Zarah Sultana’s website said: “We’re building a new kind of political party.” How unexpectedly true that claim turned out to be.
“Join one half of a party that has split before it is launched,” the website did not go on to say. “Choose your faction and take up arms against an internal enemy provided as one of the benefits of membership.”
The split in Jeremy Corbyn’s new left-wing party resembles a Monty Python farce. It is hard not to find it amusing, given the eccentric bunch of figures involved. On Tuesday, Sultana announced that the “inaugural founding conference” of the new party would be in November, and yesterday invited supporters to sign up – £55, or £5 concession – to enter a lottery to be chosen to attend this historic event.
Hours later, Corbyn put out an “urgent message” to all supporters telling them to ignore an “unauthorised email” sent out that morning. “Legal advice is being taken,” he said. “If any direct debits have been set up, they should be immediately cancelled.”
Between them, Sultana and Corbyn managed to make the launch of a socialist party look like a crypto phishing scam.
Sultana responded by saying that “right-wing bad faith actors” were claiming that her link was fake. “It isn’t. It’s safe and secure!” Not since Stalin’s purges or Mao’s cultural revolution have former allies been denounced with such ferocity. One moment a good comrade, the next a capitalist running-dog. In Sultana’s case, as recently as July, Corbyn was co-leader with her of an exciting new party. By September, he was a right-wing bad faith actor.
It is hard for those who believe in the politics of the centre or centre-left to believe our luck. None of us is going to interrupt the comedy while it still has a way to run. Besides, how can we make fun of something so brilliantly self-satirising?
Not even John Cleese et al could do justice to the inventiveness of a party that does not yet exist and which cannot agree what it is called; one half of which accuses the other of being “a sexist boys’ club”, and the other half of which has reported itself to the information commissioner, accusing itself of the unauthorised collection of supporters’ data.
Not only is Corbyn threatening legal action in what the Militant tendency used to call the “capitalist courts” – until it went to law in the Eighties to fight its expulsion from Labour – but this whole circus is being fought out on X, the platform owned by Elon Musk, who is regarded as an enemy even by Blairites.
The details are hard to follow, but they are superfluous to grasping the essence of the story. Corbyn’s lifelong belief that a breakaway socialist party will fail in the British electoral system meant he was reluctant to take the plunge, long after it became obvious that there was no way back into the Labour Party for him. Since his suspension five years ago, he has resisted the entreaties of many of his supporters to set up something new.
After forming a parliamentary group, the Independent Alliance, with four other independent MPs elected on platforms that included support for the Palestinian cause, he was finally persuaded to launch a new party by Sultana. She had been suspended from Labour for voting against the King’s Speech after the general election, because it failed to abolish the two-child limit on benefits. Corbyn agreed in principle to the plan that he and Sultana should be joint leaders of the new party, but still hesitated over the launch. She took the initiative in July, announcing the party and its co-leaders.
Corbyn said nothing, realising he had been bounced by an impatient and energetic rival for the leadership of Corbynism. Eventually, he went along with it. But now the breach is more serious, and it is hard to see how it can be healed.
What makes this bust-up so welcome for Labour loyalists is that Sultana and Corbyn were facing a historic opportunity. Even as Keir Starmer headed for his landslide election victory, independent pro-Palestinian candidates gave Labour a fright in several seats, including Wes Streeting’s and the prime minister’s own (Andrew Feinstein, one of Sultana’s allies, came second there, with 19 per cent of the vote).
The unpopularity with many voters of Labour’s policy on Palestine, its tough spending decisions and its language on immigration have created an appetite for a party in the Corbyn-Sultana quadrant. Even Ed Davey, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has been trying to occupy some of that ground, with his attacks on Donald Trump and his adoption of the term “genocide” to describe the Israeli government’s policy.
Disappointment with Labour could have been a big chance for an independent left party to break through the barrier of the first-past-the-post voting system and secure significant representation in parliament.
Instead, it now looks as if that opportunity will fall to Zack Polanski, the self-proclaimed eco-populist who has just been elected leader of the Green Party. How happy a certain Keir Starmer will be.
