Going Beyond Corbynism

On Saturday evening I was in a foul mood. Throughout the day, on social media and YouTube, from text messages to WhatsApp updates, the news was the Your Party founding conference was the shit show everyone thought it would be. Inconvenient amendments not being heard, members being barred from conference - some, but not all, were SWP supporters, the forced removal of a Stand Up to Racism stall pn the orders of "a Scottish woman called Karie", an apparent diddling with the naming options before conference, and Zarah Sultana's own boycott of the first day promised a catastrophic waste of time. And then on the second day, things got ... better.

On single leadership vs collective leadership, the latter won. On keeping the ban on dual membership, Team Jeremy lost. On enshrining trans liberation in the constitution, that vote was won. All these might have been tighter or lost if the secretive organising committee hadn't ham-fistedly imposed themselves on proceedings on the previous day. And in ballots over the weekend, measures emphasising local branch democracy and initiative, anti-cuts principles, trade union relationships, and positioning YP as an explicitly working class socialist party all passed. The only thing Corbyn got his way on was the ridiculous Your Party name. It was good to see him strike a contrite note in his interviews, and likewise Zarah Sultana apologise to conference for her role in making the founding of this party a mess. In all, despite the overdramatic protestations of Corbyn superfans, something was achieved. If YP was in the toilet following the last round of bilious fallings outs, the membership scooped the project out of the bowl as the party's would-be elites yanked hard on the chain.

There are still unresolved issues. Who gets to be the leadership now? With MPs and councillors barred from the incoming executive committee, this is an opportunity for the party to put forward a new generation of leaders. Corbyn will forever remain YP's figurehead, but there's now a chance the party can transition from one-man-band status to something other than his needy dependent. And though existing self-declared Leninist outfits are not barred, what kind of relationship they should have in the new party is in the new committee's gift. Keep them as is, require them to fold into party platforms, re-impose the block? Whoever the leadership will be and whatever they decide to do, the membership have already demonstrated good sense. The chances of the SWP or the other little Lenins taking over or wrecking it through sectarianism is thankfully, for once, remote.

To be sure, Your Party is taking risks organising this way. As others have pointed out, in politics having a stand-out figure is a boon. Ask Reform. Ask the Greens. Without that, how can YP capture the public's eye? This is now especially difficult as September's stupidities have ensured Zack Polanski is hogging much of the space that was YP's for the taking. Where there are still openings is where the left are much stronger than the Greens. I.e. In the workplaces, in community organising, in street movements, in solidarity campaigns. We build from there. Owen Jones argues that time is of the essence, and that's true. But he also knows from his labour movement history and that building the political capacity of our class isn't dependent on elections. There are other ways, and the existing collective experience of YP can counter Labour and the rise of Reform outside the ballot box. It's not the mainstream way of doing things, but then again YP is not a mainstream party.

Doesn't collective leadership and the recall of lay officials suppose permanent factional struggle? Yes. But if the project is organising our class as a political party, it cannot be any other way. The working class is as diverse as it is vast, and anything aspiring to this role has to be a clearing house for experiences and opinion. Discussion, debate, the freedom to form platforms and factions around positions, all these are necessary for formulating strategy. The way forward is not going to be handed down from superhumans living on a higher plane. A democratic workers' party is a noisy party, not a personality cult, not an agreement of diplomatic silences, not a narrow mono-idea sect. This is the challenge YP's membership has set. Which demonstrates a level of political maturity over and above the caricatures attributed to the left - even, sometimes, by itself.

Politics is not easy, especially class politics. Nor are there any guarantees. YP's membership have chosen a difficult path, but in the circumstances, it was the right path, the only path. Drawing a line under the mistakes and idiocies of the last few months means moving on from Corbynism. With all the dust having settled, it's clear this is what Your Party has started to do.

Bon Voyage, Iqbal Mohamed

And off he goes. Following the departure of Adnan Hussein on 14th November from Your Party, resignation watchers' eyes were on Iqbal Mohamed. There was his conversation with Hussein on this very topic. And he prepped the ground for leaving by taking to social media to repeat the same tired transphobic talking points. An action Mohamed knew would provoke a reaction from YP supporters, as well as sharp criticism from Zarah Sultana, his erstwhile colleague. And, what do you know, his resignation statement references "false allegations and smears". How very unexpected.

You could see it coming from a mile off. Yet this caps off another row, this time about Sultana hosting her own rally prior to the founding conference next weekend. Apparently, there was no guarantee that she would address the main gathering and is, therefore, having a pro-democracy meeting to rally left wingers fed up with the Labour-esque control-freakery that has disfigured YP from the beginning. The background to this is the demand with menaces that she hand over the cash from her ill-starred unilateral launch of the YP membership portal, and her being kept away from the conference organising committee. Which, of course, is taking place in utmost secrecy and without any accountability whatsoever. And now there's news Jeremy Corbyn will host his own rally, replete with "special guests". With leading figures like these, it's a wonder the process has got as far as it has.

But back to the resignation. Some will take this as more evidence of the new party's instability and chaotic start. I'm inclined to a more positive view. As argued previously on the relationship between the new left party and the Independent Alliance MPs, this should be one of respect, continued dialogue, and joint actions where appropriate. But because of their politics, they should not have been invited to take leading roles in founding a left alternative to Labour. The rows that have happened are testament to this and, again, do not speak well of Corbyn's acumen. Nevertheless, Mohamed's departure is welcome as it underlines what the party should be - a party of our class in all its diversity.

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The Your Party Debacle

The left in this country doesn't need agents provocateurs to stuff things up, it's more then capable of doing that itself. And here are two more etchings for the incompetence ledger. A public briefing in the name of the Independent Alliance MPs against Zarah Sultana, a parliamentary group she's apparently a member of. And the resignation of Blackburn's Adnan Hussein from the "steering process" of Your Party. A favourable contrast to the Greens these latest developments do not make.

The fallout from September's public arguments got the Geiger counters twitching last month. Your Party "insiders" briefed the press that it was taking legal action against the directors of MoU Holdings Ltd. This was the company set up by Andrew Feinstein, Beth Winter, and Jamie Driscoll ahead of the launch of Your Party, and was to hold some money and data gathered during the initial phases of the launch. Sultana climbed on board in the summer with her quitting Labour, announcing she would co-lead the founding process of a new left party. This was the occasion she announced a mailing list, attracting about 850,000 sign ups. The starting pistol on the foundation process had been fired, somewhat to the annoyance of Jeremy Corbyn and the people around him. Then Sultana jumped the gun again two months later, announcing Your Party's membership was open. About 20,000 joined inside a day, until Corbyn intervened and said no, this ain't happening. There was a public row with legal threats flying about, reports to the information commissioner, and a great deal of rancour. Then, about two weeks after, the "official" membership portal was launched.

Here lies the problem. The details and monies of the first "launch" sat with MoU Holdings. To be "official", members would need to either join again via the new route, or wait until the information and cash was transferred over. Unfortunately, this is a far from a straightforward matter. Legally, the monies and data can't simply be given. It's not like writing a cheque and sharing the relevant passwords. MoU is liable for bank charges for processing refunds. Second, there are more costs associated with navigating the transfer of the sum, winding up MoU, and settling the resulting legal bills. When YP "sources" threatened legal action against the directors of MoU, claiming they were withholding funds and accusing them of having "gone rogue", that same someone was lying. They knew there were legal complexities, and why Feinstein, Winter, and Driscoll were not prepared to shoulder the costs. I.e. It was not they who initiated the premature membership drive. That was Sultana. To try and resolve the problem, the Independent Alliance MPs were invited to become MoU directors but they turned it down, knowing they'd be on the hook for the costs. The existing directors then resigned, with Sultana becoming the sole director. Undoubtedly an expensive decision for her, but a willingness to take responsibility for the problems her premature membership call caused. Something she deserves credit for.

