I have more questions than answers about Jeremy Corbyn's new party

The National

2 days ago

He and I are both admirers of Tony Benn and I share many of his political opinions. At the same time, I respectfully disagree with him on some important issues.
And I point out that the 27-year-old Scottish Socialist Party has already announced – and reiterated again at our National Council in Glasgow last weekend – that it is our intention to stand in all eight regions at next year's Holyrood election.
One of the most substantial differences we had with Corbyn for a long time was the nature and role of the Labour Party, which I left 40 years ago. For me Labour are not now, nor have ever been, a legitimate or trustworthy vehicle for socialist change.
The independent socialist Scotland and modern democratic republic I want to see, for example, is not an ambition Labour share. The reverse in fact is true. It seems Corbyn, having split with Labour, agrees with me on the former issue at least.
Keir Starmer's ambivalence toward the ongoing slaughter in Gaza is merely the last straw for many of his erstwhile voters. Others were just as disgusted by his attack on the benefits for people with disabilities and families with more than two children. Then there is the betrayal of the Waspi women and the repugnant decision to divert international aid spending towards armaments.
Many questions remain about the Corbyn/Sultana project, however, largely because its advocates have been slow to provide answers.
Is it their intention, for example, to create another version of the Labour Party? In other words, an electoral machine that may criticise but ultimately sustains capitalism?
Where is the primacy of class in the new party's politics? How will it prevent the broad, and therefore shallow, coalition of disparate opinions collapsing under the pressure of ideological divisions and competing tactical priorities?
If I were to guess at the social composition of the 600,000 people who have reportedly signed up for this project, I'd say many were likely to be students, others would be from the pro-Palestinian diaspora. And most would be from Greater London and the biggest English cities.
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My late father, a lifelong socialist and trade union member, never took to Corbyn as Labour leader. He felt he was just not 'hard enough' to withstand what the Labour right would throw at him. I confess I could see what he meant.
Corbyn is a decent man, and it is an outrage that the charge of antisemitism was levelled against him for criticising the actions of the ultra-reactionary Israeli government.
And yet he often seems like 'an altar boy at a knife fight', prone, according to Owen Jones's book
This Land to disappearing to his allotment for days at a time to avoid confrontation. Just as Starmer has come a cropper for being merely the anti-Tory conduit in last year's election, Corbyn can surely see that offering an opposition to Starmer is not enough for people to sustainably coalesce behind.
Another feature of the Corbyn announcement I found interesting was examining who is not joining – John McDonnell, Diane Abbott (below), Ian Lavery and other members of the 'Bennite' group of Labour MPs, nor are the trade unions. Nor are many socialists in the schemes of Scotland.
The project, it seems to me, is therefore hamstrung by the contradictions within it. It's another London-centric project whose approach to the national question is at best ambivalent – they say they will not take a position on Scottish independence.
I fear this new party is therefore less likely to succeed in Scotland than many believe. If it fails to build roots in working-class communities here, it will not sustain and in due course may perversely act as an accelerant for further advance by forces such as Reform UK.
The rise in support for Reform can also be traced to Starmer's door. It has been seven years in the making and while the first five were spent largely trying to usurp the Tory Party, it really took off under the weight of Starmer's failures.
They won the Runcorn by-election in May – Labour's fifth-safest seat – and are on course to win the Welsh Assembly election. They have 500 councillors, many in England's poorest counties and their narrative that 'Britain is broken and needs Reform' resonates with millions.
Successful strategies demand thorough preparation, immense funding and resolute application. Nigel Farage, I regret to say, seems better prepared and more streetwise than Corbyn.
The question I have been examining in this column over recent months is not so much 'is support for Reform increasing in Scotland?' but rather 'why is it on such a sharp incline?' What is driving its support?
It's a question that demands an honest and comprehensive answer from an independence movement losing support to arch-Unionists.
READ MORE: John Curtice gives verdict on John Swinney's indyref2 plan and SNP chances in 2026
Starmer's failures are undoubtedly the main driver. He promised to redistribute wealth in favour of working people and to fully fund public services such as the NHS, social care and education. He palpably has not. But it is also true that John Swinney must take his share of the blame for Reform's surge here. As First Minister, he has presided over NHS Scotland's worst crisis and betrayed a promise to deliver a national care service.
His cut-and-paste independence strategy is no more credible. Claiming only an SNP majority at [[Holyrood]] next year can deliver indyref2 is undermined by a poor record in government over the past 19 years. That referendum also remains in the gift of Westminster and Swinney has never offered a serious route to achieving it.
Incapable of thwarting the rise of Reform, he is unable to extricate himself from the view voters have of him as part of the political establishment implicated in the failure to address the grotesque inequalities, privatisations and exploitation people endure here.
The Scottish Socialist Party will offer people an alternative to the parties of the 'extreme centre' and Reform UK at next year's election.
And in doing so we will highlight our unwavering support for an independent socialist Scotland and a modern democratic republic – and the fact our MSPs would live on the average worker's wage, as I did between 2003-07.
We'd replace the hated and unfair Council Tax with an income-based alternative where the poorest are exempt, and point proudly to an unparalleled record, over a quarter of a century, of support for workers and communities in struggle.