Will a new UK left party back mass movements or bow to the establishment?

The pregnancy of the African elephant lasts nearly two years, but that is a blink of an eye compared with how long those in the UK wanting the birth of a new left party have had to wait.

For many months, closed meetings involving survivors of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership team and others have been formulating schemes, but no agreed plan has emerged.

Now, at least, the objective of forming a new party has been announced by Corbyn and the Coventry MP Zarah Sultana, although no programme, policies, name or structure accompanied that declaration.

Indeed, even the bare announcement of co-leadership was an agreement not easily reached.

Fortunately, the level of rank-and-file enthusiasm for such a project has, for the moment, carried it forward and covered for the lack of agreement among its core promoters. And, again for the moment, there seems to be no difficulty the left can get itself into that Prime Minister Keir Starmer is not capable of helping it to overcome.

His recent decision to remove the whip from four more dissident Labour MPs over their successful rebellion against welfare cuts reminded even the most jaundiced leftist of how necessary a new party has become.

The removal of the whip (for a second time) from Diane Abbott shows that Starmer’s hatred of the left is visceral to the point of self-harm.

International vision

Despite the difficulties attending its birth, the new party has been warmly welcomed by the wider world with over 600,000 signing up as supporters in a few days.

There will, of course, be many challenges, both political and organisational, ahead. But one of the most pressing will be establishing an international policy that resonates with millions of voters.

This might seem like one of the easier challenges. After all, four independent MPs and Corbyn himself were elected on a pro-Palestine ticket at the last election.

Israel’s ever-expanding war in the Middle East raises more issues than headline support for Palestinians

They succeeded because there is already widespread pro-Palestinian sentiment in the population – a view that has virtually no other expression in electoral politics.

But even so, Israel’s ever-expanding war in the Middle East raises more issues than headline support for Palestinians.

What of the attack on Iran – less popular to oppose than the Israeli offensive in Gaza? What stance will the new party take on the actions of the Houthis? Or of Hezbollah, a proscribed organisation under UK law?

These questions may be resolved relatively easily because Israel has so degraded its own international standing that opposition to its war-mongering is quickly becoming widespread, at least among that section of the electorate likely to vote for a new left party.

Beyond Gaza

Still, beyond Gaza lie more difficult issues, and they are just as central to the politics of this country.

A European-wide rearmament programme is now in full swing, intimately connected to a propaganda war against Russia and the actual war in Ukraine. There is no avoiding this. It is a defining feature of the Starmer government’s political profile and a major justification for its austerity measures.

A major “patriotic” propaganda campaign of “National Endeavour”, spelt out in the latest Strategic Defence Review, is aimed – in Starmer’s words – at putting the country in a condition of “war-fighting readiness”. Some military figures go further, insisting that “we” will be fighting a war with Russia within “five years”.

Opposing this war drive will mean flying directly in the face of the interests of the military-industrial complex, an entrenched media consensus, and the agreed tripartisan positions of Labour, the Conservatives and Reform.

Corbyn has been through this fire before. Few will forget his live TV grilling over nuclear weapons during the election campaign when he was Labour leader.

When he resisted that pressure, he drew on a lifetime of organised relationships with the anti-war movement, especially the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the Stop the War Coalition.

Sultana does not yet have those links to the same degree. It would be advantageous if they were strengthened. This would help re-establish connections broken when Starmer forced MPs to sever links with Stop the War over a statement opposing the Ukraine war.

Few of Corbyn’s advisers had a direct practical engagement with the anti-war movement, and that showed when they, not Corbyn himself, collapsed over the IHRA definition of antisemitism when it was adopted by the Labour NEC, then dominated by leftists.

It was the single most disastrous decision of the Corbyn leadership, with the most long-lasting consequences.

Servants or bosses?

Such episodes are not minor or incidental – they go to the heart of how any new party views its relationship with extra-parliamentary mobilisation.

There are two broad models: one is the traditional model, which claims to combine parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggle – a formulation much used by the late Tony Benn. The other puts extra-parliamentary struggle at the centre, viewing electoral politics as a tool to support, rather than lead, mass movements.

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The traditional model, however, is an algebraic equation in which much rests on the values one attributes to its terms. Even for Benn, the balance shifted from the time he held cabinet office to his later, much closer, identification with extra-parliamentary struggle. In that, he was virtually unique.

So the questions remain: is extra-parliamentary struggle simply a supporting chorus for electoral activity? Do would-be elected representatives view it as a means to an end, or the main motor of social change? Is the local council chamber and the chamber of the House of Commons “where the real power lies”? Or does decisive change come from the streets and workplaces? Are elected representatives the servants of the social movements or their bosses?

These are not merely theoretical concerns. A new left party in the UK will hardly be the first attempt to create an alternative to mainstream social democracy. Syriza in Greece, Rifondazione in Italy, Podemos in Spain, and Die Linke in Germany have all preceded it – and failed, often splitting over just these issues.

This should be a radical and robust socialist project, with the strengthening of extra-parliamentary struggle as its primary goal

Reinventing left social democracy, which then becomes right social democracy, only to disappoint and fail, is not an attractive option.

From the outset, this should be a more radical and robust socialist project, with the amplification and strengthening of extra-parliamentary struggle as its primary goal.

In any case, the depth of the current social and political crisis necessitates the most radical measures to effect even the most marginal improvements in working people’s lives.

International relations are not marginal to voters’ concerns. In the UK, the greatest mass movements of the last generation have been over international questions: the Iraq War and Palestine.

The upcoming political crisis will centre on rearmament, in all its global and domestic aspects. A new left party will be judged on whether it helps or hinders mass mobilisations for peace.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.