After a long and fraught gestation period, the new left-wing party in British politics has been created, by former Labour MP's Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Initially, labelled “Your Party” they are asking supporters for suggestions for names, so that it can be decided when it holds a conference later this year. No doubt some wag will have proffered the suggestion of “Fruit and Nut” party! However, the fact that its reported to already have signed up more than 600,000 supporters, increasing by around 500 per minute, that 18% of the electorate say that they would possibly support a Left party led by Corbyn, and that, even before it has even got off the ground, it is standing level in the polls with Starmer's Blue Labour Party, shows this is no joke. As Reform has shown in replacing The Tories, the electoral system means that, as Your Party draws its potential vote from Labour (plus Greens and Liberals), a collapse in Labour's vote is quite possible, as the election increasingly becomes one fought out between the reactionaries of Reform, and the progressive alternative offered by Your Party.
When Corbyn got on the ballot to stand for Labour Leader, in 2015, a similar skyrocketing in Labour membership took place. It went from around 200,000, many of whom were inactive, to over 600,000, most of the new recruits being young people, though a substantial number of older, former members rejoined, now seeing some prospect of an end to the days of bland, Blair-Right, conservative social-democracy. Under Corbyn, Labour became the largest political party in Europe, by some way, and with such a large membership, overnight, its funding problems, also, disappeared, filling the coffers, and ending the need to appeal to either the unions, or rich patrons via the prawn cocktail circuit. The surge in membership was matched by a surge in electoral support, despite the efforts of the Tory media, and of the right-wing inside the party itself, which did all it could to undermine Labour's position, including attempts to launch two parliamentary coups against him, spearheaded by members of Labour Friends of Zionism.
Corbyn's Labour, in the 2017 General Election, saw the biggest increase in its vote, since 1945. Compared to 2015, Corbyn's Labour saw its vote rise by more than 3 million votes, a rise of nearly 40%. It rose by 50% compared to Labour's vote in 2010. That was despite the attempted parliamentary coup, and no confidence vote by the PLP, and perpetual sniping, the undermining of the functioning of the party machine, as the right-wing retained control of the bureaucracy, as well as all of the increasing fuelling of media stories about intimidation, as those right-wing MP's simply faced the censure by their own party members in the constituencies. The right of the party who had banked on a poor performance, in 2017, as the springboard for another assault on Corbyn, could hardly contain their disappointment, when all their efforts to undermine Labour turned out in vain, and Corbyn, almost snatched victory, obtaining 40% of the poll, just behind the 42% obtained by Theresa May, whose parliamentary majority disappeared.
They had to wait until 2019, when Corbyn's Labour lost to Boris Johnson's Tories, amidst a full scale shit storm whipped up on the basis of largely baseless accusations of widespread anti-Semitism in the party. In fact, those charges were shown to be largely false, and malicious, in subsequent investigations. That some of those involved in promoting them have gone on to show their true colours as defenders of war criminals and as genocide deniers, is exemplified by the former Chair of Labour Friends of Zionism, David Mencer, who claimed he was leaving Britain for Israel out of fear of a future Corbyn Labour government, and who now daily lies and denies an actual genocide is taking place against Palestinians, as the media spokesman of the Zionist regime.
But, the response of Corbyn, and of his Stalinist advisors, at that time, facilitated the strategy of the Labour Right, and their alliance with the Zionists. Time after time, Corbyn and his supporters, who had mobilised thousands of members via Momentum, refused to tackle the challenge presented by the Right. A priority was to have democratised the party, but that was hardly something the Stalinists that increasingly dominated Corbyn's office are renowned for. On the contrary, Stalinism always operates bureaucratically, seeking behind the scenes deals and alliances. Moreover, the Stalinists must have had huge concerns over the fact that the 400,000 new members, drawn in were largely to their Left, and one reason they were drawn in was their opposition to Brexit, a political trajectory not at all in keeping with the petty-bourgeois nationalist ideology of Stalinism, nor of Corbyn.
