Millions of UK voters are desperate for radical change. For their sake, we must hope Your Party’s hotheads give way to calm strategists
The left traditionally faces four formidable enemies: wealthy interests, the political elite, the mainstream media and itself. Over the past few days, the latter has stormed back with a vengeance.
When the independent MP and former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and the former Labour MP Zarah Sultana announced the birth of a new leftwing party, the surge of interest shocked even its founders. More than 750,000 people signed up in support of an unchristened, nonexistent party. Polling suggested nearly a third of Britons would vote for an alliance with the Greens; among under-35s, support rose to 52%. That media outlets spent more time mocking its placeholder name, Your Party, than seeking to understand this phenomenon tells its own story. In today’s Britain, “legitimate concerns” means kicking out migrants, not taxing elites to rebuild crumbling services.
Alas, a deeply unattractive public row in recent days appeared to detonate the whole project. Sultana seeks the co-leadership of a new party, and her camp felt she was being frozen out by Corbyn’s advisers and the four independent MPs who won on a platform opposing Israel’s genocide and tackling economic misery at home. Corbyn’s team believe that he remains the politician most able to galvanise the grassroots. The independents feel that, having crushed the Labour machine when Keir Starmer was securing a landslide, they represent a mass base that must be respected and given a major role.
