KD Tait
The announcement that Zarah Sultana MP has left the Labour Party and is co-founding a new political formation with Jeremy Corbyn is a welcome break from the stifling confines of Labourism and its current imperialist, pro-austerity leadership under Keir Starmer. It reflects a growing recognition among many socialists, trade unionists, and youth that Labour is not — and in our view never was — a party that could be transformed into an instrument for socialist advance.
However, we must be clear: while the break is necessary, it is not sufficient. What we need is not another “broad left” party, nor a recycled version of Corbynism. We need a revolutionary workers’ party — rooted in the class struggle, armed with a socialist programme, and committed to smashing the capitalist system, not simply reforming it.
Labourism has failed — again
Starmer’s Labour has convincingly demonstrated that the party’s apparatus, parliamentary wing, and historic commitment to British imperialism cannot be reformed from within. Over the last five years, it has purged the left, endorsed genocidal warfare in Gaza, and openly opposed workers’ strikes. The proscription of Palestine Action is a declaration of war on the entire left. Birmingham Labour Council’s thereat to Fire and Rehire its striking bin workers, and its backing by Party deputy leader Angela Rayner, has outraged Unite and led to the second largest union and biggest doner to the Party to consider disaffiliation.
The Corbyn era, despite its hopes and mobilisations, ultimately failed to challenge the domination of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the union bureaucracies. It made every concession — on NATO, on antisemitism allegations, on programme content — in the name of electability. In essence Corbyn’s strategy for electing a left government required keeping the PLP Right from deserting. The Right however had no need to keep the left within the party; as Starmer’s expulsions and suspensions have shown. In doing so, Corbynsowed demoralisation and confusion among its own supporters. That failure is not a case for retreat but a case for learning the key lessons: 1) you cannot use a capitalist party for socialist ends, and 2) the Labour left MPs can be temporary allies but will ultimately put their own privileges and apparatuses ahead of the interests of the class.
Fighting Farage
The rise of Reform UK, now with five MPs, two regional mayors and control of 10 councils, has accelerated the process leading to Sultana’s announcement. There is widespread fear and anger among wide layers of the working and popular classes of a Reform council or government. An electoral party that could take some of the disillusioned Labour vote seems urgent.
This sentiment is of course progressive. But an election simply records the political balance of forces existing on that day (up to four years away). To change that balance, in our direction, not only needs a party that can offer a socialist alternative, but also a party that fights against every manifestation of social oppression, women, black, Asian and migrant, LGBTQ, disabled workers, in the workplaces, on the streets, in our educational institutions, every day from now till the election.
The Greens
This new formation is also a clear attempt to stem the drift of disillusioned Labour leftists — especially younger activists — toward the Green Party. In the aftermath of Gaza and Labour’s open war on its own base, many left-reformists have begun to shift their hopes to the Greens, seduced by their progressive rhetoric and ecological veneer.
Zack Polanski’s “eco-populist” leadership campaign is trying to capitalise on this sentiment, framing the Greens as the true heirs of the Corbyn movement. But this is a mirage. Polanski offers a populist brand of politics that sidesteps class — appealing to “people power” and “community values” rather than workers’ struggle and socialist transformation. The Green Party leadership supports NATO, has governed in coalitions with austerity parties (as in Scotland and Germany), and remains tied to the logic of capitalist markets. Most fundamentally, it doesn’t rest on and give expression to the interests of the working class, but those of the radical middle classes.
The Sultana-Corbyn initiative is, in part, a defensive manoeuvre by sections of the Labour left to stop this haemorrhage of support. But unless it offers a clear break with electoralism and populism itself, and immediately shows courageous support for all those engaged on every front of the class struggle, from striking trade unionists in Birmingham or Sheffield to victimised Palestine Action supporters, it will simply be another holding operation — not a vehicle for socialist advance.
International examples and their limits
Some are now pointing to the resurgence of left electoral projects abroad — Die Linke’s modest rebound in Germany, the rise of the New Popular Front in France, and Mahmood Mamdani’s insurgent candidacy for mayor in New York — as proof that the “broad left party” model still has life in it. But we must draw the right lessons.
Each of these efforts is unfolding under increasingly unstable conditions. This is not the 2000s. The space for reformism — for redistributive programmes, inclusive coalitions, or even peace-time electoral stability — is closing rapidly. The ruling classes across Europe and North America are preparing not for a new welfare consensus, but for austerity, rearmament, and war.
These projects may inspire, but they do not provide a model for what we need: an independent, anti-imperialist, revolutionary workers’ party, not a new left flank of the crumbling centre.
Far-Left sectarians
In response to Sultana’s move, a range of far-left groups have begun calling for a “broad”, “federal”, or “coalition” party — allegedly to avoid division, but in reality to preserve their own sectarian niches and veto powers. This is not a new strategy: it is a repeat of the failed experiments of the Socialist Labour Party, Socialist Alliance, Respect, and more recently, Left Unity — projects that collapsed under the weight of petty bureaucratic rivalry, electoral opportunism, and programmatic incoherence.
In each of these cases, so-called revolutionary groups elevated organisational self-preservation over political clarity. They refused to submit to open democratic debate over programme and direction, instead carving out protected fiefdoms in a political swamp. The result was fragmentation, confusion, and defeat.
We are already seeing the seeds of this dynamic in the reported tensions between Corbyn’s team and Sultana’s circle, with rival cliques and loyalists jockeying for influence before the party is even launched. This mirrors what was done to Momentum, when bureaucratic loyalists gutted it of democracy to prevent radical clarity, and what on a union bureaucratic level smothered the Enough is Enough movement in its cradle, ensuring the there could be no grassroots challenge to the bureaucratic sellouts of the great strike wave.