Whilst, the stepped up attempts to undermine Labour's 2019 election campaign, the ever more hyperbolic claims about anti-Semititism and so on, played a pivotal role in Labour's defeat in 2019, it was the inadequate politics of Corbynism, and of his Stalinist advisors that sealed it. In the Spring elections of 2019, even 60% of Labour members voted for other, anti-Brexit parties, as Corbyn swung Labour back towards his old, 1970's anti-Common Market positions. And, not only was Corbyn setting his face against the vast majority of the party membership, around 90% of whom opposed Brexit, on that front, but he was also failing to defend party members falsely accused of anti-Semitism, and who were being daily suspended or expelled by the party machine, still in the control of the Right.
Nevertheless, despite all of the jubilation at Labour's defeat by the Right of the party, in the 2019 General Election, Corbyn still did better than did Stamer's Blue Labour in 2024, which saw its vote fall below that of Corbyn's Labour by half a million votes. Compared to 2017, Starmer's Blue Labour saw its vote fall by 3 million votes, and obtained only 34% of the poll, compared to the 40% obtained by Corbyn's Labour in 2017. Since then, as Blue Labour has attacked workers, the elderly, the young, the sick and disabled, and spent two years repaying its debt to the Zionists for their aid in removing Corbyn, its support has cratered even further.
The experience of Corbyn's Labour shows precisely the weakness of this new party. The Labour Party has never been, in reality, just a single party. It is, basically, a popular front. It is a coalition under a big tent, of different classes and their political interests, just as the Liberal Party of the 19th century, was a party, established to represent what was seen as the aligned (social-democratic) interests of the industrial capitalists, and industrial working-class, against the interests of the old landed aristocracy, and their allies within the commercial bourgeoisie and financial oligarchy. The Labour Party was created by the unions, when the working-class became by far the largest component of that class alliance, but did so, whilst still retaining the old social-democratic ideology of the ultimate symbiotic relation between the interests of capital and labour that simply had to be negotiated, though always within the context of the ultimate primacy of the needs of capital and capital accumulation.
The objection of Marxists to the creation of some new mass workers party has always been that these proposals, put forward by sections of the Left, from time to time, have sought to simply replicate all of those deficiencies of the Labour Party itself. In other words, to create a Labour Party Mark II. Just as with all of the other Popular Fronts, created by sections of the Left, over the last 100 years, they have sought to privilege size and scope of organisation over, politics and programme. In order to draw in large numbers, the clarity of ideas, based on class interest has been watered down to the lowest common denominator, so as not to frighten the horses, not to scare off all of the radical vicars, much beloved by the Stalinists and Liberals.
In his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx faced a similar problem. In 1848, as Engels described in his letters to various US socialists, he and Marx had joined the German Democrats, an openly bourgeois party. Why? Because, in the context of the revolutions of 1848, the tiny forces of socialism had to do what they could to win the ear of the workers, who were, themselves mobilising in support of the bourgeois revolution. But, Marx and Engels made clear that, in doing so, they saw themselves both as part of that movement, and simultaneously as having their own separate stream within it.
”When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it.”
He goes on to describe how, as such a “wing”, they advanced their own ideas and programme, and without doing so, what would be the purpose of “getting the ear” of the workers? Its on that basis that Marxists always justified their involvement in the Labour Party, or other such social-democratic parties, in conditions where there were no mass communist parties. Where a mass Marxist party does exist, the question does not arise. In those conditions, as Trotsky and the Communist International set out, in the Theses on The United Front, a mass communist party can simply propose to other workers the formation of a workers united front in action, for example, to fight the fascists, on the streets, and so on, and, in the process, as the leaders of those other workers parties shrink from any such joint action, so the workers still attached to those parties are drawn away from them. But, Trotsky, and the CI, considered that such conditions would require the communists to have around 40% of the working class already behind them. We are far from such conditions.
At the time of the joint congress of the Lassalleans and Eisenachers at Gotha, the German working-class was growing rapidly, though still not the largest class. Marx considered that the formation of a single large workers party in such conditions, was an important step forward, a point reiterated by Engels in his letters to US socialists. But, as can be seen in his Critique of The Gotha Programme, Marx did not consider that this justified the Eisenachers abandoning their programme. That didn't mean that Marx and Engels opposed the formation of the new party, but that they believed that, it would have been better to have agreed to not have a jointly agreed programme, than to have one that was a step backward.
