Zarah Sultana has resigned from the UK’s Labour Party after 14 years to lead a new party with former Labour leader and independent MP Jeremy Corbyn.
“Today, after 14 years, I’m resigning from the Labour Party,” she said in a statement on Thursday evening local time.
“Jeremy Corbyn and I will co-lead the founding of a new party, with other Independent MPs, campaigners and activists across the country.”
Sultana cited the Starmer government’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza as a reason for leaving, saying that “this government is an active participant in genocide. And the British people oppose it.”
Just for anyone still following this odd developing story, Corbyn has now issued a statement in which he says ‘discussions are still ongoing’ about a ‘real alternative’, but does not say he’s going to be co-leader of anything. This seems to me to match what Jessica Elgot and Gabriel Pogrund were reporting yesterday: that, contra Zarah Sultana’s statement, there’s not (yet) a new party and Corbyn is not co-leader.
I would be all for a new left-wing party but I don’t particularly think it would be a good idea to have Corbin anywhere near it. As much as I agree with him as a person he’s truly awful at being a politician. He just doesn’t seem to play the game very well.
Him being in an advisory role would be absolutely fine.
Corbyn’s already said he’s not joining, amazing stuff.
Source?
-There have long been significant divisions between senior figures close to Corbyn over how such a movement on the left should operate - some keen to begin as a new party and others less so. Sources adamant tonight Corbyn not agreed to any joint leadership of a new party.
A MSM journalist opposing progressives by citing “anonymous sources” is not really evidence yet.
If Corbyn does launch a new party, a huge MSM smear campaign like the last time is to be expected.
I always call out this conspiracist stuff when the right do it, so I’ll do exactly the same when it come from the left.
As @[email protected] put it, ‘either those reports are true or Corbyn went radio silent on the announcement of his new party and let there be room for this speculation.’ In fact, both sides are true: the party has been ‘launched’ without a coherent structure, leadership or even a name, and Corbyn has chosen to say nothing about it. These are facts. There’s no smear involved.
Corbyn is not silent though
Jeremy Corbyn outlines plan for new political party and pledges: ‘I am here to serve the people’
I’m not blaming you but the “journalists” in this one. We must not forget the tremendous “antisemite” smear campaign they launched against Corbyn because he opposed Israel.
Right wing tabloid TheDailyMail is already going in full force to generate “speculations of leftist infighting”
We see the BBC staff literally saying that their news favours Israel. TheGuardian is slightly better but has proven for an entire year after October 7 that they will join a media blitz for Israel. And they too smeared Corbyn. Guardian writers like Owen Jones who smeared Corbyn in the past now admit that they were wrong to do so and that Corbyn was right.
Surely you’re not going to say that the organized media smear campaign against Corbyn was a “conspiracy”.
This is not inconsistent with anything I said yesterday or, indeed, this morning.
There was not an organised media smear campaign against Corbyn. ‘The media’ is not in any sense a group of people who said ‘Let’s all agree to tell lies about Corbyn’, which is what an organised smear campaign would have to look like. The media has always been persistently unfair, to the level of insanity, about everyone to the left of the Conservatives, but there’s nothing organised about it, it’s just powerful people representing their own interests.
There was not an organised media smear campaign against Corbyn. ‘The media’ is not in any sense a group of people who said ‘Let’s all agree to tell lies about Corbyn’,
So is this a lie?
Sunday Times journalist, so take with a handful of salt:
https://xcancel.com/Gabriel_Pogrund/status/1940865333570801752
We really went from the Independent Group (anti-Corbyn) to the Independent Group (pro-Corbyn) and Corbyn somehow hates both. Corbyn truly is one of a kind, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Accidentally launching a party co-lead by someone who doesn’t want to lead it is something only the British left could’ve accomplished.
Then there’s people, like the Canary, who are trying to spin the reports of Corbyn hostility as a media smear.
Like, either those reports are true or Corbyn went radio silent on the announcement of his new party and let there be room for this speculation. You’d think someone who’s been dealing with a hostile media for a decade would know better.
Media will smear Corbyn for anything. I’d recommend watching the short clip where Corbyn talked about the party https://www.youtube.com/shorts/gQFc9OxR-_0
It’s amazing that to gage if Corbyn supports Sultana’s party we have to read between the lines of an interview with ITV from a few days ago instead of Corbyn just stating he’s with the initiative.
Either the reports are true, or this is a major comms failure on the yet-to-be-named party’s part. Having the initial talk of your new party being if the supposed co-founder is involved isn’t a good look. Corbyn has a lot to be rightfully mad at the media for, but this is one is on him.
To be clear is this “the evidence that Corbyn is furious”? A writer for the right wing “The Sunday Times”? or am I missing something?
If the UK had ranked choice voting or proportional representation, they’d have a chance of bringing up the left flank, and possibly even having the clout to force Labour to compromise. Though under first past the post, they’ll find it next to impossible to break through in most seats, at best holding seats their high-profile founding members already have (Corbyn’s not going anywhere) and fighting the Greens for Brighton and Bristol (which would probably result in Labour picking them up due to the progressive vote being split).
They have a bigger change than you think. A recent hypothetical poll put them at 10% national support (without that party actually existing or them campaigning!), and it’s very likely that their spontaneous support is highly concentrated in urban areas and the red wall. That means they’r competitive in those seats. Now imagine them going in to an alliance with the Green party (=15%) and they’re already bigger than the LibDems. Now if they start campaigning, and they manage to increase the turnout by 1%, steal 1% of the LibDems, and 2% of Labour and Reform each (respectively disengaged poor/working class people with whom leftist socio-economic plans resonate, dissapointed middle class Labour-voters who went to the liberals, dissapointed leftists who vote Labour because it’s the best thing on the ballot, and dissapointed Labour voters who’re “giving Reform a chance”), and you’ve suddenly got yourself the second biggest party in the election.
They could win enough votes to force the main party to have to form a coalition like the LibDems did in 2010 though - and then force through P.R.
But with the right vibes a populist movement could of course win outright. Coalition with the Greens and SNP while picking up a few defectors from the LibDems in a pinch.
Honestly, I’m sick of voting tactically. It just means that instead of running towards fascism, we inch towards it instead every election.
I’m voting Green or Corbyn. Labour is not my party anymore.
I don’t mind Labour, it’s the current leadership that I’m upset about.
Labour have some really strong potential party leaders. If the Conservatives continue to be as pathetic as they currently are, and Reform continues to just have unhinged PR disasters every 5 minutes, it’s entirely possible they will get the chance to be Prime Minister.
Good luck to UK lemmings on how this plays out. I wish something like this would happen in the US.
The US actually has other parties, it’s just no one ever hears about them. I’m afraid to say that this will go the same way, the days of the three-party system are long since over. Now your choice is right-wing politicians, really right-wing politicians, or actual Nazis.
Or you can have the delusional hippies (who don’t want to build solar farms on the basis that it would require cutting down a few trees), who always pick up a few votes, but never enough to make any difference.
The only good thing about reform is that Nigel Farage has utterly failed to establish the cult following that Donald Trump has. So they’re unlikely to be a long-term issue.
Good luck to them. I fear this will do absolute fuck all to shift the needle. But good for them for trying.
Oh, stop. I can only handle so much excitement. Now take the decent Labour MPs and leave the right-wing wasteland behind.
