New political parties often have the faint air of the ridiculous. Who remembers Change UK? Chuka Umunna and Anna Soubry’s little band of pro-EU MPs walked out of Labour and the Conservatives to set up a new party intended to represent anti-Corbyn, anti-Brexit social democrats — a demographic which, as it transpired, amounted to about five people and a dog.
Similarly, it is easy to write off Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s political party. For one thing, most of us remember Corbyn’s embarrassing electoral defeat in 2019. For another, well — it doesn’t even have a name (I hear that “Change UK” is available).
Yet reducing “Your Party”, as it is provisionally known, to a punchline would be a mistake. Corbyn upended British politics once and he has the power to do it again.
Since Corbyn’s 2019 loss, Keir Starmer, who was presented as the sensible and competent left-wing alternative, has won an election but cratered in the polls. He has in fact been the most unpopular PM in four decades. For a lot of left-wing voters, Corbyn’s appeal will have been very much refreshed.
Gaza will play a significant role here. Emotion on the radical left has very much shifted from climate change to Palestine — with Greta Thunberg, for example, posting non-stop about Gaza and not the climate. Israel is unprecedentedly unpopular as the brutal conflict grinds on. Starmer’s refusal to take a strong line against Israel has made him a hate figure for a lot of leftists. Owen Jones, for example, has written that he “facilitated the mass starvation of an entire people”.
Tony Blair might have invaded Iraq and still won in 2005 but Starmer is governing — or trying to govern — a different Britain. Ethnic minority voters who carried independent Muslim MPs to power in 2024 focused, as Sam Bidwell wrote, “more on Palestine than on potholes”. The threat of Nigel Farage, still less Kemi Badenoch, is not going to force them to hold their noses and vote for Labour. They think they are pretty much all the same.
The case of Jean-Luc Mélenchon is instructive here. The radical leftist has become a potential kingmaker in French politics with his third-worldism flavoured anti-elitism attracting youthful progressives and disaffected ethnic minority voters (demographics that the author is aware will intersect). Like Corbyn, he has faced allegations of enabling anti-Semitism — but they do not seem to have done a lot of damage.
Corbyn also has his image. To be clear, he is by no means the beloved national treasure that his 2017-era fans hoped he would become. He is a lot less popular, for example, than Nigel Farage (though he is more popular than Kemi Badenoch). But millions of people still see him as a man of principle and personal decency. Say what you like about his politics — and this author is fully aware of his disgraceful associations when it comes to the Iranian state, Hamas and Hezbollah, Irish republicanism and Seamus Milne — but he seems, frankly, like a nicer chap than Keir Starmer, who claimed to be his friend before stabbing him in the back. His firm anti-establishment credentials mean that even Reform voters prefer him to the PM.
Zarah Sultana MP brings a youthful edge to “Your Party”, with her popularity on TikTok demonstrating at least the potential for mass appeal. That said, if Corbyn does not become the leader of the party, and Ms Sultana “co-leads” the party with him, I suspect that she will not have the same support. She does not have anything like the same record and her habit of expostulating about, say, irreverent Observer cartoons make her more suited for niche social media stardom than broad popularity. That it is so easy to imagine her admirers fuming about supposed ageist and sexist connotations here only makes that more true.
Another source of tension will be the conflict between the social progressivism of many youthful leftists and the social conservatism of many Muslim voters. Independent Muslim MP Adnan Hussain caused outrage among secular leftists who were shocked that a Muslim MP of Pakistani descent might express some sympathy for social conservatives. Still, some Muslim voters are themselves social progressives, like Ms Sultana, while many more are bound to prioritise their anger over Palestine rather than, say, their issues with sex ed in schools.
With Jeremy Corbyn at the helm of the party, then, “Your Party” could be a serious force to be reckoned with
While Reform only have the Conservatives as rivals, “Your Party” have the Greens as well as Labour. The Greens have been doing fairly well in recent times — but I suspect a former hypnotherapist with the surname of an infamous fugitive from justice might struggle to compete with Britain’s most famous socialist.
With Jeremy Corbyn at the helm of the party, then, “Your Party” could be a serious force to be reckoned with. I doubt that it would actually win elections. But it could do real damage to Keir Starmer — and, as much as I do not support most of its political ambitions, there would be undeniable poetic justice there.
