It is very risky you know, you are playing with fire; if your new party gets a decent vote you will split the left and let Farage and the racist far right into power. What about defending migrants then?
I am with you on the policies of your new party, I don’t like Starmer either but we have to be realistic, whether you like it or not you are opening the road to Farage and the racists.
Already I have heard these arguments raised when we have been discussing the formation of the new left party that Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn are launching. The point about splitting the vote is made not just by opponents of the new party but by some people broadly sympathetic to its likely policies.
How should socialists supporting the new party respond?
Who are the splitters
You could argue reasonably that Corbyn had done all he can to stay in the Labour family. He has been very reluctant to make the break. It even took Zarah Sultana’s intervention to get him to announce the need for a new party. The political current that has split the Labour party has been the Starmer leadership. From the moment he won the leadership on his ten lying pledges of continuing Corbynism he has moved aggressively to remove the left from any influence inside the Labour party.
The apparatus has carried out the witchhunt vigorously at all levels of the party. Political discussion on the witchhunt or issues like Gaza or government attacks on welfare spending has been effectively banned. Meetings have been reduced and gutted of meaningful politics. Any candidates from the left have been eliminated from councillor or MP selection processes. MPs who challenge government policy have lost the whip. Diane Abbott has been suspended from the party. When people like Peter Mandelson – who is still influential – says he wants the left buried in a sealed tomb then it is no surprise that it is looking for a new home.
- A contradictory Labour position
From the moment Your Party was launched leading Labour politicians have:
- ridiculed it – making the tired old Monty Python references to the Popular Front of Judea or joking about the fact that it wants its members to decide on a name
- smeared it – Jeremy is a bloke with a big ego (Reeves)
- sneered at it – it will split within a year or so
Then the public polls and their internal ones began to show that the new left party might get between 6 and 15% of the vote and that it would take at least 5% of Labour votes. It also could not fail to notice that around 750,000 people have signed up online. So now the tone changes, Neil Kinnock is rolled to say that the new party is opening the way to Farage. Now it looks like a serious threat Starmer’s team are looking at ways to look less reactionary on Palestine or taxation.
- Labour is helping Farage grow support, not the Left
If you look at Starmer’s official twitter feed, Labour’s press releases and social media posts are dominated by how it is dealing with the ‘illegal’ migrant threat. It is hard to differentiate this obsession with immigration from Reform’s. Ministers say they understand why people are standing outside asylum hotels and shouting send them home. The narrative about stopping the boats and smashing the gangs overlaps completely with Reform’s. The problem of small boats is caused by the lack of safe and legal routes. Asylum hotels are not needed if claims were processed more quickly and local authorities were given the funds and responsibility to deal with it.
If asylum seekers could work you also would not need the hotels. Despite mirroring Reform’s campaign, Labour is still trailing Farage in the polls and losing council by-elections. Polls show Corbyn is more popular than Starmer among Reform voters. A new energised left party could certainly help stop the rise of Reform more effectively than Starmer’s Labour.
- Labour is hiding behind an undemocatic first past the post (FPTP)system
Those Labour politicians accusing the new party of splitting the progressive vote could solve the problem easily by introducing a more democratic proportional representation system. Labour conference has overwhelmingly supported this. Public opinion is now increasingly in favour, and Labour has the votes in parliament to get it through. Then each party would be fairly represented and you would not have to choose one party you don’t particularly agree with to keep out a greater evil.
It is not the fault of the new left party (or of the Greens for that matter) that we have this ridiculously unfair electoral system. It means challenging established parties is extremely difficult. But Labour had to do that to establish itself in the early 20th century. Now it appears it denies the right of people to do it now.
- Even with FPTP we cannot predict a Farage victory
It is very early days to suggest a Farage victory is nailed on. A lot depends on whether the Tory party continues to decline and whether or not the new left party will effectively take votes from Reform. It is even possible that we could have a hung parliament where Labour would have to deal with the ‘splitters’ to establish a government. To say we cannot try and build a new political party because of the risk – not the probability – of a Farage victory, is not rational and reasonable.