On Thursday Sultana was able to transfer £200k from MoU to YP, and for this she was targeted for a hostile briefing. Issued in the the name of the IA MPs while she was on BBC Question Time, it was an act of deliberate sabotage. Corbyn has apparently disowned the statement. It says everything that was said previously. All MoUs monies should be ours, we demand an immediate transfer, blah blah, yeah yeah. A move designed to undermine Sultana and throw more discord into the mill of pain the nascent party has become. Who is responsible? One of Corbyn's close allies who want something between a personality cult and Labour mkII, albeit with less democracy? Someone who enjoys being important and at the centre of things, and can rely on Corbyn's indulgence? Or someone else?

The timing of Adnan Hussein's resignation makes for an interesting coincidence. He references "becoming drawn into very serious and damaging internal disputes on matters relating to organisational conduct and governance", a barely-concealed Islamophobia ("I am troubled by the way ... Muslim men have been spoken about and treated ...I witnessed insinuations about capability, dismissive attitudes and language that carried ... veiled prejudice."), and how YP was at odds with its billing - a "movement that welcomed diversity of background and thought." It also came hours after Novara Media put questions to him that he and others in the IA were minded to dump the new party.

To be honest, the independent MPs should be nowhere near this process. As a "source close to Zarah Sultana" was quoted as saying in the New Statesman, "this shows what a stupid idea it was to transfer control of the founding process over from a decision making body, appointed by Jeremy and containing a broad array of left-wing figures, to the six MPs, some of whom do not remotely share the politics of the 800,000 people who signalled an interest in Your Party". Quite.

For example, trans issues are not a shibboleth to be fought over like one's attitude to the dead USSR, but a live issue used by sections of the media in a crude divide-and-rule effort. The government have jumped on the campaign to attack trans health care, and have made the lives of trans people a misery, stoked up prejudice, and driven some to take their lives. These are direct attacks on our class in all its diversity, something Hussein had the cheek to invoke in his Dear John letter. Anyone who alibis this are unsuited to be an elected representative of a class-based left party, never mind play a leading role in its founding. The same is true of MPs who defend first cousin marriages, the criminalisation of abortion after 24 weeks, call on the army to fill in for striking workers, or have significant landlord interests. Collaboration and cooperation in parliament, yes. Friendly relations and persuasion to win them over, also yes. Roll out the red carpet and give them leadership positions in a socialist party? No. This is so obvious that no one should need to say it.

Unfortunately, we know who is responsible for this. And that's Corbyn. He's responsible for the people he's promoted to the heart of the new party, he's responsible for bringing the IA MPs into the fold while overlooking questionable and anti-working class aspects of their politics, and he's responsible for dragging his feet - even having to be bounced into starting a mailing list. The only thing preventing this from being a complete write off is that despite the shenanigans and stupidities, upwards of 50,000 people have joined - in the face of the serious alternative presented by the Greens. By all accounts, where regional assemblies are taking place members are showing up. And across the country, unofficial branches have convened. A dynamic independent of the centre's gatekeeping and the dithering is underway, and is refusing to be snuffed out by the idiocies leading figures keep inflicting on the project. Yes, it's hard to believe right now but this resilience shows Your Party, or whatever it will end up getting called, can come out the other side of these squabbles. It could overcome its over-dependence on Corbyn. It may yet realise its potential and have a great future ahead.

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The Second Green Surge

Congratulations to the Greens. Doubling the size of the party in two months to 140,000+ members and leaving the Tories in the dust is no mean feat. Especially with politics being as it is, with right wing talking points crowding other views out of the mainstream and Nigel Farage parading around as the establishment-sanctioned anti-establishment alternative. Yes, the Green Party in on an upward trajectory as long forecasted around these parts, but what's driving it?

Since the election of Zack Polanski, no one can fault the Green Party for making the most of him. Polanski is doing a good job of making the most of his fresh face status. His "eco-populism", which emphasises the us vs them populism characteristic of Corbynism at its most successful has leant itself to spiky social media posts and a refusal to play the usual media game. Polanski promised he would be a Farage-like figure, albeit from the left, and he's making a good fist of it. His social media shorts have gone viral, he's earned praise from Alastair Campbell(!) for his easy style and the slogan "make hope normal again", and following a short campaign he was granted a slot on Laura Kuenssberg after he was "overlooked" during party conference season. Less noted but also important is Polanski's new podcast, Bold Politics. Featuring interviews with well known left and radical figures, such as Grace Blakeley, Owen Jones, and Gary Stevenson, this has drawn in a layer who spend less time on your Twitters and Blueskys and more cycling around the politics podcast circuit.

We make our own history, but not under circumstances of our choosing. Polanski and the Greens are fortunate that there are two more things in their favour. Which, interestingly enough, almost repeat what happened a decade ago. Though this time as triumph, rather than tragedy or farce. Obviously, enthusiasm for the Greens is a blowback against the reactionary cul de sac Labour has parked mainstream politics in. In their cynical and reckless fashion, Keir Starmer and galaxy-brained Morgan McSweeney have charged to the right in an effort to dampen any progressive expectations their support might have following 14 wasted years of Tory government. Being racist and posturing hard on immigration is ideal: the lure for Labour is the same as it was for the Tories. Create scapegoats, stir up panics against them, and reap the benefits from clamping down hard. The overall balance of forces in the country remain unchanged, but the government gets to look effective. For Labour, to McSweeney's mind this tees up the support for Reform, but in the absence of any positive sell in 2029 the choice is between Starmer and Farage. That's right, this Labour government would rather risk opening the door to a government of the extreme right than abandoning its present course and tipping toward the centre left.

The Green surge of 2025 is then a larger echo of the Green surge of 2015. Millions of people are sick of this politics. No one voted Labour last year to chip away at social security, starve public services, give NHS data to private corporations, rip up the green belt, arm a genocide, outbid the racists on immigration, demonise trans people, or slavishly kowtow to billionaires at home and abroad. The Greens are well placed to intersect with this discontent, because Polanski is just about the only politician talking about these issues. Had history pivoted the other way and Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns won the leadership, would they have made the most of this? It's doubtful.

I said just about the only politician, because the others who might have capitalised on this are Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Arguably, as Your Party is going through its founding process and there not being much to join might have counted against their appeal. But undoubtedly, last month's fireworks have put plenty of would-be recruits off. Just the idea that the new party could fudge it on landlords, and could fudge it on trans people, the opaque moves and secrecy, and now the lack of faith in its leading figures because of all this rubbish, why not head to a party that has name recognition, a support base, a ready-made structure that is very democratic, and a seeming absence of the back biting and media leaking some are intent on importing into Your Party from Labour and the trade union movement? The Greens are taking off, in part, because the main player in the new party has dithered and delayed, and then the project was almost tossed into the skip. Politics waits for no one. If there's an opportunity, someone will move on it. Zack Polanski has, and this is why the Greens are surging and Your Party will have to play second fiddle to them. For good or for ill.

Your Party's Membership Launch

Who doesn't like moments of collective joy? Here's one I was looking forward to: the launch of the membership of Your Party. Seeing the numbers shoot skyward like a SpaceX rocket, what we didn't want was an unscheduled rapid disassembly. But that is exactly what we got with last week's farce. And now, after things have settled a little bit and some calm has prevailed, YP is back on the pad and has blasted off again. Jeremy Corbyn took to the socials on Monday lunch time to launch his political moonshot. Yet instead of excitement, the buzz online has been downbeat, cynical, and gives off going-through-the-motions vibes. What a contrast to how things were a couple of months ago, and what could have been.

Matters weren't helped by the manner of this launch. Though the video accompanying Corbyn's announcement featured library footage of Zarah Sultana, featuring her as well might have undone some of the damage. Making matters murkier is the small print on the party website, which says the membership is operated by Your Party UK Ltd, in turn owned by the Peace and Justice project. Where is MOU Operations Ltd, the outfit that has the mailing list and recruited 20k members last week? What happened to the prior agreement between the two legal entities? We don't know and will have to wait for the memoirs, because it's all hush-hush: the very antithesis of an open and democratic way of proceeding.

Another unasked for feature of the recruitment is the barring of other parties. The sign-up page says that "you cannot be a member of another political party". I'm sorry, that is a decision for the party to make and not for friends-of-Jeremy to decide. Neither is it clear what parties are considered "political parties" here. Obviously the Greens, who do allow for dual membership, are out owing to their being registered as such. But what about the SWP, whose branches have variously organised YP meetings up and down the country? Or the Socialist Party? The YP project has made generous use of Dave Nellist's time in convening and chairing gatherings. Are they allowed? And if their comrades ignore the bar, are Karie Murphy and Pamela Fitzpatrick going to deck themselves out in witch-hunter garb? This is both an unserious approach to political differences and an unwelcome power grab that, I hope, the membership will undo at the first opportunity. And that's before we get on to the involvement of the other Independent Alliance MPs. No problems collaborating on an issue-by-issue basis, but giving them leading roles in this project, even if they are only "facilitating", is a dubious decision at best.

Yes, this should be something to celebrate. An episode of a new political movement rising to prominence, while making its opponents and enemies shake as masses and masses of people take on membership. Instead, the secrecy and petty power plays have tarnished its leading figure and, for many, whipped the rug from under them. Unfortunately, the ranks of reluctant Corbynism have swelled because of recent disappointments. And nearly all of them will head over to the membership portal and sign up out of duty, not enthusiasm.

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Reluctant Corbynism Revisited

So much for the hope of reconciliation. Late Friday night, Zarah Sultana announced she was seeking legal advice against unspecified instances of defamation. And on Saturday, a new effort by other prominent Your Party supporters to try and make the "leadership" see sense reported that only one side was open to mediation. Yet at the conference of Jeremy Corbyn's Peace and Justice campaign group, the man himself defended Karie Murphy from "abuse" she had received and vowed again to press on with the foundation of the new party. Its conference will still take place in November, he said. For a bit more context and how the Gaza Independents and Collective, the group around Corbyn, sees things, Andrew Murray appears to have a good grasp on their thinking.

It's all a bit depressing. Undoubtedly, who's to blame for what will rumble on for some time yet, and there doesn't seem much point giving more recrimination a turn on the spit. But on the question of what now, for those of us who won't be trekking over to the Greens, we are stuck with the process Corbyn agreed with his Gaza Independent colleagues. Which, according to the 15th September email from Your Party HQ, means the membership is to open within the next fortnight, instruments of online deliberation and document submission are going to be made available, mass regional meetings to debate these will be organised, and then a delegated - determined by sortition - founding conference with some direct membership voting. Also to be launched is The People Speak campaign, which is a huge canvassing effort to get the party known on the doorstep, recruit supporters, and find out what the issues are. As most parties rarely door knock between elections - and some, such as Reform, don't even do that, this is a good idea. But it's sure to be a patchy affair with the ad hoc character of the YP groups that currently exist.

Setting critiques of this process aside, there is now no path to a new party except Corbyn's route with the time available to us. He has effectively been the leader of the left for the last decade, and he became this not through some magical process or hero worship - though the latter undoubtedly exists - but because he served as a lightning rod for the discontent and grievances that were studiously and intentionally ignored by mainstream politics. A situation that still remains the case today. Using the platform the Labour leadership contest supplied, he enthused hundreds of thousands of people and when put to the electoral test, even in the dire circumstances of the 2019 general election, there was more of a popular appetite for what he was saying than Starmerism has fostered, even at its peak. Corbyn was the condenser and subsequent embodiment of a mass movement and as such all the personal attacks on him, the internal right wing shenanigans now freely admitted to, and orchestrated media hit jobs were and continue to be efforts at forcing that movement back into a box.

This has not changed. No other left wing figure is close in name recognition, popularity and, where our opponents are concerned, notoriety. Corbyn has become the focal point, a personality through whom the stuff of history has elected to flow. And so, despite frustrations, well-worn criticisms of his record and politics, and regardless of whether one leans towards Team Jeremy or Team Zarah in the current fracas, the ballast lies with Corbyn. Only he can be the midwife of the new party. No one else right now has the ability or authority to draw together hundreds of thousands of people that can win over millions and set British politics off in a new, brighter, more hopeful direction. Obviously, an urgent task of the new party is to raise up a generation of new leaders so that, as we root ourselves in our workplaces and communities, we shake off dependence on the charismatic figurehead. And besides, Corbyn will be 80 come the next election and has to be considering retirement. He deserves to spend more time with Laura and his allotment.

In 2016, I wrote about 'reluctant Corbynism' in reference to the small layer of Labour members who moved left during the first year of his leadership of the party and supported Corbyn against the effort to oust him. This was 'reluctant' because they were motivated more by the disgust and scorched earth chicanery of the parliamentary party and their helpers in the Labour machine than enthusiasm for Corbyn's brand. It was based on an appreciation that democracy matters, and that sovereignty in the labour movement belongs to the people that make it up. The specifics today have changed, but the way things have played out is that reluctant Corbynism, which is much larger now than it was then, has to come to terms with the fact this is the only game in town where starting a new party is concerned. Just ask the far left and other recent initiatives about how they've been getting along with their party building projects.

Comrades, you might not like it. But this is where we are. Carrying on meeting as local groups and starting new ones is the best course of action for now, and is much more productive than shouting on social media. We have to take Corbyn at his word that he sees himself and his immediate supporters as facilitators of the new party. Thankfully, as politicians go, Corbyn does have a track record of honesty and keeping to his promises. We might be reluctant Corbynists, but a great prize is within reach. As such we have no choice but to exercise patience.

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The Crisis in Your Party

Considering the last fortnight, it takes something special to make Keir Starmer and Morgan McSweeney look like exemplars of competence. Just a quick reminder of where we are in the Your Party crisis. Zarah Sultana's faction, annoyed with the snail's pace of the project and the conference arrangements worked out seemingly behind her back, opened a membership drive. Only to have it disowned by Jeremy Corbyn and the four Gaza Independents. Sultana's reply complained about being frozen out, and another communique from the Corbyn camp said they had reported the affair to the Information Commissioner. Archie Woodrow has done the honours in supplying the time lines, and his superlative guide to the hidden differences behind the Your Party project is required reading. Things have settled down a bit today, with prominent supporters in Wales and a new grassroots initiative each fielding their takes. Sultana has endorsed the latter while Sky News reports on reconciliation efforts. Your Party might be in the toilet but no one's pulled the chain. Yet.

There's nothing much to add except for hundreds of thousands of would-be supporters, the outbreak of collective joy that occasioned this summer's announcement that a new party is but a memory. Recrimination, anxiety, and disappointment is now filling the vacuum left by this unseemly falling out. As Woodrow writes in his overview of Your Party's factional balances, there is an abundance of control-freakery and secrecy. It's tempting to locate this in the desire of a handful of people around Corbyn wanting to secure paid positions and influence in the new party, and plenty have made that inference. But this is secondary to the politics of our shadowy movers and shakers. And what are these politics? Fundamentally, it comes down to what they think the new party should be.

For the Corbyn wing and its (understandably) reluctant leader, the desire is obviously a mk II Labour Party. One with a touch more democracy and better politics, but ultimately Labourist in orientation and method. The "sexist boys' club" Sultana criticised has centred the formation of the new party on the honourable members - Corbyn and the so-called Gaza Independents. From the off, the MPs have had a privileged say over the party's direction, and are looking to preserve their autonomy and standing within it. This is hardly the grass roots democracy Corbyn promised over the summer, and is concerning when it's very clear that apart from Gaza, the politics of the independents are barely Labourist, let alone socialist. But that suits a Labour mk II fine, which thrives on a politics of the lowest common denominator.

Some have asked why Corbyn wants to co-habit with the independents in a new party. Is he not aware of their positions on landlordism, LGBTQ issues, and cousin marriage? Of course he is, but Corbyn's ethical socialism predisposes him to a politics of diplomacy. This is a politics of moral outrage at the evils of the world, and believes in the essential dignity and goodness of human beings. Capitalism is obviously damaging and cruel, and there is an ethical imperative to build something better - a position everyone can get behind, because everyone benefits. Socialist morality abstracted from a materialist appreciation of power and politics, in Corbyn's case, helps explain his decency and willingness to engage with people most wouldn't touch with a barge pole. Why can't we all get along is the principle by which he's lived his political life, and he reciprocates the friendship and loyalty shown him by others. Karie Murphy, for instance, is often criticised as a gatekeeper and an authoritarian, but she stayed in the trench with Corbyn until the end. Small wonder she's part of the inner circle, alongside Len McCluskey who did everything he could to get Corbyn readmitted as a Labour MP. Unlike Starmer, who bins off allies when they become an encumbrance, the fusion of the personal and political in Corbyn means he can never be as mercenary. Regardless of how damaging his allies might be for whatever project he's involved with. Where the Gaza Independents are concerned, while Labour "oppositionists" to Israel's genocide have been few and far between, they have been resolute and faced down Westminster and media hostility. On paper, who would not want to make common political cause with such courageous people?

Corbyn-as-figurehead is the glue that keeps this faction together. Unity where their common interests are concerned, and diplomatic silences over political differences. Which makes Corbyn ideal to lead a broad church that stretches from the far left to anti-LGBTQ "traditionalists", as long as no one talks about difference or, horror of horrors, politics. This is where his keen interest in community organising comes in. While laudable in and of itself as a means of implanting the new party into our communities, activists so engaged will build trust and solidarity through good works. Disagreements would simply wither away and not matter because action takes precedence.

Sultana's faction has a different objective. They are not looking for a Labour mk II, and want to establish a radical left party. Indeed, in her interview with Novara on the topic, she said her preferred name for the new party would be the Left Party or The Left. In other words, quite similar to several continental left-green parties and broadly congruent with Zack Polanski's trajectory. She has argued for putting "class issues" front and centre, while maintaining it should be a socially liberal party. I.e. Mirroring the vast majority of the class it seeks to organise in the age of immaterial labour. Obviously, this party isn't a place for landlords or those whose politics seek to sow division, regardless of how good they might be on questions of war and peace. And she's impatient with the bureaucratic obstructionism and foot dragging given the state of political affairs. Whether you agree or disagree with her positions, at least Sultana has been open about her vision and what the new party should be like. Can you say the same for Corbyn?

These are the fundamental differences between the two broad camps, and the reason we've reached this impasse is because one side - Corbyn's - would rather not have a "divisive" debate about the party's character. The problem is when you stifle politics, they find other, more damaging ways of finding expression, and it ends up scarring those doing the repressing. The situation we're in means Corbyn is the only politician with sufficient social weight to bring together the left and refound it on a mass, as opposed to a sectarian basis. But the more he delays, the more his associates are given free reign to arrest this process, the more his standing will diminish to the point where the moment could be lost. But the situation can and must be retrieved. Open the membership, put the party on a firm financial and organisational setting, regularise the already-existing branches and fora, and let's have this founding conference where the purpose and politics of our party can get thrashed out.

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The Case for Cautious Optimism

Like 500,000 other people, I signed up for the Zarah Sultana/Jeremy Corbyn Your Party mailing list. Comparing free registration to the memberships of other political parties is hardly a like-for-like exercise, but it does demonstrate a real appetite for an alternative to Keir Starmer's authoritarian incompetence and Nigel Farage's right wing extremism. And it's very likely the donation facility has already raised tens if not hundreds of thousands in small donations. Already, the new party is orders of magnitudes more significant than any other left-of-Labour outfit in British political history, and it doesn't really exist yet.

Since the announcement, and setting aside dishonest rubbish about letting Reform in and right wing panic, the establishment have, by and large, greeted it with two responses. The first is with dismissive humour, that - ho, ho, - neither Corbyn nor Sultana could get their story straight about the new party's name. What a muddle! The other, articulated on Times Radio, has it that there are too many irreconcilables among the party's potential support. That on the one hand you have Muslim voters lost to Labour over Gaza but who are socially conservative, and social progressives motivated by, among other things, trans rights. This surely is a mountain the nascent party would find impassable.

A more thought-through variant of this position is offered by John Oxley. He makes a similar point about the incompatibility between the voting behaviour of the so-called Gaza Independents in the Commons, and where the party's progressive base would sit. But a further difficulty is that if this can be overcome, it would - at best - lead to a handful of seats because the party has "too narrow a niche". Building reach requires issues that have broad appeal and can be capitalised on, as Farage has done with Brexit and immigration. Reform also complicates things, as it pivots towards Labour seats with its mix of anti-immigration, English nationalist politics, and dalliances with left-populist economics. Another problem are the new party's supporters, among whom are likely to be unpopular views at odds with public opinion, it's not clear how these difficulties could be overcome. That is, in the absence of one thing: a Farage of the left. "Someone with a demagogue appeal, political nous to weave these tribes together, and organisational skills to pull together a party which pushes its advantage strategically." Without this, there are flashes of anger and fragments of grievance. And so the new party will be born, but with limited life chances.

These are serious issues, but they are issues limited to a party of a certain type. All parties are condensers and coalitions of interests, but where the government, the Tories, Reform, and the Liberal Democrats are concerned, there is one interest that predominates - capital's. What they offer then are variations on a theme. I.e. Who can manage its collective interests best, which in the case of the Tories and Labour, is about engineering the class relationships British capitalism depends on. To ensure they're on the right track, leading figures cosy on up to business interests as closely as possible. No need for members as mediators of interests when luncheons and private meetings do the job. In Labour's case, this closeness to capital has proceeded with the attacks on and removal of democracy, due process, and natural justice inside the party. This leads to a politics where agency and efficacy is invested in the leadership, and offers bourgeois politics a model of how it should be done.

As a mainstream politics writer, this is the prism through which Oxley perceives politics. However, this is not the approach informing the new party. In the aftermath of his victory last year, Corbyn argued that he owed his return to the Commons to community embeddedness and power. And perhaps mindful of other left wing splits from Labour and the sundry efforts at building an alternative, he has been reluctant to commit to a new party in the absence of a strong base and an orientation that would sink deep roots into our class. Like many others, I've found this reticence frustrating. Starting a new organisation requires that someone who has social weight, which Corbyn does, makes the move and be the catalyst for what could come next. He might have been pushed into it before he was ready, but the die is cast and the numbers are coming up.

When he was Labour leader, Corbyn and Corbynism pushed it to the limits of Labourism and threatened to go beyond it. Corbyn tried to ground the party in community organising, to turn what was the traditional party of the working class in name into its party in substance. And it's encouraging that this model of collective power is the approach Corbyn wants to found the party on, and not the electoralism of a Labour mk II. This is where things can get weird where the mainstream model of politics is concerned. If this quickly puts on a few hundred thousand members at launch, as noted a while back the organisation in and of itself can become a political factor. Not because it can turn out armies of canvassers - though helpful. It comes from its social weight. Putting its energies and grounding its organisation in workplaces and communities makes it familiar, creating living relationships between members, activists, and our class at large. It becomes a party that lives the everyday lives of everyday people, because the party is them. The party doesn't need a strong leader, because its job is to generate hundreds of thousands of them. These aren't people who stand above and separately from them, like Labour politicians do, but are indistinguishable. Their leadership comes from organising and building institutions that bring our people together. This is not only the best way to break from Labourism and transform society for the better, it is the only practical way of doing so.

The party as a substantive collective, as a part of and vehicle for our class, this is its potential as things stand. There will be arguments and problems, but its declaration comes at the right time. Labour have performed dismally in office and have attacked its own base, like all Labour governments do. The country is pervaded by a miasma of dissatisfaction that the current crop of parties cannot intersect with. And, germane to the new party, the experience of the last decade in Labour Party politics, the explosion of street movements, and the proliferation of industrial disputes has swelled the legions of politically switched on and experienced activists looking for something to cohere their efforts around. The Labour leadership contest of 2015 and all that followed was a moment upon which the direction of this country's politics turned. This new party could be another one.

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Zack Polanski's Green-Left Populism

Zack Polanski's announcement that he's standing for the leadership of the Green Party has set the hares racing. Over the last couple of days, he's done the rounds of left media, had write ups in the Graun, and - predictably - attracted hostile commentary from the right wing Jewish Chronicle and Jewish News. My Bluesky feed, which heavily leans on left and progressive-types has witnessed an outpouring of support and not a few signing up to the Greens to back his candidacy. Could it be that we're finally seeing something positive happening on the left?

There's certainly the space for it. For a variety of reasons, which you can put down to sectarianism, foot dragging, and the continued fealty to Labour on the part of those MPs who've already been chucked out of the party, there is a void to Labour's left dying to be filled. So wide it is that even Nigel Farage has said opportunist things about nationalising steel and liking trade unions. Therefore, as a socially liberal party that has been pushing a radical left platform for a while now, it would be a dereliction of political duty to not tread where Jeremy Corbyn and the independents and sort-of groups around him fear to go.

What has been encouraging about Polanski's pitch is a recognition of the Green's weaknesses and the kind of politics that have to be pushed to wrest the radical mantle away from the extreme right. He says the Green Party is "too nice", which reflects dominant sections of its base among the middle class. I.e. Professionals and the highly educated, tending to cluster in the public and third sectors. The moment however demands a left populism that centres wedge issues around class, inequality, wealth, and environmentalism. You might say an approach owing more to Marx than Malthus. And there is an appetite for this politics. On a larger scale, Corbynism has twice demonstrated it has more popular appeal than Starmerism at its height, and so there is a constituency for the taking. Next year's metropolitan local elections across Labour strongholds are going to be very interesting.

The question is can the Greens become the left alternative if Polanski wins the leadership? One can look around at the, to put things euphemistically, patchy record of the party's co-thinkers across the continent. In the UK, Brighton council, Mid-Suffolk council, and the Greens' performance in the Scottish government hardly heralded red dawns. But neither were they worse than your average Labour council, for whom attacking workers and slashing services have long been the norm - even before the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition imposed ruinous cuts on local government after 2011. The alternative path away from that trod by establishment green parties is that taken by the green-left parties of Denmark, the Netherlands, and the Nordic Green-Left Alliance. There are no insurmountable reasons why taking a Scandinavian turn is impossible.

But there are two difficulties an explicitly left wing party faces. The first can be more or less ignored, and that's the scepticism many on the established left - your writer included - has toward political organisations not explicitly based on class. This is unlikely to prove an electoral obstacle, but puts a ceiling on the numbers of established left wing activists a Polanski-led Green Party can attract. Though, to be honest, he's not waiting around for any of their approvals. Perhaps the politics of the electoral deed might sway them. The second is more substantial: the Greens' non-radical wing. This is best represented by the local government inroads made before Reform was anointed the establishment's anti-establishment party of choice, and was recently highlighted when current co-leader Adrian Ramsey went off-script in an interview with the BBC's Nick Robinson and equivocated instead of pushing the party position on trans issues. There is a possibility that some of this layer could do a reverse Polanski and move from the Greens to the Lib Dems.

That said, there is undoubtedly a prize to be seized. With the extra-Labour left unwilling to move beyond marches and rallies, a radical Green Party that speaks to the interests of the rising class of workers, reflects the dominant socially liberal outlook of tens of millions, and is starkly posed as an alternative to the extreme right and what Labour are selling, could chime with the vibes of the moment and build that elusive left-populist insurgency this country's politics has so far lacked. Therefore, while I won't be joining the Greens, there's a good chance the tidal surge of a Polanski leadership could lift all our boats.

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Revisiting Brexit and Corbynism

While we're on the subject of marking Brexit's five year anniversary, an interesting story appeared in The Times on Friday night. We learn that the self-proclaimed genius of Brexit, Dominic Cummings, had a line into Jeremy Corbyn's inner circle during the first half of 2019 - when the UK's exit from the European Union was in the balance. Contacting former Corbyn spox Matt Zarb-Cousin, Cummings went out for dinner with him and James Schneider, then in the leader's office, and laid out Labour's path to victory. I.e. Rescue Theresa May's Brexit deal by whipping the PLP in favour of it, and sit back and watch the fireworks as the hardcore remainers in Labour - who were mostly opposed to Corbyn's leadership - deflated and the Tories irredeemably split for years to come. As we know, this was not to be. May was forced to resign, Boris Johnson became Prime Minister under the slogan "Get Brexit Done", and he won a crushing victory on that basis.

The piece argues that Cummings had seen the focus group data for the Midlands and what trouble Labour were storing up for themselves if they refused to go along with Brexit. But, by the same token, Get Brexit Done voters would look afresh at Corbyn and support Labour on that basis. Was this is a missed opportunity? I don't think so.

The problem was that by this point - early 2019 - Labour was split on Brexit and had become entrenched. The big mistake took place two years earlier when Corbyn was basking in the glow of Labour's unexpected surge in the polls and the torpedoing of May's Commons majority. That was the moment for not just getting through mandatory reselection for all Labour MPs and making the left's revolution permanent in the party's structures, but to also consolidate the position around leaving the European Union. Making it clear this was the line to be held, was part of why Labour performed so well in the election, and that the party would be developing its own negotiating position on the basis of the kind of Brexit deal that was least damaging. And, crucially, our class wouldn't pick up the bill for Dave's folly. After 2017's conference season, and particularly following the Skripal poisonings in early 2018, sections of the Labour right latched on to the second referendum position as a means of undermining Corbyn's leadership and winning back control of the party.

This isn't to say everyone who took this position were so motivated. At the time, it was obvious to some that the second referendum campaigns were not primarily motivated by campaigning for a second referendum. The vast majority of those turning up to the huge pro-EU marches were entirely genuine in their desires, which in the main was a mix of liberal internationalism and well-founded fears for the economic and political consequences of leaving. The problem was that not only was the majority of Labour's membership aligned with these views, so was the bulk of the party's base. There was a tension then between about two-thirds of Labour's constituency, and the position of the leadership which remained signed up to seeing Brexit done. It would have been remiss in light of the Labour right's eternal quest against the left not to have employed this to drive a wedge between the leadership on the one hand, and the membership and its support in the country on the other.

This is something few if any Labour's mid-late 2019 opponents of the second referendum appreciate, unfortunately. The EU elections that the UK had to take part in that summer annihilated the Tories, but dealt Labour a comprehensive drubbing too. Its constituency was prised apart by the Liberal Democrats and Greens on the one hand, and to the Brexit Party on the other. The last hurt the Tories the most, and so when Johnson came to office his strategy was clear. Champion the ending of the political paralysis by sorting Brexit once and for all, and he set about demonstrating his single-mindedness of purpose. Labour needed to bring its coalition together too, but theirs was a more difficult task. The hard remain positioning of the Lib Dems and Greens and firmed up enough support that were never going to vote for any party that kept Brexit on the table. But more numerous than this relative sliver were Labour leavers and who, as we saw, punished their party in significant numbers by either voting Tory or the Brexit Party - letting some Tories sneak through the middle.

The Labour leadership's difficulty was that if by this stage they had taken Cummings's advice, a much greater catastrophe would likely have been in the offing. Yes, sure, the Labour leavers by and large might have stayed on board. But with Brexit through, why would the Tories have split? We saw Johnson easily dispose of his remain-supporting back benchers prior to the election, and there's little suggesting they would have been in a stronger position had Labour whipped the PLP to support May's deal. No, it was much more likely that Labour would have split. More MPs would have walked out of the parliamentary party, finding succour with Change UK (remember them?) or the Lib Dems. But even more damaging would have been a likely mass desertion of Labour's support. The battlelines were drawn by 2019. Labour could only choose a second referendum or Brexit and all the consequences that flowed from that. Despite Corbyn's best efforts, there was no third way.

Returning to that dinner, what Cummings was pointing to on the menu was not salvation and victory, but the sort of ruin Labour experienced in Scotland in 2015. A terrible gutting defeat that might have put the party's existence as the Tories' primary competitor in jeopardy, and rejuvenated the Lib Dems far beyond the renaissance they enjoyed last year. In the end, because of the way politics played out between the summer of 2017 and the winter of 2019, the terrible result inflicted on Labour was, in all likelihood, the least worst outcome.

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Anything but a Banger

Keir Starmer gave a conference speech typical of him. There were the nods to "service". There was the (unfounded) election triumphalism because we "changed our party". There were gestures to better things in the future, tempered by acknowledging the hard road ahead. Working people, "country first, party second", the boilerplate Starmerism was present virtually unchanged from last year's speech. In fact, the stand out moment - and what it will be remembered for - was his demand for the return of the sausages. An unexpected moment of levity in a scripted address that was anything but a banger.

What was striking about his speech was as if the last week didn't happen. This would no doubt concern Andrew Marr, who argued that Starmer should have apologised for the wardrobes of gifted clobber, the free tickets, and the takings ups of hospitality enjoyed by the leadership. There was no concession that anything was amiss, nor was there likely to be. Starmer has long nursed a penchant for the spoils of office. To his mind he believes he deserves it, and he's not going to say sorry for something he isn't sorry for. Never apologise, never explain is the first rule of right wing Labour politics. Jittery journos like Marr can carry on jittering because, they believe, the public don't care. A silly assumption, because they do.

A vague plan for Britain got a second airing, which via the framing of building a "decisive state" singled out Starmerism's two enemies. The first was the phantasmic Labour left, which was repeatedly dismissed and traduced by comparing his changed Labour to the "comfort zone" of irrelevance. The heckler who took him to task over his continued support for Israel was contemptuously dismissed with a "This guy has obviously got a pass from the 2019 conference." What japes to laugh off complicity in a genocide. Despite the evisceration of Labour's left by fair means and foul, Corbynism is a shade that weighs on their brain like a nightmare. If the "magic grandpa" has cast a spell, it's one over the Labour right's imaginary.

The other enemy was "populism". Corbyn was lumped in with Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage, who were denounced - albeit not by name - as peddlers of "easy solutions" and unrealistic promises. Contrasting his managerialist project with pie-in-the-sky politics, "we know where that leads" he said. He almost verged on the passionate in attacking the far right, though this was limited to "racist thugs" and praising the communities that came together to rebuild after the riots. He's still lagging behind the King on this one, and refusing to take on the Tories, the Farageists, and the right wing talking heads who've encouraged and excused it.

Starmer announced one new policy: guaranteed accommodation for former armed forces personnel, so none will end up sleeping on the streets. He also outlined the ambition of extending this to care leavers and victims of abuse. And if you're not one of Starmer's worthy homeless? Let's just say the silence was symptomatic. But there was a weird moment when Starmer waxed lyrical about everyone having the right to access the arts, music, and pursue their creative passions. He gave the impression of working himself up to an announcement about guaranteeing children's access to artistic subjects and venues, many of which are either on the brink or have gone under. But it never went anywhere, except for an anecdote about Starmer's first trip abroad with the Croydon Youth Orchestra.

In all, the court media loved it. The New Statesman said this speech showed "the real Keir Starmer". If it did, then we can conclude the Prime Minister has more waffle than Birds Eye, is tone deaf to public grumblings about freebie gate, and despite what was supposed to be an electoral triumph is haunted by his predecessor still. It wasn't a bad speech by Starmer's standards, but it wasn't the one he needed to give. If the customary post-conference polling bounce doesn't materialise, it's not difficult to see why.

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Confessions of the Gravediggers

I do like a good memoir, especially when matters touch on the recent past. That's why I read Anushka Asthana's piece about Labour Together's manoeuvrings in the Corbyn years with some interest. You've probably had a look at it too. It's a tale of the dishonesty we've come to expect from the Labour right, describing the outfit's cynical soft branding and efforts at wooing the left (including delivering a nice presentation about Labour Together to Jeremy Corbyn himself). But this was a front for the usual skulduggery: using antisemitism as a factional weapon (so much for the protestations) and passing on social media posts to journalists to damage the party. Erecting rings of protection around right wing Labour MPs facing deselection. Saying a left-led government should be something to be avoided at all costs. And telling donors that their imagery was a ploy to defeat Corbyn and the "hard left".

This late candour confirms everything that the left said at the time, but got vilified for stating the bald truth about what was going on under the toupee. Thinking back to Labour's factional struggles in the early 1980s, it's striking that when the late John Golding penned a memoir about his time fixing and smearing, John Spellar wasn't happy about it because it brought the Labour right's factional ploys into the open. Despite Hammer of the Left being published 20 years after the events described. Yet here we are, only a handful of years after the right lied its way back into control of the party machine and already the secrets of how they did it are getting spilled. Poor old Spellar must be wondering what his comrades are playing at.

For one, Asthana has a book to sell which goes over this period. And as her article shows, she was invited to several of the key organising meetings by the right's movers and shakers - hence her easy familiarity with how the Labour right's networks operate. If you're going to let a journalist in to chronicle your legend, you're going to have to let her publish sooner rather than later. Especially when it no longer matters. And that's the clincher. As far as the Labour right are concerned this doesn't matter any more. Saying that they are less popular than Jeremy Corbyn at his lowest ebb riles up a few loyalists, but they have their majority and can now get on with the important stuff. Like taking money off pensioners and making sure children in poverty stay in poverty.

The truth is they think they've won, and they have. There is no way for the Labour left to come back in the immediate to medium term, and so they feel safe letting their secrets all hang out. No newspaper is going to revisit their crimes and call out their dishonesty. When Keir Starmer isn't now being held to account for his brittle authoritarianism, it's not likely lies from several years ago will ever count against him. But, as we know, pride comes before a fall. As internal jockeying is more now more obviously defined by careerists competing for careers a la the "disputes" between Blairites and Brownites of old, there are plenty of others who've watched the behaviour of the Labour right in recent years and drawn the necessary conclusions. For those on the left groping towards a new party, the utter cynicism being advertised can only stiffen their resolve. Pleas to vote Labour at this election didn't work as well as they should have, and the antipathy the right's factionalism has engendered conjoined to an awful record in office isn't going to see any emergent project off. The Greens, poised to do well out of Labour's woes (as long forecast) can prosper for the same reasons. And when Labour has to engage with trade unions over pay settlements and disputes, they know full well that "their government" is dirtier in practice than even the Tories. They are telegraphing to each and every progressive social movement that they cannot be trusted.

