliance of the Left, which TUSC was initially on board with. And it wasn't long before they were kicked out for its opportunist cosying up to George Galloway, just he joined in on the establishment attack on trans people. The Socialist Party, who used to have much sectarian point-scoring fun with the Socialist Workers Party for co-habiting with Galloway in Respect find themselves doing exactly the same thing: burying their own politics.

Anyone starting a new party project has to answer two questions. What is it for, and how does it plan to realise its purpose. Transform's platform signposts a direction of travel, but how is it any different to Breakthrough, for instance? What does it have that Breakthrough hasn't got? Given the lack of sectarian baggage that doomed the efforts of the Socialist Labour Party and Socialist Alliance, it's not clear why there has to be a new body that everyone dissolves into. The second issue is the competition. The existing far left ... exists and, unlike Transform, does have a degree of ideological conformity that is attractive to radically-minded newcomers to the left and labour movement. For instance, Socialist Appeal literature these days urges punters to "join the communists!" (a bit of a turnaround for anyone acquainted with their history). You go along to a SWP or SP meeting and it's not long before a bit of Lenin and Trotsky is fed into the conversation. As obsolete as this brand of revolutionary socialism is, they have a total world view that is easy to grasp and offers a coherent explanation about our contemporary crises, and is explicitly rooted in a reading of working class politics. They are also already active in trade unions and through their caucuses and groupings offer other militants a lead on the workplace issues of the day. And because they're disciplined organisations, regardless of what you think of self-described Leninist groups they get stuff done and are able, in certain circumstances, to punch above their weight. Neither Transform nor any of its feeder organisations have that level of coherence, efficacy or, you might say, motivation.

And there is the competition over the left-of-Labour space. Undoubtedly, that is opening again as Keir Starmer beats a hasty retreat but poised and ready to pounce are the Liberal Democrats and the Greens. With greater resources and name recognition at their disposal and, in the case of the latter, a commitment to a politics not a million miles from Transform's 10 pledges, any kind of headway will have to be made against these strong cross winds. And for an entirely new party without a big name attached this becomes even more difficult.

Lastly, there is the track record. In a decade of existence Left Unity has achieved nothing apart from a memorable Facebook thread. Breakthrough's defectors have almost entirely retired from politics rather than fight for their seats under their new party name, and its electoral interventions have proven extremely modest - even if their results on average are a touch better than TUSC's. Meanwhile, NIP vanished as quickly as the memory of last week's retweets. How Transform is an advance on the internet pop-up party phenomenon is not obvious. It looks to me just like a rebrand of already quite meagre forces, and one facing a daunting task to get noticed outside of a few thousand extremely-online social media users.