As Marxists, we clearly have no interest in agreeing to a programme that is inadequate to the needs of the working-class, and of driving the class struggle forward. Similarly, there is no point in us creating yet another party, with such an inadequate ideological basis, simply in order to broaden its appeal to other class forces, and their political representatives, i.e. popular frontism. We have no interest in creating a Labour Party Mk. II. But, given the tiny forces of Marxism, at the present time, that is clearly a different question to what our attitude should be to any party that is created by others. We still have the question of tactics of how best to get the ear of workers, and, in particular, the most advanced sections of workers.
At the present time, if “Your Party” is likely to represent simply the creation of a Labour Party Mark II, Starmer's Blue Labour has turned the Labour Party Mark I, into a Labour Party Mark -I. In other words, not even into the Liberal Party out of which the Labour Party emerged, but a step back beyond that, a regression to the kind of "Young England" nationalism of Disraeli's Tories of the 19th century, and what Marx and Engels termed "Reactionary Socialism". On the one hand, “Your Party” could act as the kind of external whip on the Labour Party that UKIP/Brexit Party represented in relation to the Tories. But, that external whip on the Tories carried on for a quarter of a century, before the Conservative Party eventually fractured, into its bourgeois and petty-bourgeois wings, with the latter metamorphosing into Reform, and the former left as a rump that must be swallowed by the Liberals, in short order.
If the figures for those signing up to “Your Party” are correct, then that is something qualitatively different, even than the role of UKIP etc. Even if the claim of half a million members is wildly exaggerated, and the real figure is half that, it would mean that, in every constituency across Britain, there would be around 500 members, or about one in a hundred voters would be members. Combined with the polling data showing the party already level with Blue Labour, the significance of that membership base, then, becomes obvious. At least one person, in every street in Britain, would, on average, be a member of Your Party, which not only means no shortage of local candidates in local and other elections, but candidates known by and recognised by their neighbours. Given that, as with Corbyn's Labour, most of these members will be young, enthusiastic and active, compared to the old, moribund membership, not only of Blue Labour, Liberals and Conservatives, but also Reform, this is a significant development.
In a couple of months, the Labour Party holds its annual conference. What the Labour Party still has, is the links to the trades unions that created it, as well as to the cooperative movement. That organic link still enables the Labour Party to be saved from Blue Labour. The writing is on the wall with the warnings from UNITE to Starmer and Rayner. Blue Labour do not dare even publish their current membership figures which have collapsed, not least from the thousands of members expelled for daring challenge the leadership and its support for the genocide committed by the Zionist state. If the unions fail to call a halt to the Blue Labour project, in the Autumn, the writing appears to be on the wall.
The unions created Labour at the start of the last century, for one reason, because it was easier to do so than to try to change the Liberal Party itself, which remained in the control of the industrial bourgeoisie. The same may be true, today, in relation to Labour and Your Party. If the unions and individual party members do not kick out Starmer and put an end to the Blue Labour regime in the Autumn, members and voters will flock to Your Party. Given the history of Corbyn's Labour, we have to be concerned, as Marxists, as to how that pans out for them. For one thing, however, they will not have to deal with all of the crap and obstacles thrown at them by the Labour Right, which, of itself, liberates them to engage in positive action.
The formation of the party also facilitates the drawing together of all of the various Left sects, many of which voluntarily excluded themselves from the Labour Party on the basis of supposedly protecting their ideological purity. Whether they seize the opportunity will be up to them. As Engels put it, writing to US socialists,
"….It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug tererden" [to learn by one's own mistakes]. And for a whole large class, there is no other road, especially for a nation so eminently practical as the Americans. The great thing is to get the working class to move as a class; that once obtained, they will soon find the right direction, and all who resist, H.G. or Powderly, will be left out in the cold with small sects of their own.”
(ibid)
It seems that Marxists will have to relate to Your Party, at the same time as seeking to utilise its external whip on Labour, to drive out Blue Labour. The relation for now can only be algebraic until such time as history shows which of these parties will prevail as the workers party. In both cases, Marxists continue to stand alongside the workers as they travel this road, and we continue to advance our own independent programme, based on the class struggle, and interests of the working-class, by addressing the property question.
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