There are several reasons why Corbynism failed, but the major factor was the scorched earth war the Labour right launched against their own party the moment the left looked like it was going to win. They'd rather see the Labour Party die than play second fiddle within it, and as they set about digging the Labour left's grave they furnished it with a lead-lined coffin, and stood ready to pour a concrete cap. Now they feel confident enough to say this openly, they are not only warning future left wingers what behaviour to expect from them within the party, they are telling everyone else exactly what they are. And that their opponents should take this as their truth, and treat with them accordingly.

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Building a Left Electoral Insurgency

Rare are the occasions where parties and candidates to the left of Labour do well out of a general election. Despite having some scepticism regarding the Greens' four for '24 strategy, the concentration of their resources, a bit of tactical and split voting in the Tory seats they took, and a manifesto that was about consolidating a leftist base paid off. One of the few moments when I get things wrong but happy to admit it. As expected, though it didn't seem like it at the time, Jeremy Corbyn trounced the private health profiteer Labour imposed as his opponent. Elsewhere, five other independents were elected off the back of the political establishment's support for the endless massacre of the Palestinians, four of whom could be described as being broadly left wing. And there were other very good results for left independents and, if you must, candidates for George Galloway's Workers' Party.

Thinking back to a forecast given in an academic paper three years ago, before Party Gate, Liz Truss, and the other horrors of the last few years of Tory rule, I argued that the next election (i.e. the one just gone) might have a morphological similarity to what we saw in 2017 and 2019. I.e. Thanks to a soft electoral polarisation, victory depends on mobilising bases and turning out as many votes as possible. This was on the understanding the centre ground, as previously understood, was bifurcated by Brexit and with it the age/class cohort divisions often noted on this blog. It came with a warning. If Keir Starmer was to move Labour to the right, it wouldn't be the case of trading votes in super safe seats for support in the marginals because the people he risked alienating - the new base Labour pulled together in 2017 and largely hung on to in 2019 - existed across the country. If the election was going to be a test of who could get their vote out, putting off our people in the marginals didn't seem terribly wise.

As we know, politics didn't turn out quite like that. Boris Johnson was always going to do himself in, I suppose. And given the composition of the Tory membership, his successor was always likely to be Liz Truss and with it the calamities that were hinted at during the 2022 Tory leadership contest. This changed the shape of the 2024 election. The old triangulation strategy beloved of the Blair years could only work because the Conservatives' position disintegrated. The Tories fought their campaign as if it was a turnout-based election to prevent its base scattering to the four winds. This could not and did not stymie the momentum toward their worst ever defeat. As for Labour, despite getting fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn's Labour at its lowest the right wing positioning ensured the most benign media environment a Labour leader has ever operated in, married to mass tactical voting - thanks to a tacit understanding with the Liberal Democrats - and the very helpful intervention from Nigel Farage.

This came not without cost. No more Thangham Debbonaire. Adios Jonathan Ashworth. So long Khalid Mahmood. Three big Labour names taken out because, as forecast, pursuing policies and lines that put off one's normal backers has political consequences. The result is a thumping majority in the Commons supported by a historically thin mandate in the country. Evidently, Labour did believe it could trade safe seat votes for swing seat support, and the gamble paid off. Two shadow cabinet members, one prominent MP, a backbencher, and the safe return of Corbyn in Islington for the complete dominance of the Commons was a trade no centrist Labour leader would have passed over. But Labour was lucky. Had Farage not re-entered the fray, the effect of Reform would not have proven so potent. And with a smaller majority, questions might already have been asked about Starmer's leadership.

What the original article sketched out was a logic of vote decay, and the general election confirmed it. Labour cannot repeat the same trick again now it's in government, and holding on depends on building campaign infrastructure and embedding its scores of new MPs. But politics matters, and with the Tories unlikely to bounce back quickly, there is room for the Lib Dems and Greens to capitalise on Labour's difficulties and the general long-term decline of right wing politics (as presently constituted). But what of the extra Labour left?

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the falling of parliamentary by-elections could see a seat taken by a rooted left wing independent. Or Galloway's outfit. Especially as Labour's continued disregard of black and Muslim communities is not likely to change, if recent behaviour is anything to go by. "Independence", of course, means many things to many people. Not attaching a party label, especially a left wing party label, can in some circumstances improve one's chances. Consider Fiona Lali's 1,791 votes (4.1%) in Stratford and Bow. Would she have done anywhere near as well if she had faced the electorate as the Revolutionary Communist Party candidate? The results for TUSC and the Communist Party of Britain suggest not. Independence typically allows for the projection of all sorts of anti-politics, anti-party, single issue, and localist peccadilloes on to a candidate. Good for saving deposits, but for party building projects? For building something long lasting?

Time for the left independents to pool their resources and call for a new party, a la the perspective long pushed by our comrades in the Socialist Party? Helpfully, Corbyn himself has weighed in on this. Drawing on the lessons of his campaign, he rightly argues it's his community rootedness that saw him safely back into the Commons. This wasn't on the basis of door knocking sessions centred on voter ID, which is the Labour way, but decades of living among his constituents, helping them, being present at community events, campaigning on their issues. Corbyn has attracted, condensed, and become the repository of collective aspirations and gratitude. This is what he tried to get Labour to adopt during his time, and which was immediately axed in Starmer's counter revolution. He's also right. When the parties of the left outside the Greens and Galloway's club have zero recognition and even less of a presence, how to build the left up as a contender? This won't be welcome news to most of the organisations that stood in the election. They are committed to top-down models of party building in which everything is instrumentalised, and whose work fits around the reproduction of their respective organisations. There is certainly mileage in a link organisation that can take on weight and link up community campaigns but, to be honest, if Corbyn simply sets up a new party I doubt he fancies adjudicating between the 57 varieties and the numerous liabilities who attach themselves to the left.

We live at a rare moment in Britain's political history. The Tories and with it, the most reactionary sections of capital have suffered a historic political defeat. Labour's right turn is opening space to the left, and out of the decomposition of the coalition Corbyn's leadership brought about under the party's auspices there are, yes, promising signs that something new could be built. It's not the best time to be a socialist, but it's certainly an interesting one.

On the Green Party's Four for '24 Strategy

It's been evident for a while that the Greens are on a roll. After its best ever results at 2023's local elections, it has 745 councillors to its name. It governs in coalition in several local authorities and won Mid-Suffolk outright - the first time a Green Party has taken sole control of a council anywhere in Western Europe. The increased emphasis on popular left wing policies, support for workers in struggle, and speaking out against the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians has seen their membership grow handsomely. And reflecting this increased strength, the Greens are going to stand everywhere in England and Wales when the election comes (the Scottish Greens, who organise separately, are committed to doing the same). Electoral Calculus also suggests they are in with a shout of taking the new Bristol Central seat, depriving Thangam Debbonaire of her place in the Commons.

There have been false dawns for the Greens before. In 1989 they polled 14.5% in the European Parliamentary elections. Because these were then ran on first-past-the-post this meant no MEPs, but they came out with triple the support of the then Social and Liberal Democrats, and it did spook the mainstream parties and their press friends. I recall a Dominic Sandbrook-style look forward in the News of the World that predicted a future fit for trees, but less so for people. Consumer choice was winnowed down and the ration books had made a comeback. All more than possible precisely because of the environmental problems the party highlighted. The Greens had hit the zeitgeist and their popularity spiked as the general public became aware of climate change (then dubbed the greenhouse effect), the threats to the ozone layer and what that meant, problems with acid rain, and how McDonald's and other fast food joints were driving deforestation in the Amazon basin. From that point on, all parties affected to take environmental issues seriously and the Greens were unable to capitalise on this temporary surge in support.

