After months of discussion, it has finally been confirmed that Jeremy Corbyn is starting a new left-wing party. The news was broken last night by another MP: Zarah Sultana, a longtime admirer of Corbyn. Elected as a Labour MP in 2019, she lost the whip last July for voting to lift the two-child-benefit cap. This week, she was reprimanded in the House for declaring ‘We are all Palestine Action’ – which will shortly be proscribed as a terrorist organisation, following the Brize Norton attack.
With readmission to Labour ‘clearly impossible’, in the words of government aide, Sultana decided that now was the time to announce her next steps. In a message on X, Sultana said she had resigned as a Labour member after 14 years, adding: ‘Jeremy and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.’ The statement immediately received a chorus of delight from socialists on the platform. There was just one problem: the statement had not been approved in advance by others in the new party.
The former Leader of the Opposition has been carefully considering his next steps since he himself lost the Labour whip back in October 2020. Thanks to a huge outpouring of both national and local support, he retained his Islington North constituency last year. Yet since then, he has frustrated even close allies by his seeming unwillingness to commit to a different left-wing party. Some of his old Momentum backers have now left Labour to join the Greens. Others saw potential in a formal vehicle with the Gaza independents, ahead of the London and Birmingham elections next May.
Talks had finally crystallised into a nascent plan to form a new party, with Corbyn and Sultana among its most prominent members But her sudden statement last night has taken many of those involved completely by surprise. She has, in the words of one, ‘completely jumped the gun – no ideas had been properly decided.’ It has plunged the new party into a crisis even before its creation. Corbyn is expected to make a public comment in the coming days – but one can imagine that he and others are not best pleased with Sultana for forcing the launch before others were fully prepared.
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