There could be no more deliciously appropriate start to the new party supposedly co-led by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana, than the news that the ex-Labour leader is said to be ‘furious and bewildered’ that it was launched without him even knowing that he is a member of the party, let alone that he is its leader. Although I’m not sure it is really news that Jeremy Corbyn – who has yet to comment on the new party – is either furious or bewildered, since he has spent his entire career being both.
Although I’m not sure it is really news that Jeremy Corbyn – who has yet to comment on the new party – is either furious or bewildered
Sultana, whose brief career as a Labour MP was only made possible when her not-at-this-moment-co-leader-of-the-new-party Corbyn was sole leader of the Labour party, had the Labour whip suspended within days of Keir Starmer’s election win last July. Reports suggest she was on the verge of expulsion after tweeting ‘We are all Palestine Action’ last month. She should never have been even considered as a possible Labour candidate, let alone selected, and it is entirely right that she is no longer involved in the party.
I am assuming she will now demand that her constituents be allowed to set up a recall petition to remove her as an MP, having voted in 2020 that MPs who voluntarily change their party affiliation should be subject to such a petition. She wouldn’t want to be accused of hypocrisy, I’m sure.
The new party does not yet have a name. One wag has suggested that with its two leaders (two, one? who knows? who cares?) both so obsessed with Israel it might be the New Anti-Zionist Independent party. I will let you work that one out…
Meanwhile, it’s good to see the new party start as it will surely go on. Speaking to Robert Peston this week, Corbyn suggested that there would soon be a new group which brought together the many disparate factions which have spun off from Labour after he led the party to its worst result since the 1930s. ‘That grouping [of Independents] will come together, there will be an alternative,’ he said.
In this context, one must turn as always to the most insightful analysis of the left ever penned: Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Is this new party the Judean People’s Front, or is it the People’s Front of Judea? Already George Galloway, who has been a one-man hard left party splitter since being expelled from Labour, is angry. He is, apparently, leader of the Workers Party. Because, yes, there are even more hard left splinter parties as there are former Labour MPs leading them. And the upstart splitters have behaved very badly. Very, very badly.
‘There has been no contact with us about this,’ he fumes on social media. ‘We can’t join it due to significant differences on the issues of…’ blah, blah, blah. Splitters gonna split and the rest of us gonna grab our beer and popcorn and enjoy the spectacle.
But what, you ask, of John McDonnell? The former shadow chancellor, the Mikhail Suslov of the tankies, is the only one of this rabble with a functioning brain. He has presumably realised that even being a Labour member who has had the whip suspended is more worthwhile than throwing in his lot with the Judean People’s Front (look, it’s all relative). He has said he is ‘dreadfully sorry to lose Zarah from the Labour Party.’
None of those involved in the new party, whether they eventually include Corbyn or not, ever had any business in a mainstream left of centre party, so Labour is better off without them. As for their relevance: there is clearly a space for opposition to Labour from the left. The problem is that in election after election voters have made clear that space is small and of almost no psephological importance. Where Labour is vulnerable – and has already lost seats in 2024 – is to sectarian Muslim voting. That is where the real story is.
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