A much smaller wave crested in 2015. Following a relatively good showing in the 2014 EU elections (the Greens polled seven per cent and netted three MEPs), and then establishment politics' near-death experience with the Scottish independence referendum, the party put on membership weight as Labour were committed to Ed Miliband's Milquetoast agenda and there was no outlet for the small radical surge in England and Wales. Except for the Greens. This brought in more resources and more activists, and they subsequently stood in a record 538 constituencies and polled 1.1 million votes. Circumstances prevented the Greens from building on this growth in support when Labour went to the left and its activist and voter base decamped in large numbers to the bright lights and big cities of Corbynism.

And then there was 2019. In the course of the Brexit wars the Greens adopted a hard second referendum position, which attracted support from the more Europhile wings of Labour leftism disappointed in the untenable (but understandable) efforts of the Labour leadership to abide by the Brexit result. In the UK's last EU elections, they came within shouting distance of the 1989 peak with just under 12% of the vote and a return of seven MEPs. But that was far from replicated in the general election, though they improved on their 2017 figures. And then Covid intervened preventing an early capitalisation on Labour's return to managerial politics and Keir Starmer's found enthusiasm for Brexit.

The Greens' successes in 2023 differs from previous upticks in support because it's built on firmer foundations. Without any kind of media backing, unlike the incessant hype lavished on no-hopers Reform UK, the Greens have taken on the lessons of the Lib Dems in the 90s and built up their organisation at local level. And the investments are beginning to pay dividends. Which brings us to the so-called 'Four for '24' strategy.

Announced at conference in October, despite standing everywhere campaign resources are being concentrated in four seats: Brighton Pavilion, where Caroline Lucas is standing down and Sian Berry is taking her place. The aforementioned Bristol Central with co-leader Carla Denyer in the hot seat. Her counterpart Adrian Ramsey is taking up the cudgels in Waveney Valley, which should be safe Tory territory but where the Greens won several of their councillors last May. And North Herefordshire where the Greens also have a solid local government base, and in 2019 Ellie Chowns won over nine per cent of the vote. This makes perfect sense. But how does this sit with standing everywhere? Isn't four-for-24 undermined by this ambition? Not necessarily, and not in the way the Greens are implementing it.

Apart from the cost of deposits for all the English and Welsh constituencies, standing everywhere has a number of important effects. It's a morale boost for the membership and shows how much the party has come along this century. It means the Greens will benefit from more localised coverage. It should theoretically entitle them to more national coverage. Under Ofcom rules, the more seats the party stands in the more credible the case is for more election broadcasts than previously. And this wide notice can trickle down to the targeted seats, showing prospective voters the party is small but a nationwide force that has been recognised as such. And there are some important consequences the focused strategy has that go beyond the chances of retaining one seat and gaining up to three more.

One reason Corbynism was dispersed fairly quickly was the prospect of its failure was not prepared for. Demoralisation was an entirely predictable consequence, as so it proved. On a much smaller scale, the election campaigns of the far left, which have neither strategic rhyme nor reason stand in seemingly random constituencies, expend scarce resources for zero return, and end up burning through activists who were hopeful of at least saving the deposit. Instead the Greens are combining ambition and modesty. While flexing their newly gained muscle, they are also accepting political realities: that the party stands a chance in a tiny handful of places. This manages their membership's expectations, so few are going to get carried away thinking Starmer's abandonment of his Corbyn-lite platform will see a Green sweep of the board. By grounding aspiration, it's pointing to what the party has to do next. I.e. Carry on the hard yards of building up community organisation and local support. This is the best way, the only way the Greens can be well placed to benefit from disaffection with Labour. It continues during the next round of local elections (122 council seats need defending on top of hopes for an advance) and by the end of the next Parliament ensuring the party becomes a beneficiary of parliamentary by-election discontent. And the political positioning appropriate to this is not posturing as a government-in-waiting, but as the only party capable of offering effective opposition. After all, the Tories are already in the process of surrendering this responsibility while they're still in office.

The Green approach to the next election is a rare example of strategic nous informed by modest realism and basic honesty. There are no guarantees in politics, hence why it's more an art than a science. But the Greens have made an assessment of where they are, where they want to be and are acting accordingly. And if they remain this hard headed and Starmer continues ploughing his present course, there's a chance that over the next five years the party goes from a localised annoyance to a threat that Labour has to take seriously.

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Laura Kuenssberg's State of Chaos

State of Chaos by the BBC's former politics editor was undoubtedly well-watched by everyone at Westminster. It promised to plunge deep into the mess of Brexit and its fallings outs to make sense of the near anarchy that characterised mainstream politics between 2016 and 2022. Promising insider access and never-before-seen interviews with movers, shakers, and bit-part players, did Laura Kuenssberg succeed?

No. Back in March last year, Patrick Howse wrote a blistering critique of her time at the helm. It wasn't that Kuenssberg was bad at her job, it's that her job was not what it should have been. I.e. reporting the news and holding politicians to account. Instead she acted as a relay. Kuenssberg has a nose for political gossip and ingratiated herself with Number 10 insiders, faithfully acting as a conduit for their framing of news stories. Boris Johnson's operation didn't need to establish a rapid rebuttal unit because Kuenssberg could be counted on to repeat whatever nonsense was texted her from the inside. Even if, as was the price for her closeness to Dominic Cummings, this meant regurgitating a complete pack of lies.

State of Chaos was true to Kuenssberg's signature style. There was never any hard questions asked of her interviewees. They were given plenty of space to explain themselves, which has its place. But in a documentary about how politics in this country went into meltdown? Considering how some of her talking heads played important roles in the dramas and behind-the-scenes shenanigans, simply allowing them to spin their own responses without question was a dereliction of political journalism.

I suppose it was to be expected. But this wasn't the only fatal flaw. Replicating standard practice of mainstream political comment and most academic politics coverage, State of Chaos caressed the surface of politics. There was no appreciation of why the Leave campaign won, why the British civil service famously did less contingency planning for Brexit than Japan, the character of the forces politicians pandered to, nor how the Tories were so successful in 2019. There was plenty of she-said he-said minutiae, confessions of plotting, and aspersions cast on the characters of ex-Prime Ministers. But why Theresa May framed Brexit in the hardest possible way when the referendum was won by a slight margin, why Boris Johnson bullishly bulldozed Brexit through all opposition, and why - in the last episode - Liz Truss crashed the economy were all questions that were never asked. What were the interests involved? What drove the crisis? Anyone wanting answers should look elsewhere.

But even more damning was the great unsaid. The so-called state of chaos of the documentary's title was as much a crisis of the Labour Party. Billed as an account of the shambles politics as a whole became, Labour and Jeremy Corbyn merited the briefest of mentions. There was no curiosity about how Labour managed to out-perform expectations in 2017, thereby accelerating Tory crisis. Why and how this was reversed two years later, nothing. It might as well have been natural forces or the politics gnomes at work. Nor were the severe divisions that paralysed the party paid any mind. You can't say this wasn't newsworthy or irrelevant. After all, the BBC's politics output and the "reporting" of Kuenssberg herself devoted to Labour between 2015 and 2019 amplified every lie to undermine its leadership, and helped deliver the party back safely into establishment hands. Its absence was an editorial oversight and nothing more, I'm sure.

State of Chaos failed as a portrayal of the recent political crisis, ignored a huge part of what happened, and reduced everything to the argy-bargy of dysfunctional personal relationships. In short, the "months and months" in the making turned out to be worse than a waste of time. It was a disgrace.

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