These manoeuvres are not innocent mistakes. They reflect a material reality: the layer of professional politicians, NGO operatives, and union bureaucrats who orbit these formations are not neutral. They are a privileged caste that ultimately defends its proximity to capitalist power — through Parliament, through social partnership, through imperialist diplomacy. They will always oppose the emergence of a revolutionary programme that threatens their position. That explains why many outright oppose a new party having a programmatic commitment to socialism—the conquest of power by the working class and abolition of capitalism, instead calling for a “left” party—a concession to electoral opportunism and attempt to preserve their self-appointed role as the “revolutionaries”.
The role of the working class
What’s needed is a party that starts not from abstract principles or electoral calculations, but from the lived struggle of the working class. That means rooting the party in the trade unions, in tenants’ organisations, in youth movements, and among precarious and migrant workers. It means building workplace committees, strike solidarity networks, and tenants’ defence groups — and linking them to a national programme of working-class resistance.
But it also means political clarity. A workers’ party must not be a lowest-common-denominator coalition of leftists and liberals, pacifists and radicals. It must be a party with a programme — a revolutionary programme based on the need to overthrow capitalism, expropriate the billionaires, dismantle the British state and its imperialist alliances, and replace them with workers’ power.
Populism — even in its left or ecological variant — poses a direct obstacle to the emergence of such a party. It pretends that “the people” are a unified bloc, that politics is about elites vs masses, and that socialism can be achieved through clever messaging and parliamentary manoeuvres. But society is divided into classes, and only the working class — because of its role in production and its potential to collectively reorganise society — can lead the way to socialism.
Any party that fudges this distinction — that tries to appeal to “progressive small business owners,” that talks about “community” or “the people” instead of class, that avoids confronting the police and military — will, sooner or later, capitulate to the capitalist order.
No to a “progressive alliance”
One of the first obstacles this new project will face—and one that the Corbyn faction’s ‘electoral coalition’ proposal directly concedes to—is the growing pressure from liberal commentators and some leftists to form a so-called “progressive alliance” — an electoral pact with the Greens, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, and even sections of the Liberal Democrats. This is not a strategy for liberation — it is a trap that would fatally compromise any new working-class party from the outset.
These parties are not allies of the working class. The Greens support Nato, accept capitalist greenwashing and market-based climate “solutions,” and have governed in coalitions that implemented austerity — in Germany, Scotland, and local councils across Britain. The SNP and Plaid Cymru wrap themselves in the flag of national identity, but have shown in power that they manage capitalism no differently from Westminster — attacking workers, privatising services, and cutting budgets.
Any party that enters into electoral deals or governing arrangements with these forces will be dragged into defending their policies — and through them, the capitalist system itself. The real aim of the “progressive alliance” is not to build working-class power, but to restore the crumbling centre — a refurbished liberal bloc that can manage imperialism more politely, repress more smartly, and delay socialist politics with endless compromise.
We’ve seen this before. The Respect coalition tied the socialist left to promote the interests of the Muslim bourgeoisie against workers and women and grovel before parliamentary careerists. The Popular Fronts of the 1930s — which some now want to revive — were a disaster that disarmed the working class, handed power back to the ruling class, and paved the way for fascism and war. A genuine workers’ party must stand independently, refusing all cross-class alliances, and fighting to expose the limits and betrayals of these so-called “progressives”.
The seeds of disaster are already there, if the new party allows the handful of independent MPs to dictate its policy on the basis of concessions they may have made to their constituents whether these be support for tax breaks for private school, calling for soldiers to break the bin workers strike by clearing the accumulating rubbish. Independents, with no party and no working class principles beyond their manifestos, even if they strongly support the Palestinians, will bring the sort of confusion and cross -class politics we saw with Respect. Another proof that a programme debated an ageed democratically by a party is not a late addition but must be raised at the earliest stage
To be clear: we are not against united fronts for action — mass protests, strikes, or campaigns in which workers and youth from different backgrounds fight together for concrete goals. But electoral alliances with pro-capitalist parties are something else entirely. They blur class lines, suppress political clarity, and substitute electoral arithmetic for revolutionary strategy.
A new party that is serious about confronting the crisis must have the courage to say: no pacts, no coalitions, no deals with capitalist or nationalist parties. The working class must rely on its own forces, its own programme, and its own leadership.
For a Transitional Programme
The workers’ party we need must be based on a transitional programme — a bridge between the current struggles – like the bin workers or the resident doctors, an end to austerity or the defence of Palestine activists – and the need for socialist revolution. This means demanding:
- Nationalisation of the energy, transport, housing, and banking sectors under workers’ control
- A £20 minimum wage, inflation-proofed and linked to the average wage
- A four-day working week with no loss of pay
- Repeal of all anti-union laws and full right to strike
- Solidarity with Palestinian resistance and opposition to all imperialist wars
- Abolition of immigration controls and equal rights for all workers
- Abolition of the monarchy, House of Lords, and all unelected bodies
- For a workers’ government based on councils of workers’ and popular delegates
This is not a utopian wish list — it is a fighting programme for the class struggle.
What next?
We call on all socialists and workers who recognise the need for a clean break from Labour and the need for a revolutionary alternative to join the struggle for a real workers’ party.
- Fight for Sultana and Corbyn’s initiative to become a forum – with local and national gatherings – where a critique of reformism and the need for a revolutionary strategy can be discussed
- Oppose attempts to close ranks around reformism, electoralism, or eco-populist vagueness
- Call for a national conference of socialists, trade unionists, and campaigners, to debate and democratically decide on the way forward.
The crisis of leadership is not new — but it remains the decisive question. A new left formation will only go forward if it breaks decisively with Labourism, with reformism, and with class collaboration. That means a party of the working class — by and for the working class — with a revolutionary programme.