The Greens have shown that even under FPTP that they have solid electoral support. They are eating into Labour support and have every right to. Given that they have policies that the old Labour left championed it is not surprising they are winning in Labour areas. Are they splitting the vote too? There is an unseemly arrogance about Labour politicians who are attacking working class living standards and democratic rights claiming to be the only representatives of progressive or labour movement values in this country.
- An electoral alliance between Greens and a new left party could win a significant number of seats so talk of splits becomes meaningless
How many votes or seats do you have to win before you stop being a splitter? If Labour does not recover from its slump in the polls and there was a pact between the Greens and the new left party – something that is possible if Zack Palanski wins the Green leadership – then the actual difference in votes between Labour and the Red/Green alliance might not be so much. Certainly it would not justify and accusations of small minority split.
- A new left party has every right to exist and it is needed
Accusing a new party of splitting the vote means you are denying a voice for Palestine, for disabled people, for workers who want to defend their living standards, for migrants, for black people resisting racism, for women and LBGTQIA+ people who want to defend their rights and for everyone who wants to maintain democratic freedoms.
We are the majority, it is Starmer’s Labour who has split from us.
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Sorry: this is evasive rubbish that evades the very serious point posed at the top of the post: “whether you like it or not you are opening the road to Farage and the racists.”
Yes, it’s true that this is largely Starmer’s fault, but that doesn’t change the reality of the situation.
Sultana’s Third Perios attitude to Labour (in effect something like “they’re as bad of not worse than the Tories and Reform and after them we’ll gain power”) is completely irresonsible an in practice rules out any sort of anti-Reform / anti-Tory electoral united front with individual Labour candidates and activists.
Btw: on another point, despite the undoubted crackdown on internal democracy under Starmer, it is simply not the case that “Political discussion on the witchhunt or issues like Gaza or government attacks on welfare spending has been effectively banned. Meetings have been reduced and gutted of meaningful politics. Any candidates from the left have been eliminated from councillor or MP selection processes”: this may be true in some CLPs but in general is massive hyperbole and cancedes total victory in advance to the Labour right.
Dave Kellaway’s commentary effectively debunks the assertion that Your Party could or would lead to a Farage-led government. Those who ridicule or attack the Corbyn-Sultana project do not offer a convincing alternative. Their message is to acquiesce to a slightly less than evil brand of politics that is not only uninspiring but defeatist. We must not resign ourselves to this political dead end.
We simply cannot afford to concede defeat before the fight has even begun. I haven’t felt this optimistic about the future for many years.
Jim does not show evidence of democratic life Inthe wardsand exe,s.
It existed before the last election but Crossman warning and Foots demand is oblivious after last years peculiar victory.
I look forward to joining the new party.
We need positive, progressive ideas.
Reform are eminently beatable. They are already showing themselves to be incompetent, like the BNP before them, in local government.
A decent local campaign can beat Farage in Clacton. His track record to his constituents will be a big turn off.
Two things:
1) With regard to elections, Corbyn is not in favour of an alkiance with the Greens and nor am I. The manifesto would have to be silent on NATO, most nationalisations probably have a more equivocal position on immigration. More productive would be mutual agreement to stand down in certain seats.
2). What this article leaves out is that for 3 1/2 years leading up to the election, we will hopefully have a mass party of the left actively campaigning in the streets against austerity and racism and Reform’s reactionary social policies. Both Corbyn and Sultana have said as much and there seems to be a strong desire for such activism. Who is to say what Reform will look like then? In contrast we do know what they would look like in 2029 if the new party did not exist – or if it fails…
Scottish elections are fought on the basis of semi-PR systems. The Holyrood system in May 2026, however, does raise some important tactical issues: 73 seats are awarded based on the distorted first past the post constituencies, same as Westminster (though with 16/17 year olds and all nationalities included in the electorate, and no Voter ID required), the SNP are likely to be the victor in most of these; however, in the 56 list seats, 7 seats for each of 8 regions, seats will be distributed differently – you can get elected with as little as 6% of the vote, however there will be over 20 parties competing, SNP list voters don’t count if they get the lion’s share of constituencies, but there will be umpteen left parties, including the strongly pro-independence and serious contenders from the Scottish Green Party and also the Scottish Socialist Party, both of whom have economic/social policies similar/compatible with Corbyn/Sultana.
