Just a year into Labour prime minister Keir Starmer’s rule in Britain and his ‘huge parliamentary majority’ has fallen apart. Elected with the lowest share of the electorate of any government since universal suffrage was introduced in 1918, this is a government with barely any support in society, attempting to do the bidding of the capitalist class – of the billionaires and the bond markets. No wonder it is hitting the rocks!
The government’s humiliation over its attacks on disability benefits has shown that Labour austerity can be defeated and will have given confidence to all those battling pay restraint, privatisation and cuts. The National Shop Stewards Network Conference, taking place tomorrow, in London, will bring together some of the key activists in those battles. But this week’s events have also driven home the urgent need for a new workers’ party with a clear anti-war, anti-austerity, socialist programme. Such a party is vital to combat the right-populists of Reform.
It is therefore welcome that on 3 July 2025 Zarah Sultana MP announced that she was resigning from the Labour Party to, together with Jeremy Corbyn, “co-lead the founding of a new party, with other campaigners and activists across the country.” Zarah has been suspended from Labour for a year, for the ‘crime’ of voting against keeping the two-child benefit cap that has pushed 800,000 children into poverty. She has drawn the right conclusions – that the time has come to build something new. In response, Jeremy Corbyn has also put out a message that “the democratic foundations of a new party will soon take shape”.
The potential support for a new party is clear. One recent opinion poll showed that – even before a party has been founded, 10% of people would vote for a Jeremy Corbyn-led party, and it would win among 18–24-year-olds with 32% of the vote. Those young people could not even vote when Corbyn was Labour leader, showing how the enthusiasm engendered by his anti-austerity election manifestos in 2017 and 2019 still reverberate in society. And there is no question that a new party would have the potential to quickly win much bigger sections of the working class and young people.
However, the obvious potential for a new party does not automatically mean a future launch will be successful. There have been several previous failed attempts at new left parties in Britain, including Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party and George Galloway’s Respect Party – the latter despite some initial electoral gains. Clearly, the potential now is much greater, but that does not mean greater success is guaranteed. A party that is ‘top-down’, without democratic structures, would not be able to hold the many workers and young people who are enthused by the idea of a new party.
Fighting in and for the trade unions
The issue here is not primarily of a ‘left party’ that only attempts to bring together existing left forces, but struggling to create a workers’ party, which big sections of six million-plus workers already organised in the trade unions see as fighting for their interests.
There is no doubt that the majority of trade union leaders at this stage will continue to argue as hard as they can that trade unionists have to ‘give Labour a chance’, but they are already losing the argument. For example, at the University and College Union (UCU) congress this year a motion, initiated by Socialist Party members, was passed calling on UCU members to stand in elections, linking up with other trade unionists, to fight for union policies. The motion also called for the UCU to invite Jeremy Corbyn, the Independents, and other pro-worker MPs to attend the UCU executive and discuss how they can support the union’s campaigns.
Even now, before the formation of a new party, there is a putative bloc of ‘pro-worker’ MPs in parliament. One immediate measure that Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and the others could take is to move – and campaign for – an early day motion in parliament demanding that the trade union voting thresholds and all other measures in the Tory 2016 anti-trade union act are repealed immediately. This government can act rapidly to proscribe pro-Palestine protestors, yet its manifesto pledge to repeal the trade union voting thresholds has been repeatedly delayed in an attempt to hamper unions’ ability to fight Labour austerity measures. Such a motion would be a lever to step up pressure on Starmer’s Labour and give confidence to trade unionists that a new party was going to fight in their interests.
Of course, it is possible that – if and when a new party is launched – some trade union leaders, particularly from the non-affiliated trade unions, declare their support. That would be welcome but will not in itself create the kind of party that is needed, any more than the then-PCS general secretary Mark Serwotka’s support for Respect did, for example. But union leaders encouraging a debate throughout their membership on the need for the workers’ movement to build its own party would be a significant step forward, as would steps to organise a cross-union conference to discuss it.
For a federal structure
It will also be crucial that any structure for a new party gives trade unions a collective voice, under the democratic control of union members. Not to do so will, correctly, lead to some of the most fighting trade unionists hesitate about joining. That was the case with Bob Crow, the late general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), who in 2010 co-founded the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) alongside the Socialist Party and others. His central reason for opposing his union participating in Respect in the previous period was that the RMT – with around 80,000 workers in its ranks – would have had no say over party-decision making. Some kind of ‘One Member One Vote’ structure may superficially appear the most democratic approach, but that is not the case. In fact, the introduction of One Member One Vote in the Labour Party, which severely undermined trade union power in the party, was essential to Labour’s transformation into New Labour.
In its earliest days, the Labour Party had an extremely federal structure, with no individual membership until 1918. The first Labour MPs stood on behalf of their own trade union and socialist organisations, on the basis that they would work together in parliament once elected. On a much smaller scale, TUSC has now been bringing together different forces to contest elections for fifteen years as a result of its federal ‘umbrella’ approach. Today, a broadly similar approach is needed for a new party, allowing individual members, but also both the different organisations that are already fighting for a workers’ voice in the electoral field – including the various groupings of left independent and local councillors – and future forces that could be won to a new party, to collaborate together while maintaining their own identities and programmes. In addition to trade union organisations, there are all kinds of other groups of campaigners – on Palestine, climate, disabled activists, trans rights campaigners, Black Lives Matter and more – who could be won to a new party on that basis.
Some may argue that a federal approach would be an obstacle to building a fighting party that is involved in struggle, but the opposite is true. For example, in the 1980s the Socialist Party – then Militant – played a leading role in the mass struggle of Liverpool City Council against the Thatcher government. The District Labour Party (DLP) was the key body via which the course of the struggle was decided at each stage. It had 400 or so delegates from unions, ward Labour parties and so on – there as representative delegates, not accidental individuals – it was a kind of parliament of the workers’ movement. The creation of a party able to play that role in the many struggles ahead would be a tremendous step forward in increasing the unity and cohesion of the working class.
Others may argue that a top-down, centralised, approach is needed for electoral success, but that is also untrue. There are many lessons to be learned from the different new left parties that developed in other European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession of 2007-09. Perhaps the starkest are the lessons of Greece. Syriza – the Coalition of the Radical Left – went from being a minor party to winning 26% of the vote in 2012, and it did so as a loose, federal ‘coalition’. After that – prior to winning the general election in 2015 – it was centralised with a top-down structure which meant the President only faced election every three years. This did not happen in order to win the general election, however, but rather because Syriza was clearly on course to win the general election. It was part of a desperate attempt by the capitalist class to try and ensure a Syriza government would not challenge their interests in office. In the event, tragically, the heroic Greek working class were betrayed by the Syriza government, which ended up implementing vicious austerity.
For a socialist programme
This raises a final, vital point. What is needed is not just to build a workers’ party with a mass base, but to build one with a programme and leadership capable of leading a successful struggle for socialism. The Socialist Party argues that will require decisive measures, such as nationalising the major corporations and banks, under democratic workers’ control. There are bound to be different ideas within a new party on these crucial issues, and there may be some who want to attempt to avoid discussion on them and therefore do not want freedom for different political trends to argue for their programme as part of a new party. Such an approach could lead – as with Arthur Scargill’s Socialist Labour Party – to a new initiative being stillborn, and it is also utopian. Faced with the many tactical and strategic questions that will face a party that is serious about fighting in the interests of the working class, discussion and debate on the way forward at each stage are inevitable. Any serious steps towards creating a party within which the working class can begin such debates, however, would be an important step forward.