From left to right: La France Insoumise deputy leader Nathalie Oziol, Die Linke general secretary Janis Ehling, Workers’ Party of Belgium general secretary Peter Mertens, British-Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana
Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana discuss the formation of a new leftwing party
THE Tories and Labour’s grip on power must come to an end, people attending The World Transformed Festival 2025 in Manchester heard today.
A massive queue wrapped around the Niamos Radical Arts Centre in Manchester’s Moss Side in the afternoon as people waited eagerly to join a panel discussion with former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and independent MP Zarah Sultana focused on the formation of their new political party.
“For too long, our politics has been trapped in a cycle: the same two parties, the same tired promises, the same broken failures; a nightmare that keeps us stuck divided and ignored,” began prominent British-Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad.
“The truth is that the two-party system has failed us all,” she said. “Everything that these two parties touch is corrupted. And that is why we have to break this duopoly and we will.”
Ms Sultana began a passionate speech by first addressing the new party’s rocky start. “Obviously, you’ve all seen what’s happened over the past few weeks,” she said. “But I’m here to tell you, the show is back on the road.”
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.UK Conservative Party leader Kemi ‘not a genocide’ Badenoch explains her reality that the Earth is flat, the Moon is made of cheese and that she was born from
Unicorn horn dust
Since being elected to the Green Party leadership, Zack Polanski has impressed people who want a left-wing alternative to Labour. Most recently, his response to a supposed “jibe” has gone down particularly well:
Polanski has been making an effort to speak to anyone who’ll speak to him (including the Canary).
Recently, Polanski appeared on Pod Save the UK with hosts Nish Kumar and Coco Khan. In the clip in question, Khan notes that Zarah Sultana said she’s in a ‘socialist party’ when asked what the difference between Your Party and the Green Party is. As Sultana and Polanski clearly get along well, we’re sure she wasn’t gunning for the man, and Polanski didn’t come out fighting. Offering a thoughtful response, he said:
Do we shout that we’re a socialist party regularly? No, because I think most people don’t know what that means, and you switch people off. So instead, I talk about lowering bills, about the public ownership of public services, and taxes on multimillionaires and billionaires. These are all socialist policies, and they’re all embedded and deep within the Green Party.
Keir Starmer says that the Labour Party under his leadership all feel a small part of Scunthorpe.Keir Starmer explains that he feels no shame or guilt benefitting personally from gifts from the rich and powerful while insisting on policies of severe austerity causing suffering and death.
The leader of the Greens, Zack Polanski, expressed willingness to potentially cooperate with the party Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are setting up. Photograph: James Manning/PA
Almost 1,400 people sign up in 24 hours to increase party membership by 10% since Zack Polanski’s leadership win this month
The Green party’s membership has jumped by more than 1,000 people in a day after a public split between Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana cast doubt on the viability of the pair’s new leftwing party.
Almost 1,400 people signed up to the Greens in the 24 hours since the bitter disagreement emerged, in which Corbyn and his allies referred Sultana to the information watchdog after claims that she started collecting membership subscriptions without authority.
The leap has helped push the Greens in England and Wales above 75,000 members, a more than 10% increase on the number of members when Zack Polanski won the contest to be their leader at the start of the month, the party said.
After his victory Polanski expressed willingness to potentially cooperate with the party being set up by Corbyn, the former Labour leader, and Sultana, who was elected as a Labour MP but now sits as an independent.
However, the Green leader has said it is impossible to know if and how that might happen given the lack of any party structure or policies. He added that the Greens already offer a political home for left-leaning voters disillusioned with Labour.
Diane Abbott is the the longest-serving female MP but lost the Labour whip in 2023 and again in July this year for her comments on racism. Photograph: Victoria Jones/PA Archive
Exclusive: Contenders teed up for future contest, which MP says seems ‘to pre-empt results of investigation’
Moves to find a successor to Diane Abbott in the parliamentary seat she has represented since 1987 are under way, prompting concern that her fate has been decided before an investigation into her latest suspension has concluded.
Figures on Labour’s national executive committee (NEC) have spoken to potential contenders, teeing them up for a future contest in her constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington, and giving them informal advice on how to prepare, according to a party source.
Abbott was suspended from the party in July for repeating that Jewish people do not experience racism in the same way as Black people[*1], a statement that had earned her a previous suspension in April 2023.
Labour said there would be no discussion of potential successor as an investigation was ongoing. The party said there had been no discussions about alternative candidates at any NEC meetings and no proposals put to NEC members about a selection process.
Abbott said: “It does seem to be rather pre-empting the results of the investigation.”
*1 I suggest that it shouldn’t be reduced to “Jewish people do not experience racism in the same way as Black people.” While that is how it’s perceived and dealt with by the Zionist Labour party, it’s more about there being different forms and consequent experiences of racism and not addressing Jewish people specifically.
“Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know.
“I just think that it’s silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism. I don’t know why people would say that.”
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.
From left to right: La France Insoumise deputy leader Nathalie Oziol, Die Linke general secretary Janis Ehling, Workers’ Party of Belgium general secretary Peter Mertens, British-Palestinian activist Leanne Mohamad, Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana
