Latest news with #YourParty
New Statesman
a day ago
- Politics
- New Statesman
How worried should Labour be by Corbyn's mailing list?
Photo byAt the time of writing, more than half-a-million people have signed up to the mailing list for Your Party, headed up by former Labour MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. This party is in an incubational stage. It will be made into a proper political party with, hopefully, a proper name at its inaugural conference… whenever that is. I am reminded of the Labour leadership election in 2015. There was a rule change that gave members of the party a right to vote for the next Labour leader. And predictably, Labour membership surged. It made Labour the largest party in Europe. Constituency Labour Party meetings were packed out. Factions were formed. Zack Polanski, in his New Statesman debate with Adrian Ramsey two weeks ago, alluded to a similar phenomenon in the Green Party now. Branch meetings are swelling in size thanks to the upcoming leadership election; disgruntled councillors and members are switching sides to get what some might view as a Corbyn-friendly leader on the air-waves. At least, that's what Zack says. This is a bell weather moment. There is obviously an appetite for a sharper left populist rabble rouser to shake up the status quo, whether a Corbyn/Sultana led party or a Polanski led one. The right-wing version of this disposition has had an outlet in Reform for at least a year now, and now the left is finding its own vehicle. Perhaps the conditions have never been better for the emergence of a left populist party. Voters are less loyal, more consumer-minded, more swingy (as I wrote in 2022), than ever before. As research from Peter Kellner shows, the only enthused loyalists in town right now are bedded in with Reform and the Greens – the radicals. But members, as with Labour's surge in 2015 or the Green surge now, do not speak for voters. They are vastly unrepresentative of the unattached masses. And in the Corbyn/Sultana case, this isn't even membership. Plenty of over-excited people are claiming Your Party has overtaken the Tories and Reform and may just have pipped Labour for the most popular party nationally. But this is a mailing list, free of charge, just 'keep me in the loop' stuff. This does not mean the surge is totally meaningless, but it is less meaningful than half a million paid up members to a real party with a real name and legitimate infrastructure. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe What does that tell us about the real term popularity of this future project? One poll tells us a Corbyn-type party would tweak the enthusiasms of 18 per cent of us. This compares to 30 per cent for Labour in its current form, 24 per cent for the Conservatives, 28 per cent for the Greens… and 28 per cent for Reform. In isolation, as a headline, 18 per cent sounds exciting. In as split an environment as Britain's, 18 per cent at the ballot box would win you a hefty number of seats, and if Reform isn't too far ahead, kingmaker role in the coalition negotiations. But look closer and you will see the 18 per cent is the real upper-limit of what this party could get. And the support trends among the younger (an unreliable voter base). Corbyn does bring voters out. I've never seen his face on my Facebook feed more than now. And I remember 2017! Corbyn excites. But he also brings out his opponents. No party has people swearing themselves from ever voting for it more. In the long term, one has to wonder whether a New Left party so heavily tied to the Corbyn brand would be as toxifying as it exciting. For now however, we know there is appetite on the left for something sharper than what Labour currently offers. The mailing list is not really evidence of that. [See more: A Trump shaped elephant] Related
Spectator
a day ago
- Politics
- Spectator
Corbyn and Sultana use same crowdfunder as Tommy Robinson
You'd think two botched party launches would have chastened Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn somewhat. Not so. The duo continue to heap praise on the number of sign-ups their new group has seen – reaching 550,000 in the last 24 hours – while Sultana uses the rising figure to barb Reform, boasting at the weekend that it had overtaken Nigel Farage's party membership. But, as Reform figures were quick to point out, a free sign-up is a rather different thing than being a paid-up party member… And Mr S has spotted another amusing feature of the dynamic duo's freshly-formed website. YourParty – which Sultana rather confusingly insists is not the long-term name of the new group – uses a plugin from a US company called Donorbox to crowdfund for its lefty cause. Eagle-eyed observers might have heard of this organisation before – after it gained publicity through none other than far-right activist Tommy Robinson. As previously reported by BuzzFeed, Robinson raised money to cover £20,000 legal fees via the plugin after better-known payment platforms like PayPal cut off payments to some controversial right-wingers. Small world, eh? When quizzed on Donorbox's decision to allow Robinson to use the plugin at the time, CEO Charles Zhang remarked that he didn't want to get into 'opinions on [Tommy Robinson]', and added: We are not a platform or a social network that spreads information. Donorbox is a basic financial tool that allows people to give out of their free will. We hosts donation forms for socialists, conservatives, Muslims, Christians, and the LGBTQ community. It's often that their views clash dramatically. Given the politics of the Corbynista pair, Steerpike wonders exactly what the duo will make of using a platform with such a libertarian philosophy – and its links to a decidedly non-left-wing activist…
Scotsman
a day ago
- Politics
- Scotsman
Jeremy Corbyn's new party starts with advantage but could seriously damage Labour
Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's new left-wing party got off to a shaky start. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Ms Sultana appeared to jump the gun with her announcement that she had quit Labour and would be co-leader of a new party with Mr Corbyn. He would only confirm discussions were taking place. But now it's official and "Your Party" - only its temporary name until members can decide how it will be known - is expected to hold a conference in the autumn. Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana are forming a new left-wing party. Picture: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Pollsters More in Common have suggested the new party could get as much as 10 per cent of the vote at the next general election, taking around 5 per cent from the Greens, 3 per cent from Labour and 2 per cent from elsewhere. In Scotland, it could well draw some votes from disillusioned SNP voters too. New parties usually face an uphill battle to establish themselves. People might struggle to remember the centrist, pro-EU Change UK, which was launched with great fanfare in 2019. It was founded by seven Labour MPs, including Chuka Umunna, once seen as a rising star, and Luciana Berger, who claimed the party was "institutionally antisemitic". And they were joined a few days later by three Tories, including former minister Anna Soubry. But 10 months later the party was dissolved. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party (Ukip) and Brexit Party both failed to make any electoral breakthrough before he finally got some MPs elected for his latest party, Reform UK. The new left-wing party, however, starts with a big advantge: Jeremy Corbyn is already very well known by the general public and had a huge following, especially among younger people, when he was Labour leader. Thousands chanted his name when he appeared on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury in 2017. And although the 2019 general election ranked as one of Labour's worst defeats, forcing Mr Corbyn's resignation, the election two years earlier saw the party perform much better than predicted, taking 40 per cent of the vote and removing Theresa May's overall majority. But his new party could seriously damage Labour at the next general election. It may not win many seats, but in today's fragmented political scene, and with Labour's large Commons majority based on a fairly low total vote, it could easily take enough votes from Labour cause the loss of marginal seats. And the danger for the left is that that could pave the way for Reform success.
The Independent
4 days ago
- Politics
- The Independent
Keir Starmer will fight Corbyn's new party by copying Emmanuel Macron
It is easy to mock the new party launched in a struggle between its joint figureheads, but that is no reason to pass up the chance. It takes a special skill for one figurehead (Zarah Sultana) to announce the founding of a new party only for the other figurehead (Jeremy Corbyn) to deny, a day later, that it had happened (' discussions are ongoing '). Then, when Corbyn, three weeks later, announced that it was indeed ' time for a new kind of political party ', which appeared to be called Your Party because that was the name of the website, Sultana snapped on social media: ' It's not called Your Party!' It turned out that Your Party was a placeholder name and the real name will be decided democratically at the inaugural conference, details TBC. Mockery is always useful, because it reminds us how incapable the Corbynite tendency usually is at organising anything more complicated than a split. But it cannot be the whole story, because we know two other things. One is that there is a big pool of potential support for soft Corbynism, if it can suppress the doctrinaire Marxism, the disdain for Britain and the accusation of antisemitism (denied by Corbyn, of course) that is never far from the surface. The other is that Corbyn's allies showed that they could, briefly, run a competent general election campaign when they came close to unseating Theresa May in 2017. So the Not-Your-Party could be a force to be reckoned with. According to some opinion polls, it would take most support away from the Green Party, but it would also siphon votes away from Labour. It is all very well Peter Kyle, the science secretary, describing his former leader as ' not a serious politician ', but Labour has to take the threat from the new party seriously. It is doing so. Keir Starmer has been criticised – not least by Sultana – for copying Farage and thereby pushing Labour voters who are repelled by Reform in her direction. But I think this is to get Starmer's strategy the wrong way round. He knows that part of Labour's electoral coalition is repelled by Farage, but he wants to use that force of magnetic repulsion to try to keep hold of those voters, not to drive them away. This is what might be called the 'Emmanuel Macron' strategy. Macron twice fought off a threat from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French equivalent of Corbyn-Sultana, by becoming the leading candidate against Marine Le Pen, the anti-immigration candidate of the party formerly known as the Front National. In 2017, and again in 2022, Macron came top in a divided field (winning just 24 per cent and 28 per cent of the vote) in the first round, forcing voters to choose between him, a centrist with roots in the Socialist Party, and Le Pen, regarded with horror by polite French opinion. Each time, he won the run-off vote comfortably. By running against Le Pen, Macron was able to unite a coalition stretching from Mélenchon through Macron's former socialists to the remnants of the establishment conservatives. Starmer wants to fight the next general election as, in effect, a presidential run-off contest between him and Farage. He knows that the threat of Farage as prime minister is his most powerful weapon. Presenting the election as a contest between Starmer and Farage is the best way of squeezing not just the Corbyn-Sultana vote, but the Green Party vote and even that of the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The one point on which apologists for the Corbyn-Sultana party become evasive is when they are asked if they would be helping to let Farage in. That is the irresistible logic of the first-past-the-post voting system, but they have to try to deny it to keep their dream alive. Most longstanding Corbynites understand this very well. That is why Corbyn was so reluctant to launch the new party, which some of his acolytes were keen to do the moment he won his Islington North constituency as an independent last year. He knows that the only reason he nearly succeeded in 2017 was that his supporters had taken over the Labour Party. An outfit outside the party, on the other hand, will quickly discover that support for Gaza and anti-capitalism, however wide, is not deep. If Farage's popularity holds up, the next election will be decided in seats that are contested between Labour and Reform; in those seats, a vote for the new party will be a vote for Farage. It will be time, as Macron said in France, for all good people to rally to the cause of defeating anti-immigrant authoritarianism. That is a message that could work for Starmer here with voters otherwise tempted to vote Tory, Lib Dem, Green – and with voters attracted to whatever the Corbyn-Sultana party ends up being called.
Rhyl Journal
5 days ago
- Politics
- Rhyl Journal
Cabinet minister calls Corbyn ‘chaotic' after new party launch
Technology Secretary Peter Kyle said that the Islington North MP 'doesn't think about governing, he thinks about posturing' and praised the leadership of Mr Corbyn's successor Sir Keir Starmer. The ex-Labour leader promised a 'new kind of political party' when he launched the as yet unnamed project with Zarah Sultana on Thursday. Asked about the move, Mr Kyle reflected on what he called the 'chaos and instability' of Mr Corbyn's leadership. Speaking on Times Radio, Mr Kyle said: 'He's not a serious politician. He doesn't think about governing, he thinks about posturing. And we see that writ large at the moment, because all the posturing, of course, just puts him at odds with his own supporters, which is why you've got George Galloway saying he won't join it.' It's time for a new kind of political party – one that belongs to you. Sign up at — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 24, 2025 He later added: 'The Labour Party is now led by somebody who has the very clear interest of our country at heart. It is country first, and that's the kind of thing I think people are responding to. 'We see Keir acting incredibly well on the international stage in recent months, tackling some of the big issues facing the world and its economy and he's thrown himself into fixing our public services. I think this is the kind of leadership that people respond to, not that of the chaotic Jeremy Corbyn.' Mr Corbyn said on Friday that '200,000 people have signed up' after Thursday's launch. Wow. In under 24 hours, 200,000 people have signed up to build a real alternative to poverty, inequality and war. Something special is happening – be part of it at — Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) July 25, 2025 The movement has the website with a welcome message saying 'this is your party' – but Ms Sultana said: 'It's not called Your Party.' Mr Corbyn denied on Thursday that the launch had been 'messy'. His statement on X came after Ms Sultana said she was launching the party with Mr Corbyn earlier this month, but the former Labour leader appeared unready to formally announce the move until now. 'It's not messy at all. It's a totally coherent approach,' he told reporters. 'It's democratic, it's grassroots and it's open.' He also said that he and Coventry South MP Ms Sultana are 'working very well together'. Asked why it was him alone doing broadcast media to launch the party, and also asked where Ms Sultana was, he said: 'We're working absolutely together on this. 'She happens to be, as far as I know at this moment, in Coventry. 'I was in touch with her just a few moments ago. So it's all fine. We're working very well together, all of us.'
