Allies of Keir Starmer will be tempted to dismiss the announcement that Jeremy Corbyn is set to form a breakaway party including the other four pro-Palestinian MPs elected in last year’s general election, the suspended Labour MP Zarah Sultana and about 200 councillors.
For some Starmer aides, the formal split will usefully remind voters that Labour is in the centre ground, despite the damaging headlines about the humiliating climbdown forced by rebels over welfare cuts.
After Corbyn’s expulsion by Labour, Starmer won’t mind another fight with the hard left. He needs to detach it from the much bigger, soft-left group at Labour’s heart; the two groups joined forces to devastating effect in the rebellion against disability benefit cuts.
The unnamed new party has not been confirmed by Corbyn, who seems irritated that Sultana jumped the gun by announcing she had resigned her Labour membership and would co-lead an alliance with him. It was a messy launch. “Can a party split before it starts?” one Labour wag asked.
However, Corbyn’s new project could prove a headache for Starmer. It could win over 10 per cent of voters, reducing Labour’s support by three points, according to More in Common. The new party would be in first place among 18- to 24-year-olds on 32 per cent.
Some of its supporters will have already abandoned Labour and switched to the Greens or Liberal Democrats. But Corbyn could agree an electoral pact with the Greens to ensure they field candidates in different places. Labour will hope the Corbyn party will struggle to get lift off under our first past-the-post system. The left populists are unlikely to supplant Labour in the way Reform UK has overtaken the Conservatives.
But the new party could give Starmer a headache next May by winning Labour seats in local authority elections in places such as London and Birmingham, during what already looks like a difficult set of elections for him. His and the government’s unpopularity could see Labour lose control in the Welsh Parliament for the first time and fail to oust the SNP in the Scottish Parliament after the nationalists’ 19 years in power.
Worryingly for Starmer, there are mutterings at Westminster that disastrous results could spark a move by his MPs to oust him before the next general election. Traditionally, Labour doesn’t depose its leaders like the Tories. But a change of leader can no longer be ruled out after the nightmarish end to Starmer’s first year in power.
The Corbyn party could draw money and members away from Labour, including donations from left-wing trade unions. Amid disenchantment with the government, Labour’s membership has dropped from 348,000 at last year’s election to about 309,000. (Under Corbyn, membership peaked at 460,000 in 2017). Labour HQ was told before the May local elections that grassroots morale was low after the government’s decisions on winter fuel payments and welfare.
Although some close Starmer allies will not lose sleep over left-wingers quitting Labour, the party needs all the foot soldiers it can muster.
To make matters worse for Starmer, the soft left is mobilising against his top-down leadership and wants grassroots members given more influence. The Compass think tank is drawing up a “guiding story” to end “the sense of drift” under Starmer’s ideology-free managerialism. Neal Lawson, its director, warns: “If Labour doesn’t clarify what kind of society it aims to bring about and fails to seriously develop a programme that lights the way to it, the populist right’s version of change will prevail.”
Compass’s initial ideas, which won’t be welcomed by Team Starmer, include wealth taxes, rent controls, price caps and the “social ownership” of water and buses.
With skilful targeting, the Corbyn party could unseat some Labour MPs at the next general election. Labour insiders are already worried that “Gaza independents” could win between 20-30 seats, including the health secretary Wes Streeting’s in Ilford North. “Gaza is a real problem for us,” one Labour insider told me.
The five independents who won Labour seats last year campaigned on issues like austerity, as well as the Middle East; such candidates will have more ammunition by the next election.
Although Starmer will be more worried about the threat from Reform, the Corbyn party could result in a prime minister under real pressure on both flanks, as well as from Labour members and his newly-empowered MPs. All while wedded – for now, at least, thanks to the financial markets – to a weeping chancellor, widely seen as the architect of his first-year woes.
Crucially, the existence of the Corbyn party could undermine the PM’s plan to urge disaffected left-of-centre voters to hold their nose and stick with Labour to keep Nigel Farage out of Downing Street. Starmer has fought back before when his back was to the wall – but he will need superpowers to wriggle out of this one.