However the key differentiator will be attitude towards a second independence referendum (and a better PR system). If the Corbyn/Sultana Party refuses to take a position on independence (or PR) it will struggle to gain credibility with the 50% of the electorate who are pro-independence voters.
In Corbyn’s appearance in Scotland last week, he said a second referendum was “fine by me”. That’s not good enough! What would ‘Corbyn/Sultana’ MSPs, if elected on the regional lists, vote for when the vote on a second independence referendum comes before the Scottish Parliament after the election when the SNP and Greens inevitably put a motion?
Failure to take a position will inevitably put them in the same camp as the UK Labour/Tory/Reform UK/LibDem MSPs: “nae referendum – not now, not ever”. And it’s not just a question for Scotland – what will the 5 Westminster MPs from England supporting Corbyn/Sultana vote for if the Scottish Parliament does vote by a majority to ask for Westminster to approve a second referendum? If they refuse to take a position as a whole, why should supporters of Scottish independence vote for their party for Holyrood?
The SWP and other far left groups are pushing for candidates in the Holyrood election regardless as to what the position of the Corbyn/Sultana party on independence or self-determination is, or whether it has one. This would be disastrous.
Of course the other option is to skip the Holyrood elections entirely, leave it to the Scottish Green Party and SSP for the regional lists, and for whatever emerges as the Corbyn/Sultana party to prioritise instead standing in the STV elections for Scottish Councils in May 2027. Unlike England there are no significant defections from Councillors likely to form a base for the Corbyn-Sultana party – if last week is anything to go by, what dissident Labour councillors there are in Scotland are more likely to join the pro-union Reform UK! But under STV there is no ‘splitting’ of votes – left parties can stand and left wing voters can just choose which order they vote for left wing parties – based on the degree their policies coincide with their own, including whether they support independence or not.
Cymru-Wales poses different challenges. May 2026 sees the Senedd elections moving to a pure list system with 6 seats per constituency (meaning you need around 14% in constituency to guarantee gettomg elected but in practice less, maybe 8-10%, depending on how many serious parties stand per constituency). But you can only vote for one party. For the Sultana/Corbyn Party, the challenge in some parts of Cymru will be how to avoid splitting the vote with Plaid Cymru, such that instead of eg both a Plaid and a Corbyn/Sultana rep being elected, the vote is split and insufficient, and we finish up instead with a clean sweep of Reform UK/UK Labour/Tory etc parties taking all 6 seats, probably giving Reform UK a better chance of becoming the ego-boosting largest party in the Senedd as a whole. Councils in Cymru can adopt STV, but require two thirds of current councillors to vote for it in time for May 2027 (abstentions/absences being counted as votes again) – no council has yet to get over that ridiculous threshold, so the council elections are likely to be as bad as England’s with Reform UK possibly taking many councils on a low polling share.
Left wing life north and west of the border is rather different to the arguments Dave makes about the electoral systems in England’s May 2026 council elections, and for the next Westminster election. And it’s time the English left realised that this will be a major issue.
Thank for these comments. Mike and others are right to point out the specific conditions of Scotland and Cymru. it is important that the new party does not take a unionist position and is open to he right of these nations to vote for self determination.
Sorry, but neither the main post nor any of the btl comments address the question posed in the headine: “Will the new left party let Farage in/”
In is a simple fact that a strong electoral showing by the new party may well help Reform to victory in 2026 and 2029.
Sultana’s answer, that YP will be the government after 2029 (maybe in coalition), is irresonsible, Third Period Stalinist stuff. Corbyn avoids the issue entirely, although his record suggests a more cautious approach.
But the Reform risk isn’t just a Labour attack line — it’s a real problem that we must discuss honestly.