700,000 sign up to ‘your party’ call: What next in the fight for a workers’ party?
Editorial of the Socialist issue 1332
In one week more than 700,000 people have signed up to the yourparty.uk website to support Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s initiative to build a new left party. The party doesn’t yet exist, and so there is not yet a membership fee. Nonetheless this figure shows huge enthusiasm for the party. It tops the highest membership in Labour’s history: achieved when Jeremy Corbyn led it. It has reached as many as the current membership of Labour, Tories, Liberals and Reform combined.
A year ago, in the immediate aftermath of the 2024 general election, the Socialist Party pointed out the extremely shallow base of support for Starmer’s Labour, elected by just 9.7 million voters, 20.1% of the electorate, the lowest share for any incoming government since the first ever election fought under universal (male) suffrage in 1918. We drew a contrast with the votes Labour received when Corbyn was leader, pointing particularly to the 12.88 million his anti-austerity manifesto received in 2017.
Unsurprisingly, these basic facts were not being reported in the establishment media at the time because, as we explained, “the capitalist class wants to boost the authority of the incoming Labour government hoping that, despite its very shallow social base, it will still be able to implement a programme in the interests of the elites. They are also desperate to cement the lie that Corbyn’s policies were unpopular. Despite their best efforts, however, this government will be rocked by mass working-class struggles against it, which will also inexorably find a political expression.” (Socialism Today July 2024)
Just 12 months later and the potential power of that political expression has become palpable. Even just the promise of a new party has lifted the confidence of all those suffering pay restraint, cuts to public services and benefits, and watching with horror the unimaginable misery being suffered by Palestinians in Gaza at the hands of the Israeli state. While our chins have been lifted, those of the capitalist class and their political representatives have dipped. Polls even before a party was announced showed that 18% of people would consider voting for a party led by Corbyn, and that it would come first among young people.
Labour loyalists are desperately beating the drum of ‘vote for us or get Reform’, but it is not working. Too many people can see that, if the workers’ movement supports this Labour government for the rich it will be a gift to Reform, who will be able to falsely pose as the representatives of the ‘little people’. If, on the other hand, a mass workers’ party is built with a fighting, anti-austerity programme, it would cut across Reform. One recent Merlin Strategy poll gave an indication of how – despite all of the slanders of the capitalist press – Reform voters still perceive Corbyn as representing something different to the establishment politicians. It found 67% of them think he is for working people, 64% believe he is honest and principled.
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Article continues at https://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/141634/04-08-2025/700000-sign-up-to-your-party-call-what-next-in-the-fight-for-a-workers-party
Jeremy Corbyn (second left) and Zarah Sultana, MP for Coventry South (second right) on the picket line outside London Euston train station, August 18, 2022
